Issue 30 - The New Frontiers Issue

WORDS BY JOSHUA GLASS

In these times, working across the planet is not the most unthinkable feat. Surely, you have colleagues you’ve never met—shall never meet—before. Nine-to-fives that no longer command a physical lease. Friends who have backed out of the unspoken urban agreement to suffer, folding into the promise of wider pastures. Indeed, the magazine you’re about to read was created across WhatsApp groups and Google Hangouts and commissioned through coffee meetings replaced with texts and bedroom FaceTimes with actual strangers. The editing itself, which in the past could only explain as skydiving between monsoons of printed text, was replaced with Bible-sized digital PDFs, multizone conference calls, and expiring-WeTransfer downloads. It’s a strange feeling to conceive a physical magazine almost entirely digitally. And yet it’s also completely appropriate for the occasion.

The issue marks the return of this magazine to print publishing after a time of pause. Of course, the world we live in now is far different than it was before—a nebulous reality of multi-realities that are somehow both intensified and dismantled with every passing moment. We chose to study these complex cultural shifts, influential ideas, and innovators on the precipice of change—it seems that everything relevant from technology to talent is approaching some idea of new frontiers. Along the way we encountered many stories of unbelievable originality, like the musician Teezo Touchdown, whose hair is adorned by locks of skin-piercing nails, and unexpected risk, such as the fashion designer Peter Do, who offered us an exclusive peek at his first menswear collection after swearing off designing clothing for men, or the artist Dan Colen, who turned his blue-chip legacy into a progressive farm dedicated to social change. Perhaps most compelling were the few unforeseen but deeply appreciated communions as displayed by the many creatives across all disciplines who recounted how Virgil Abloh shaped their trajectories.

Whether it is the case of shedding one’s skin to start anew, as this magazine finds itself doing, or a full nose-dive into a different world not yet seen, I’ve always been fascinated by the concept of new. (I have the word tattooed on my body twice, but that is a story for another time.) Surely by the end of these forthcoming pages, you will be as well.

CREATIVE DIRECTOR

Kevin Wong

GUEST EDITOR

Joshua Glass

FEATURES EDITOR

Sophie Shaw

ART DIRECTOR

Vasun Pachisia

GRAPHIC DESIGNER

Franny Fuller

EDITORIAL OPERATIONS DIRECTOR

Marc Wong

EDITORIAL COORDINATOR

Samantha Su

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS

Yuki Abe, Ann Binlot, Eric Brain, Sophie Caraan, Avon Dorsey, India Ennega, Keith Estiler, Alex Frank, Shawn Ghassemitari, Paul Heavener, Giovanna Ione, Samira Larouci, Adrian Madlener, Alice Morby, Sarah Osei, Andrew Rossow, Elliot Santiago, Jack Stanley

CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS

Prince Baffour-Asare, Evan Browning, Marta Camarada, Joe Cruz, Peter Do, Zhamak

Fullad, George Harvey, Asato Iida, Mary Beth Koeth, Michael Kusumadjaja, Andrea

Lamedica, Brendan Lott, Boe Marion, Rosie Marks, Eduardo Medrano Jr., Bradley Ogbonna, Bennet Perez, Eric Scaggiante

CONTRIBUTING STYLISTS

Shaojun Chen, Kirby Marzec, Ben Schofield

CONTRIBUTING DESIGNERS

Wesley So, David Wise, Jennet Liaw

SPECIAL THANKS

Dan Doyle, Ben Ganz, Kristin Hrycko, Hypemoon, IDEA Books, Clara Jeon, Humberto Leon, Carol Lim

FOUNDER

Kevin Ma

ADVERTISING

Huan Nguyen, USA

Anthony Esponda, USA

Steven Appleyard, EMEA

Tiff Shum, APAC

Advertise@ Hypebeast.com

Hypebeast.com/advertise

CONTACT

Hypebeast Hong Kong Limited

40/F, Cable TV Tower

No.9 Hoi Shing Road

Tsuen Wan, New Territories

Hong Kong

+852 3563 9035

Magazine@Hypebeast.com

PRINTING

Asia One Printing Limited In Hong Kong

All Rights Reserved

Issn 977.230412500-0 13th Floor, Asia One Tower 8 Fung Yip Street

Chai Wan, Hong Kong +852 2889 2320

Enquiry@Asiaone.com.hk

PUBLISHER

Hypebeast Hong Kong Limited 2022 September ©2022 Hypebeast

Hypebeast® is a Registered Trademark of Hypebeast Hong Kong Limited

Groovy Chair by Pierre Paulin

Pierre Paulin’s iconic Groovy chair was designed in 1964, and is modeled after automobile technology from that era: Paulin was one of the great mid-century designers out of Paris, particularly known for focusing on linearity in his pieces. The Groovy chair’s aerodynamic seating and curved edges denote an innate feeling of nostalgia bolstered by throwback colorways in a new wool fabrication. Available exclusively at the Conran Shop, the special edition is made possible by Paulin, Paulin, Paulin, led by the late designer’s family to uphold his legacy.

$5,331 CONRANSHOP.CO.UK

Obegränsad Record Player by IKEA

In collaboration with Swedish House Mafia, IKEA is launching a high-concept record player: Obegränsad. The audio device, which joins a limited-edition collection of music-minded home products seen by the Grammy-nominated music group, is designed in a block-shape and contrasting square-meets-circle format, and marks the first

time the design-focused retailer has made a record player since 1973. Powered by a USB cable, the turntable connects to sound system adapters or standard wire speakers.

Type 5 AIT by Ressence

Designed in Antwerp and produced in Switzerland, Ressence calls its Type 5 dive watch the first mechanical watch to be perfectly readable below water thanks to its oil-filled dial that thwarts underwater refraction. With its unidirectional bezel, the piece also incorporates the pressure-

balancing bellow system, magnetic transmission, and hydraulic shock absorption. Marked by a special yellow logo, the brand is now releasing an exclusive extension of the watch with Art in Time entitled Type 5 AIT. The collaboration is limited edition, though, with only 11 available for purchase at the

Monaco-based watchmaking gallery and the final to go to auction this fall to benefit the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation.

$30,700 RESSENCEWATCHES.COM

Praesentia by Felipe Pantone

Argentinian-Spanish contemporary artist Felipe Pantone looks to close out 2022 with a bang, as he releases his new hardbound book Praesentia. Having transcended the graffiti art space, Pantone is inspired by color and light and has addressed issues of digital revolution and transformation in his work. Published by Beyond

the Streets and Ginko Press, the artist’s new offering takes him further into his creative quest by showcasing over 300 pages of photographs, essays, illustrations, and personal anecdotes. The book’s silvery moire-effect slipcase conveys a kinetic art feel that allows the item to become a veritable art piece.

$95 BARNESANDNOBLE.COM AND SELECT BOOKSELLERS.

INITIA TION Chapter 1

The Belgian designer discusses helming the long-lasting brand built around denim—what he considers the most democratic fabric in the world.

“Have fun, sex, live your life, don’t give a shit about anything,” enthuses Glenn Martens, unravelling the irreverent energy he’s been trying to maintain since taking over Diesel two years ago. “And don’t take yourself too seriously, it’s really important to have fun. We try to put this in everything we do.”

Living across two capitals, though, Martens’ own free time for fun is becoming less and less. On any given Monday morning, the designer finds himself flying into Milan—where Diesel calls home— then heads back to Paris from Wednesday onwards to work on his on-going job at Y/Project. Triggered by self-reflection during COVID-19 lockdowns, he took on the double duty after questioning the impact of his work. “I began to wonder if I wanted to keep nourishing my ego and become an unsupportable designer,” he says. “Or If I wanted to talk bigger and louder and to more people.” Ultimately, he chose both. But the new task was more than just something for the 39-year-old Belgian to prove to himself. Despite its global commercial outreach, the core essence of experimentation and conceptualization that’s followed Martens throughout his career is simply shape-shifting at Diesel. “It has more reach than your classic luxury house,” he explains. “It’s really about how I feel and how I want to be empowered, which is way less fashion in the traditional sense; it’s more emotional and society-oriented. It’s about who I am talking to, and how I can empower them through these designs, because the conceptualization and experimentation of garments are always at the core of what I do.”

Growing up in Bruges, Martens recalls washing dishes at the age of 14 illegally in the back of a bar to save up money for a pair of Diesel jeans. It was a pivotal moment long before he studied fashion at Antwerp’s acclaimed Royal Academy of Fine Arts that taught him about the power of emotional marketing. “It was the first time I bought something consciously not because of the garment, but because of the brand itself,” he remembers. Decades later, both Y/Project and Diesel share common design philosophies under Martens’ eye despite their seemingly polarizing perceptions. “I’m always trying to find something in the unexpected or push the limits of what we know or consider to be acceptable,” he says. “Y/Project is based on construction, it’s really me looking at how I can reconstruct a garment, and build it up to challenge

the norm of what we already know. The starting point for Diesel is always Diesel—they have an ethos of successful living.” Of course, delving into a storied brand with a strong aesthetic identity—and without making it overtly nostalgic—has become one of Martens’ magic tricks. “You always have to reconnect to the founding values of the brand. It’s not always necessary to reinvent it,” says the designer, who also guest-designed a couture collection for Jean Paul Gaultier earlier this year. “It’s about celebrating those founding values.”

Pairing technical design principles with conceptual practices, Martens’ Diesel is a surrealistic 2000s fantasy. Pieces vary from flared track pants and boxy biker jackets to the new Prototype sneaker, and of course, denim, which comes in both straight leg and ultra baggy silhouettes. Early co-signs included Kanye West and Julia Fox: shortly after their infamous first date, the musician filled a hotel suite with every piece of Martens’ debut Diesel collection. Cementing that the fabric—which Martens passionately declares “the most democratic in the world”—remains elevated in every garment he touches: “It’s not about money, but it’s an ethos and way of thinking. Only denim has the capacity to have this versatility. Your sexuality, money, location, or where you grew up doesn’t matter. A denim pant is a denim pant and everyone will own one. You can wear the same pair with sneakers to Berghain that you then wear with a heel to a cocktail. And that’s why it’s so fun to work with.”

But the designer is also quick to assert that the textile can also be very polluting, explaining Diesel’s significant efforts toward sustainable design. “Now we have one of the cleanest denim in the industry with 50 percent of our fabric made out of recycled and organic cotton and the other 50 percent made of [Better Cotton Initiative] cotton,” he says. “Not to mention denim also becomes better and sexier the more you wear it.” Playful irreverence aside, there’s also a positive ideological force that’s being ushered into this new chapter. “In the bullshit times we’re living in, we all want to be conscious and work towards a better future,” he says, “We’ve really committed to trying to change reality through environmental sustainability, and while we’re doing that we also have to try and enjoy life as much as possible.”

WINNIE NEW YORK TRANSVERSES THE GLOBE

Founder Idris Balogun mixes impressive design background with an international perspective.

Idris Balogun’s CV is as diverse as it is extraordinary. The fashion designer got his start on London’s famed Savile Row, becoming an apprentice at the young age of 14 before moving on to design roles under Christopher Bailey at Burberry and Tom Ford for his namesake. Impressive yet vastly different, the professional experiences mirror Balogun’s own international past: growing up in London, spending time in his birthplace of Nigeria, and, eventually moving to New York. Years later, he is still based in Brooklyn, where he designs his own line, Winnie New York, a timeless tailoring brand that is hand-crafted in Vicenza—a picturesque, romantic Italian town about an hour away from Venice—and debuted seasonally in Paris.

WORDS BY JACK STANLEY PHOTOGRAPHY BY ERIC SCAGGIANTE

“TO TAKE THE RISK WAS THE GREATEST THING I EVER DID. TO ME IT MEANS THE WORLD. NOW, I TAKE A RISK EVERY SINGLE DAY AND I DON’T CARE ANYMORE. I’M LIKE, FUCK IT .”

Admittedly, the decision to step away from the comfort of his renowned employers to pursue his vision in 2018 was a risk for Balogun but it was one that he says he had to take. “You can be the happiest designer, designing for whoever, and being their second hand. But then you only have an inkling in your mind of what your world looks like, what the lifestyle you create looks like,” he explains over coffee in Paris. “I had inklings of it, but I never imagined it would lead to fruition. To take the risk was the greatest thing I ever did. To me it means everything. Now, I take a risk every single day and I don’t care anymore. I’m like, Fuck it.”

With Winnie New York, the world that Balogun eventually did build celebrates heritage and creativity. Materials are central to his process, and the designer’s garments often incorporate the unexpected, including upcycled denim, hand pleated vintage silk, and small crop linen freshly harvested from the ground and made into fiber. Not least due to its production in Italy, Winnie New York reflects Balogun’s international stimuli, incorporating cues from local New York street style with formal European construction along with travels to Senegal and his own Nigerian heritage. To commemorate her legacy, the label shares its name with its founder’s late grandmother, who passed a year before its inception. “She was a huge supporter of my career,” Balogun says. “Being a child of Nigerian immigrants, [your family] wants you to have job security, to not have to hustle and struggle the way that they did. I wanted to work in fashion, and my grandmother told me to do it. She championed me throughout my career and I really wanted to make her proud.”

Earlier this summer, Winnie New York returned to Paris after COVID-19 travel restrictions ceased to compete in LVMH’s famous fashion competition. And, following special acclaim, Balogun stayed a few days after to present his Spring/Summer 2023 collection for the week of menswear. “Within a year and a half, we went from having sewing machines in people’s houses to winning the Karl Lagerfeld Prize and being on the Paris Fashion Week calendar,” he laughs. “It’s so crazy to think about. It taught me that anything is possible. It also taught me to stay focused, keep your eye on the ball, and just keep going.”

Risk has indeed remained a creative force for the designer. “To do a show without people, without mannequins, without any anatomical structure, without any idea of clothing being worn—just throwing it out there—was risky,” Balogun explains of the fashion presentation. The clothing he showed reflected the designer’s past training as classic silhouettes were given new leases on life. Like always, materiality was strong, particularly a silk cotton blend and his small crop linen, which were used for casual pieces like T-shirts and cargo pants as well as in more formal suiting and shirts. But perhaps the clearest example of Balogun’s vision of reworking traditional pieces was a leather jacket that took its detailing from the tailoring world. “You have to imagine it, you have to appreciate the details, appreciate the fabric, look at the garments as individuals, not as a look,” he continues. “Clothes are individuals as well, they come from life: sheep was sheared for that wool, a plant was grown and picked into that cotton, flax was remade into that linen. It comes from life and then it’s made into this garment, so I think it deserves respect to be an individual as well.”

This manifestation of a garment from raw material speaks to another theme that many creatives face: transformation. “I’m not who I was yesterday. Who I was 10 years ago is not who I am now,” Balogun reflects. “Designers think about creation so much, but I think it’s a three part thing: It’s about learning, it’s about creating, and it’s about destroying. It’s a cycle. When you design you need to think about all the aspects. You have to learn these different mediums. Nobody is born and just starts creating stuff.”

HOW TO PARTY IN SPACE

Miami staple David Grutman is taking his nightlife experience extra-stratospheric by curating

“I’m not trying to throw a rave in space,” David Grutman says, leaning back in a leather office chair that may or may not be an Eames. The hospitality entrepreneur—who opened the infamous night clubs LIV and Story in Miami, collaborated with Pharrell Williams on the star-studded Goodtime Hotel, and just opened a steak-sushi concept restaurant with Bad Bunny—is no stranger to stars.

He smiles a protean, Miami smile and adds, “Although, if you want a rave in space…I’ll make it happen.” How exactly that might unfold in the circular, eight-person “space lounge” of Spaceship Neptune, which begins commercial flights in 2024, is still undetermined. But the chairs are rearrangeable for those who buy-out the entire ship—and if anyone can bring the club 100,000 feet above sea level, it’s Grutman.

That’s not, however, the point of Space Perspective. If anything, it hopes to differentiate itself from the adrenaline-junky mode of typical space tourism. As the organization’s founder Jane Poynter explains, Spaceship Neptune forgoes “high Gs”—it’s a gentle ride to the stratosphere’s brink, where one can take in the curvature of the earth and the blackness of space. The hydrogen-fueled Space Balloon—which, in renderings, more resembles a delicate candied chestnut than a polyethylene sack spacious enough for the Statue of Liberty—makes the six-hour trip carbon neutral. The ship ascends at a mere 12 miles per hour and, on return, is lowered gradually to achieve “splash down” off North America’s Floridian coast. Passengers are then ferried to dry land by yacht, of course.

Poynter and Grutman stress that the gentleness of the journey makes the flight more “accessible,” although at $150k per seat that term feels rather relative.

Indeed, when asked about the travel experiences requested thus far, Poynter explains it’s been “mostly normal things: ‘Can we have a poker tournament in space?’ ‘A wedding in space?’ Or, ‘A celebrity chef.’” Grutman, of course, already has all the above on his checklist. “Listen,” and his chair swivels for emphasis, “We’re doing food in space! How are your taste buds going to react being up that high? We don’t know.” The menu for both food and drink will change based on a given group’s preferences—as one would hope, considering the price tag—but Grutman is confident: “They could have gone with Nobu or Jean-Georges. The fact that they went with me shows they care about the experience.” One of the main throughlines will be remaining eco-conscious. “We’re going to integrate brands and ingredients that have a green or sustainable focus,” Grutman says. “I’d also like to develop something ocean-inspired, whether it’s a drink or a plate. Earth is over 70 percent water, and nowhere is this more tangible than the edge of space.”

The “perspective” shift that gives the company its name is the “overview effect”—the feeling astronauts experience upon seeing our planet from above, a mixture of awe, responsibility, and interdependence. While this is often cited as a driving reason for space tourism—and used as an easy justification for the hyper-rich hyper-waste of Blue Origin or Virgin Galactic— Space Perspective and Grutman are approaching it differently.

the hospitality for the world’s first lounge in the cosmos.

WORDS BY INDIA ENNENGA PORTRAIT BY MARY BETH KOETH

RENDERINGS COURTESY OF SPACE PERSPECTIVE

“FOR THE BEVERAGE PROGRAM, WE’LL LOOK AT INSPIRATION FROM THE OCEAN, AND LIKELY USE A SUSTAINABLE TEQUILA TO CREATE A SIGNATURE COCKTAIL, WHERE THE GLASSWARE WOULD BE IN A SPHERICAL OR CIRCULAR SHAPE. WE ALSO WANT TO THINK ABOUT THE POTENTIAL HEALTH BENEFITS WE COULD BRING IN WITH INGREDIENTS THAT HAVE AN IMPACT. BOTH ALOE AND BLUE SPIRULINA HAVE ADDED HEALTH AND HYDRATION BENEFITS THAT WOULD KEEP YOU FEELING REFRESHED FOR THE ENTIRE JOURNEY. THE TOUCH OF BLUE WILL ALSO MIRROR THE OCEAN OR PLANET BLUE RIGHT BELOW YOU!”

—DAVID GRUTMAN

As Poynter explains, the gradual zoom-out on the ascent means “you’re going slow enough that your mind can keep up with the scale changes.” That’s heightened by the 360-degree views and the dark interior of the ship—not a speck of stark, Kubrickian white here. For those more interested in understanding, rather than, say, conquering space (or, like Jeff Bezos, unintentionally prompting the FAA to refine its definition of “astronaut”), the vantage is perhaps the most appealing aspect of Space Perspective.

Although Grutman has yet to make the journey himself (the company is still in an unmanned testing phase and much is uncertain between now and the official launch), he offers up versions of previous, transformative experiences, relating it to his practice more broadly. “When someone experiences something different with you, it changes the way they feel,” he says. “It’s why we take people and show them Miami from the water. It changes their feeling of the city.” “A new perspective?” offer. “I love that,” Grutman says, flashing his cigarette-boat smile, “I’m going to steal it.”

What motivates the layperson to seek such a change of perception at not-quite-theedge-of-space? Is it thrill-seeking, insatiable curiosity, a need for social media content (yes, WiFi and recording equipment will be available in-flight), or simply a desire to understand our insignificance in the grand scheme of the universe? One can equally imagine the Obamas contemplating our human condition on Spaceship Neptune as much as one can picture EmRata live-streaming as she rises above the rest of us mortals. Whatever the motivation, Grutman will remain a neutral curator—like a priest at a galactic confessional, he knows not to dole out judgment, only well-crafted panaceas for our individual, oh-so-human natures.

“Alright, I want to show you my outfit,” Teezo Touchdown gleams through FaceTime one early evening as he walks through the streets of Camden Town, London. He hands his phone to his creative director, Austyn [Mashburn]

Sux, who takes a few steps back to reveal the full ensemble: a lime green cycling jersey and complementing tie dye pants accentuated by the artist’s signature nails piercing through his hair. “It’s like I took my favorite day of the week from Spirit Week, which was Tacky Day, and just applied it to my everyday life,” he explains. “How long am I going to keep doing this? I don’t know.”

Born Aaron Thomas in the coastal city of Beaumont, Texas, and now residing in the U.K., the artist thrives on life’s uncertainties. The creation of his Teezo Touchdown ego (as well as the rest of his cast of characters) was forged through the fire of what he calls an “extreme point of trial and error.” Although, Touchdown admits, he’s still identifying the full potential of his primary moniker to this day. He does, however, know that he wants it to be influential enough to become a Halloween costume. He’s seen this effect in the shows of Tyler, the Creator, who brought him along for his recent Call Me If You Get Los t tour, and Omar Apollo, referring to the fans who attend their concerts as the musicians’ cosplayers.

Touchdown’s current form might be most recognizable for the nails in his hair, but his main focus will always be his first love of music— regardless of any imposter syndrome he’s experienced from it or his past. Unlike many, Touchdown doesn’t see his visual presentation as a distraction from his music, which has crossed genres, ranging (so far) from high-adrenaline rap to honest indie rock and catchy electro-pop. Like a sponge, he absorbs all the sonic elements that pass through his ears and transforms each into his own, throwing all caution to the wind in the process. It’s a continuous work for Touchdown that serves almost as an act of self-love and self-care, freeing him from the negative thoughts from his past. “I heard a lot of that crazy, wild stuff growing up. That’s how raw the world can be,” he shares. “I love the direction that the world is going in now, but I’m definitely a product of a lot of those wrongs. I’m still dealing with that. I should let it go, but it’s easier said than done.”

WORDS BY SOPHIE CARAAN PHOTOGRAPHY BY ZHAMAK FULLAD DESIGN BY WES SO

Shaped by this culture of criticism, Touchdown’s sense of humor and study of method acting (or what he calls “a display of his blind and extreme faith”) have allowed him to fend off these thoughts of disapproval to better understand where the negativity originates.

“I believe that it comes from being hurt inside and insecurity. If you can deflect that off to someone else…that’s just the easiest thing to do,” he explains. So he did the opposite; he carried himself with confidence because he knew that he was destined to become Teezo Touchdown. “I know I’m gonna be a star. I’m just moving like a star before the rest of the world sees it,” he asserts.

At his very core, Touchdown is a self-taught artist. After music, his second love is cinema, specifically the kind deeply rooted in DIY culture. He credits the videographer Denzel Seale as his introduction to this type of filmography. Supported by the filmmaker, Touchdown began shooting his own music videos on his phone, and his friend’s “five-minute course” about ISOs, shutter speeds, and editing allowed the musician to film for other artists as well.

“Look at the videos of ‘Sucka!’ and ‘Careful.’ Those were shot on a Sony camera you can get at Best Buy,” he says. “We use our resources but make it look avant garde.” Even with a budget

now, Touchdown’s do-it-yourself aesthetic can still be seen in his present work, although perhaps now he realizes that maybe he took the “yourself” part too literally. He’s still trying to unlearn that part of his methodology and replace it with DIWYF: do-it-withyour-friends. He’s grown to love collaborating with other artists like Tyler and Westside Boogie, knowing that the culture of DIY will only grow stronger in music, but he does advise other young artists to use their resources. The maturity is reflective of both Touchdown’s personal and professional journeys; though both have not been the easiest, they have transformed him into the understanding, independent, and unique artist that he is today.

But will Touchdown ever get rid of the nails in his hair? The answer is maybe. After all, the nails aren’t simply part of his character; they hark back to his childhood (his father kept many tools around their family home) and the turning point in his musical career in 2019, when his breakout track about gun violence, “100 Drums,” caught the attention of Chance the Rapper and Trippie Redd. The nails are, in fact, more than a gimmick—they’re a symbol of his ability to change.

HEVEN HAND BLOWS UTOPIA

WORDS BY SOPHIE SHAW PHOTOGRAPHY BY EVAN BROWNING

Their medium may be delicate and fragile, but Breanna Box and Peter Dupont’s glasswork is anything but precious. The multi-hyphenate couple—the first a musician, director, actor, and model, while her partner, also a model, co-founded the sustainable fashion cooperative Andel—launched their creative practice known as Heven last year. With references from art, pop culture, and design, the brand’s glass-blown homewares are colorful and kitschy, and the Brooklyn, New York-based duo are bringing their fun approach to other areas of home design, too.

From lopsided goblets to devil-horned carafes, Heven’s glass pieces are imperfect and irreverent—just like their makers want them to be. “It needs to be fun—both for us to make but also to be around—and it needs to have some kind of playfulness to it,” says Dupont. This attitude is something that has been intentionally infused within their creative processes, which leaves plenty of room for error with seldom mistakes being genuinely made. “The way that we work is so fun that stuff literally has to break—maybe even break twice—before we actually trash it,” he continues. “Some of the best things happen when you can’t control the medium.”

Where they did need uniformity, however, was with their collaboration with the Parisian fashion label Coperni. The partnership, which debuted last spring, felt like a natural next step; Heven was already working on their first handbag when French designer Sébeastien Meyer serendipitously slid into Box’s DMs. After a couple prototypes, the two hit their mark with a glass rendition of Coperni’s oval-shaped Swipe bag. And yet, in spite of its immediate virality, the glassmakers still weren’t sure how their fashion-meets-art object would be received. “It’s such a new and special product—is it furniture? Is it a vase? Is it a functional thing?” Dupont muses. “Is it something you’re just gonna have standing in your house, or can you actually bring it anywhere?”

No doubt the Coperni project catapulted Heven’s practice, and with that, they’ve had to reckon with growing their operations while keeping it true to their explorative approach. “Sometimes the machine of fashion dilutes that because everything has to be so fast. It’s a constant battle between actually being able to take the time and create something that’s meaningful, and then creating something to make money on it,” Dupont says. “We’re learning and navigating,” Box adds. “People that have had charge of both industries—fashion and art—are a bit silly. And we’re definitely taking the piss out of it.”

Glassware is only the start for the design duo, whose funky creations shatter the boundaries of object, art, and function.

“WE’RE LEARNING AND NAVIGATING. PEOPLE THAT HAVE HAD CHARGE OF BOTH INDUSTRIES, FASHION AND ART, ARE A BIT SILLY. AND WE’RE DEFINITELY TAKING THE PISS OUT OF IT.”

—BREANNA BOX

While Heven has more fashion objects to come, the studio is also expanding into furniture design, lighting, and much more. Box shares that a personal search for a bookshelf from the 1800s inspired one of the new pieces they’ve been working on. “It all comes from necessity,” she says of their projects. “How can we make this new and how can we have this for our own home?” Complementarily, Dupont explains, “We want to make stuff that has a functionality to it, that can fit into people’s everyday life and make it easier.” One such item is a colorful five-piece dining table set that the two created that features crescent-shaped cutouts, allowing its different pieces to hug each other. It’s a nod to Dupont’s heritage, emphasizing Denmark’s traditions in furniture and modern design. Just as with their glass creations, in which Heven’s founders work with skilled glassblowers to develop and execute many of their ambitious pieces, the pair deferred to experienced craftspeople to help actualize their designs. For furniture, they’re working with Danish carpenters, and for glass, they’ve recruited local artists in the Brooklyn area. “We all have shit in our house, so why not have something that was beautifully made by somebody who’s put their blood sweat and tears into it?” surmises Box. “That’s so much more special.”

Big picture is important to the pair, who ultimately want Heven to evolve into a hub for creatives beyond objects and design. Box and Dupont have their sights set on the film industry (the company itself was partly launched to raise funds for a documentary Box is making about her late grandfather), and their ultimate dream would be for Heven to be a showroom and studio space for film. “Basically I’m just trying to be like Lucille Ball and have Desilu Productions,” Box laughs. “No ceiling, no cap, I [want] a store that has a flower shop downstairs and my grandmother working there—she’s a florist— and to just create a family and give the people I care about jobs. I know so many talented people.”

“Utopia would be a space where we could create and be able to fulfill that not only for ourselves, but also for the people around us with creative energy,” Dupont says. “That’ll be amazing. And glass has been a gateway to that.”

Chapter 2

GHANA IS THE GATEWAY

WORDS BY SARAH OSEI PHOTOGRAPHY BY PRINCE BAFFOUR-ASARE

As Chance the Rapper embarks on a new artistic chapter, we meet him a world away from his native Chicago in Accra—a place where creativity and community abound.

Chance the Rapper is in a period of transition. Literally, when we talk, he’s just got back to Accra, where settling in, catching up with friends, and trying to secure an Internet connection delays our interview. But on a deeper, more profound level, Chance, the artist, the man, is in flux too, and this place is the home for that. After a trip in December 2021, the Ghanaian capital has become a place for him to manifest inspiration and progress.

In recent years, Accra has emerged as the destination for Black people in the diaspora and Africans across the continent. From Beyoncé to Kendrick Lamar, many superstars have made the pilgrimage, all grasping at something colossal. Chance made his own journey amidst this African renaissance. He spent a week, it changed everything.

It all started in Chicago, where Chance the Rapper vaulted to success as a teenager, swiftly becoming one of the city’s leading MCs. In the years since, he’s remained independent, adding gravitas and perspective to the rap scene, and focused a good deal of his attention on his role as a leader in his community. There is an authenticity, a rawness to his work that can be confounding—critics are as quick to exalt

his works as they are to tear them apart. It’s been three years since his last much-disputed album, The Big Day. One would expect an artist with something to prove to cater to their immediate audience, go the traditional route, give us what we know. But Chance has a track record of mastering the unexpected.

For the next stage in his career, Chance gave himself a carte blanche. The journey to Ghana left him more ruminative, more intentional, more of an artist than he expected himself. He returned with “Child of God,” his first solo release in over a year, doubling as an art exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, then another release followed at Art Basel. But his venture into the fine arts isn’t a novelty; Chance is ready to write the next chapter of an abundantly creative career and it’s part of a story that goes back generations. “It had to be Ghana,” he tells me, “Ghana is the gateway.”

“WHEN YOU’RE IN PURSUIT OF PURE ART YOU GOTTA BE GUIDED BY TRUTH. EVEN IF I DON’T HAVE IT FIGURED OUT I MAKE SURE TO GIVE MY HONEST PERSPECTIVE.”

THE LAST TIME YOU VISITED GHANA YOU STAYED FOR JUST A WEEK. HOW DID YOU FIND COMMUNITY SO QUICKLY?

I came to disconnect from a lot of the stuff going on in Chicago, and to reconnect with Vic [Mensa], who I’ve known since we were kids. It definitely made our relationship stronger than it’s ever been. I also built a community here immediately, and met a lot of what I hope to be lifelong friends.

AS AN OBSERVER, IT LOOKS LIKE THIS TRIP CAME AT A VERY CRUCIAL TIME FOR YOU CREATIVELY.

Accra injected a lot of creativity and purpose into what I was doing. It also validated what I had been thinking for a while—it gave me confidence as a director and as an artist to work more comprehensively with visual artists. It made me understand what it means to be Black globally and how even though Black Americans specifically get a very, very important perspective there’s so many different experiences of Blackness depending on where you are in the world. Ghana has been super pivotal in terms of the advancement of Black people globally. It was important to come here.

WHAT IS IT ABOUT ACCRA THAT ALLOWED YOU TO FEEL THAT CONNECTION?

The love is permeating here. It hits you deep. When I first came to Accra, I didn’t expect it but—and I hope that I can still sound modest saying this—but people knew my shit. And not just my most famous stuff, but my B sides. I was very impressed, but the first thought that came to mind was, Why haven’t I played a show here? And I think that we need to come together as artists and create a sustainable way to always tap back into our people back home.

I’VE BEEN LISTENING BACK TO YOUR OLD STUFF AND WE DON’T TALK ENOUGH ABOUT THE LONGEVITY IN HIP-HOP THAT YOU’VE HAD. HOW DO YOU DEFINE SUCCESS?

I really don’t know what I’d call success. Do I feel successful? Yes, but I know I’m not done. I’ve always been someone who’s constantly adjusting goals, from when I first had the ambition to be a rapper. At one point my dream was to be on the radio, then to perform on SNL, meet Kanye West, and win a Grammy. Now it’s Art Basel and making music into fine art…I never would have imagined this when I started. But I think young Chance would be very proud of me now.

THIS BRINGS ME TO “CHILD OF GOD.” CAN YOU TELL ME ABOUT THIS NEW CREATIVE CHAPTER?

It’s radical and definitely very vulnerable for me. I wanted to see Black art and rap treated with reverence in the arts and we did that. Coming to Ghana and meeting the artist [Naïla Opiangah] helped me create what I believe is my proudest work. It challenged me to go back to a dream I didn’t have the confidence to complete. To tap more into visual art, especially as a filmmaker. I’m trying to put more emphasis on not just “the Rapper” side of Chance, but to translate my vision in more spaces than I even thought were possible at first.

WITH THIS PIECE, THE PROCESS SEEMS TO BE JUST AS IMPORTANT AS THE FINAL WORK.

The song changed so much because of Ghana, and Naïla’s painting changed my whole outlook on it. I had the idea for the video showing Naïla creating the artwork. This was my first time taking on cinematography, and my main focus was composition; telling this uninterrupted story of the art coming to life. The song is about that voice that tells you you can get through those moments you didn’t think you’d survive, and its meaning became much more profound through the process. Its original title was “Do Your Thing, Child,” but at the end— seeing this 6 by 12 foot painting that she had created over three days while we filmed her—I realized it was a nice name for a song but this is high art. [That] title wasn’t radical enough. Radical because the piece itself is an embodiment of Blackness, all these bodies ascending as one and they’re all Black women. It’s incredible. Naïla had a fear of her work being sexualized because she painted Black women nude, but I think us having the agency to change the name to acknowledge those figures as the singular concept of “Child of God” made it a powerful thing.

CAN WE EXPECT YOUR ALBUM STAR LINE GALLERY TO BE A CONTINUATION OF WHAT YOU STARTED WITH “CHILD OF GOD”? HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE THIS PROJECT?

Inevitable. It’s a continuation of a bigger story. Ghana had to be the backdrop for what I’m doing, and this album is so indebted to that. The name Star Line Gallery is in reference to the Black Star Line, Marcus Garvey’s shipping line that operated as part of the Universal Negro Improvement Association. It transported African Americans across the Atlantic to Ghana and back and was one of the few ways to make that connection. Even after the CIA stopped it in 1922, it had already set something off. Ghana’s first president Kwame Nkrumah was for the betterment of all African people. When he announced Ghana’s independence on the Black Star Square that he had built, it was a continuation of Garvey’s story, of our story. It’s not surprising that Ghana is the gateway again for a lot of Black people to return and connect, and that it had to be a part of my journey, too. Connecting with the amazing creatives in Accra and creating art that defies the boundaries of art, the scope of what we’re expected to achieve under the banner of the “Black Star” feels like a full circle moment.

WHAT DO YOU SAY TO THE PEOPLE WHO MIGHT NOT UNDERSTAND THIS NEW PATH, WHO WERE EXPECTING SOMETHING MORE TRADITIONAL FROM YOU?

When you’re in pursuit of pure art you gotta be guided by truth. Even if I don’t have it figured out, I make sure to give my honest perspective. And even when it’s uncomfortable or the Internet critics don’t approve, you can always count on me to create art that’s true. A lot of artists start out with the need to speak for something, whether it’s for themselves or their community, but I’ve seen it so often how over time the urgency diminishes and it’s easy to get caught up in all the things that come with making it. I’m glad that I didn’t lose focus, my path has been quite straight in that sense and [it’s] never wavered from the essence of art.

EARLIER ON I ASKED ABOUT YOUR IDEA OF SUCCESS AND HOW THAT HAS CHANGED. WHAT ABOUT LEGACY?

Legacy doesn’t mean much. What people will say after I’m gone, that’s not something I’m occupied with. I know a lot of people will say very good things about me. Then there’ll probably be others who’ll speak badly about me and my life. It doesn’t matter, I won’t be there to hear it. Since becoming a father, I understand that all of it means nothing if my daughters don’t know how much they were loved by their father and how capable they are. That’s my legacy.

Science Fiction Warned Us About Web3

Imagine a life in which your family, friends, and colleagues—everyone you know—are completely and totally alone. Where the only form of social interaction happens in the privacy of your own home through remote-controlled robots that serve as virtual emissaries. It is through these proxies that you never age, never feel pain, never risk danger, and can move in a way that your physical body could only hope for. You’re flawless in every way.

Set in the year 2054, Surrogates depicts such a world. Here, everyone stays at home while beautiful and pristine android versions of themselves—“surrogates”—crowd the outsides. The 2009 film presents the idea of disconnecting from one’s surrogate as not only foolish and dangerous but unfathomable. Believing this technology to be a newfound “freedom,” the human population is blindly devoted to its android delegates; a complete reliance that ultimately dissociates people from any form of emotion and sentiment—a condition they recognize as “safe.” It isn’t until a terrorist plot to destroy the surrogates (and the real people they are connected to) is revealed that the humans consider returning back to reality in order to save themselves. For 90 minutes, viewers face the ethical and moral conundrums that encircle a person’s choice to live safely through his or her surrogate—where they are free of pain, danger, and aging—or dangerously as a human subjected to the realities of the physical world. All the while, Bruce Willis as FBI Agent Tom Greer uses his best efforts to uncover the technological conspiracy that has caused society to forgo their humanity and love for life.

WORDS BY ANDREW ROSSOW

Decades later today, we aren’t so far off from the metaverse that Jonathan Mostow’s movie deptics. We are just as disconnected from our “true” selves and our innermost human desires, but rather than navigating this new space via surrogate robots our entrance is through digital avatars. Even with the aid of contemporary emerging technologies such as non-fungible tokens (NFTs), blockchain, and digital assets, balancing this human desire for permanence and establishment with the right to privacy and anonymity is still questionable. Indeed, one irony remains clear: As we dive deeper into the confines of the metaverse, our journey towards self-discovery becomes blurred and we become more detached from our own identity and dissociated from physical reality.

First coined in Neal Stephenson’s 1992 science fiction novel Snow Crash, the metaverse presents a new and conceptual world of worlds where humans are able to escape their reality by and through programmable avatars to experience something else—to be someone else. The vast, endless potential of what this metaverse will bring to our world’s digital infrastructure, though, requires a broader understanding of what a decentralized World Wide Web actually means. But if one were to visit one of today’s most popular tech conferences (Bitcoin Miami, Consensus, NFT. NYC, or the World Economic Forum, etc.) to ask other attendees what they believed Web3 to be, each would respond differently. That’s because Web3 isn’t just a term that can be attributed to a universal definition. It’s something much more.

At its core, Web3 is both a mindset and movement that changes the way we perceive the physical world around us. It represents an understanding that by decentralizing our traditional real-world infrastructures, we can bridge both the physical and digital realms together to help spark a new form of innovation never seen before. It is this tectonic shift the world is now experiencing as it moves away from the two-dimensional immersion into cyberspace and the Internet for a truly connected, three-dimensional, immersive, and interactive experience with one another. Rather than logging in and out or signing on and off, Web3 brings in the idea of true

decentralization as we navigate another reality under our own terms and conditions, free to construct our own boundaries of what we deem to be real.

This mindset not only necessitates a deeper exploration into how new technologies function, but it also depends upon a high level of open-mindedness and awareness that welcomes community and makes worlds within worlds possible. And for that very reason, Web3, according to Constellation Labs Chief Strategy Officer Benjamin Diggles, is “a second chance to do things right” and understand that, while still nascent and imperfect, it’s where we are headed. Of course, it’s easy to throw stones at something that requires pulling several layers apart, a sentiment seen time and time again and dates back to the birth of the Internet.

It was clear in 1994, when anchors Katie Couric, Bryant Gumbel, and Elizabeth Vargas went live on the Today Show to try to explain to America (and themselves), “What is the Internet?” In the just over 60-second segment, the tele-journalists struggle to wrap their minds around the function of an electronic mail address (email) or reasons for which viewers and network programming might have extended and direct dialogues off T.V. air. A year later, Bill Gates sat down with David Letterman to again explain what “the Internet” was after the late night host heard a “breakthrough announcement” that a baseball game was going to be broadcasted live online for the first time. While the Microsoft co-founder describes the Internet as a “place where people [could] publish information,” and individuals could “have their own homepage” and “companies [were] there” with “the latest information,” Letterman, like many, is quick to criticize the future viability and success of something so new and massive that it couldn’t yet be completely understood. “It’s too bad there is no money,” he offers to Gates in their interview, brushing off the idea that the Internet (or a computer) was anything other than a strange, new fad. For many millennials, America Online (AOL) and its underling AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) were game changers in that they collectively served as the gateway to the Internet, providing onestop-shop access to email, news, and of course, the ever-growing buddy list, where you could interact with friends and family in real-time. By the early 2000s, both platforms were the go-to hubs for digital storytelling and eventually made the shift to become a digital media company that acquired a few small others.

Two decades later, we find ourselves situated with remnants of the same skepticism and confusion from before. Only now it’s mixed with massive surges of excitement, devotion, and unparalleled support as we begin to peel the layers back on Web3 and the roads leading into the metaverse. But unlike when other forms of new technology have been introduced in the past, Web3 reconfigures the old adage of if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, harkening the fact that we can always improve as long as we’re operating at full potential. This excitement and support is fueled by the mere fact that Web3 is relatable and, for the first time, introduces an unexpectedly-human variable into the equation. The metaverse as we currently understand, in fact, it is no different than the various depictions of virtual reality we have seen constructed throughout pop culture in notable works such as Gamer, Total Recall, The Matrix, Tron, Surrogates, and of course, Ready Player One—it now just has the added element of choice. It’s a significant change as the biggest uncertainty we face while navigating it is one that has not only preceded AOL but modern tech history entirely—how to be human in the digital age.

The stark reality is that our humanity has continued to slowly dissipate the deeper we have ventured into new technology. This became evident when the element of “interactivity” was

first introduced into social media by and through AIM and subsequently MySpace. In a future where individuals are glued to their smartphones and computer screens just to check how many comments, likes, retweets, or shares their post gets, our desire for a better—or even another—life couldn’t be more apparent. As we continue our journey into the metaverse, the question of whether or not identity can transcend beyond the real world remains entirely dependent upon how we choose to recreate and establish ourselves along the way.

Since the early days of instant messaging, we have hidden behind screen names and aliases in order to justify that we belong. Now in Web3, we hide behind digital avatars that have price tags ranging from $0 to over $500,000. “It is a person’s sense of self, including the characteristics that they believe define them,” says Nicole Behnam, a Web3 advisor and founder of the discussion platform Beyond Media. “Personal identity in Web3 is no longer controlled by a central organization; now we get to decide.” But with that comes a dichotomy: our yearning for permanence has led to an unprecedented desire for anonymity and privacy while simultaneously a habit of broadcasting as much information about our every move as possible. Shira Lazar, host of the podcast Inside Web3 and founder of the media brand What’s Trending, believes that humanity and identity in Web3 is “individual, nuanced, intersectional, and multidimensional.” She uses her platforms to create content and education around Web3, bridging the gap between the industry, creators, and consumers. Web3, according to Lazar, currently allows for ways to be anonymous, which is both beneficial and harmful. “Just like Web2 that enables a lack of accountability, this can be extremely problematic. My hope is that we create solutions for this in order to continue expressing ourselves authentically and ethically while amplifying the beauty and possibilities of humanity through these tools.”

Those familiar with the Netflix series Black Mirror have grown accustomed to its methodology of introducing a variety of different characters, settings, and realities that all produce a variety of unique horrifying outcomes for its protagonists. Moreover, the anthological show instills the element of consequence as the reward for society’s unhealthy reliance on technology at the expense of our own humanity. The first episode of Black Mirror ’s fourth season, “USS Callister,” gives viewers one of the most visual depictions of what the metaverse actually looks like, and, in return, collected eight Emmy nominations for Outstanding Television Movie and Best Writing. The hauntingly beautiful episode follows Robert Daly, a gifted and under-recognized programmer and co-founder of a multiplayer online game, who takes his revenge on his unappreciative colleagues through augmented reality-based technology. His online game allows users to become their avatar characters in its metaverse, which gives each an entirely new identity in its digital world. Daly, however, has a special modification of the game that only he can access. Anytime he enters his program, Daly becomes the hero and commander of the USS Callister spaceship, navigating outer space alongside his digital crew, which have been programmed to look like his real-world colleagues and to shower him with unending praise.

As Daly plays out his innermost childhood fantasies, he finds comfort in the simulated adventures as he receives the recognition he so desperately lacks in his real-world. However, the respect of the crew comes at the cost of failure to obey, which results in collective harassment, physical torture, and even alien transformation. Each day, the crew counts down their minutes of freedom from the time Daly logs off and sits idle until he logs in and activates his virtual body for another mission of torture. From the protagonist’s perspective, Daly is a praised, heroic captain who is protecting his

crew and saving worlds. To his team and viewers at home, he is an emotionally distraught monster that enjoys causing the suffering of those who’ve deemed his real self inferior. Different from most adaptations of the metaverse, the episode portrays a constantly shifting reality as the story unfolds with each individual plugged in through their earpiece, including Daly’s own understanding of who he was and who he wanted to be.

For Lazar, who also finds importance in promoting wellness and mental health in her space, the idea of “losing our humanity” is definitely possible and “a slippery slope if we aren’t self-aware.” She cautions: “These tools aren’t going anywhere. But how do we find our harmony with them and use them for good in ways we can’t scale our impact IRL?” If we are wrapped up in the doing, the algorithms, and the gamification of our own growth, I worry that we will forget our own humanity and that of others.” Lazar also emphasizes the importance of using virtual reality to create safe spaces for members of the community, specifically women, the LGBTQ, Black, and POC communities, rather than identifying simply as our profile pictures.

Another relevant Black Mirror episode, “White Bear,” is one of the show’s hardest to watch. In it viewers are invited into a world of mystery and questionable justice in which criminals are sentenced to immersive corporal punishments. The episode begins with its main character Victoria awakening tied to a chair with no recollection of where she is or her identity. Making her way through the house, she finds a photograph of herself and a man along with another of a young girl, both of which she takes with her. As Victoria leaves the building, her fear and frustration escalate as bystanders on the street gather but refuse to help. As she pleads for aid, the crowd riles around her, recording her every move with their cell phones. By the episode’s end, we learn that Victoria is not the hero that the show initially led us (and even herself) to believe; but rather, a convicted criminal, who, along with her late husband, filmed, abducted, and murdered the young girl whose photo is shown. The real Victoria is kept permanently at an entertainment facility where actors are employed to frighten her as she relives new performances for different audiences daily. Each evening her psychological torture is revealed to her before her memory is wiped for a new “show.” The narrative blurs the lines between justice and addiction to our smartphones, choosing to use the devices as a form of intimidation and torture. Again, viewers face another difficult question of how we should identify with the protagonist after learning what she has done. Our love and hatred for technology has fueled a pathway for us to choose the ways in which we preserve and destroy our humanity as we journey deeper into the metaverse.

At the end of the day, we all strive to escape our reality so we can enter a world in which we create the rules and shape the parameters of who we are and what we can do, but it comes at a cost. “Technology is just a tool, and it would be foolish to fully depend on it,” emphasizes Behnam. “There is so much that [technology] does not offer that only we as humans can embody.” It will be up to us to create what we deem to be the perfect balance of our desire and love to expand our presence into cyberspace while also remembering who we are in the real world.

You can be anything you want in this world, too.

We all strive to escape our reality so we can enter a world in which we create the rules and shape the parameters of who we are and what we can do, but it comes at a cost.

Swiss-born Ben Ganz isn’t afraid to take risks. Whether developing a fully-fledged campaign for fashion brands or a bespoke identity and art direction for independent publishers, the New York-based artist is constantly looking to not only break the mold—but redefine it. For him, everything that’s graphic design is also object design. Deliverables should be as visually communicative as they are physical and visceral, qualities that are often overlooked, especially in an age dominated by social media and increased digitalization. Ganz is all about defying conventional formats. From jewelry to installations, and furniture in between, the polymath sets his sights far beyond printed matter.

The Yale graduate's use of avant-garde and experimental typography is a key aspect of his practice. His layouts and other interdisciplinary projects are anchored by fit-to-measure fonts that extend beyond the page and become standout visual elements all on their own. Pulling from—but also riffing on—the rich design traditions of his native Switzerland, Ganz often formulates custom letterforms based on the source material of the brief at hand. He’s keen to avoid the obvious and cleverly builds on what’s already in place. His clients and collaborators, including Nike, Prada, and Frank Ocean’s Homer, are presented with design systems in which to develop their own graphics at various scales and for different applications, everything from magazines and posters to billboards.

With an uncompromising approach, Ganz has garnered respect in both fashion and home design circles. His striking, unorthodox concepts help draw-in an audience otherwise oversaturated by the same type of monotonous visual stimuli. Rather than pander to consumer trends, he sees a more art-focused and distinctive approach to design as a way of shifting the narrative and disseminating information with more authenticity.

A deep dive into the office of the Yale-trained art director and Frank Ocean collaborator.

WORDS BY ADRIAN MADLENER PHOTOGRAPHY BY ROSIE MARKS ARTWORK BY BEN GANZ

YALE DMCA POSTER SERIES A INKET ON ALUMINUM 2017

ISOLARII 5 ÉDOUARD GLISSANT AND HANS ULIRCH OBRIST ARCHIPELAGO CREATIVE DIRECTION AND DESIGN BY OFFICE BEN GANZ PHOTOGRAPHY BY LUKE LIBERA MOORE

“I ALWAYS LIKE TO CONSIDER AN OBJECT FIRST AND THINK ABOUT THE LAYOUT SECOND RATHER THAN THE OTHER WAY AROUND. IT LETS ME START FROM A MACRO LEVEL AND WORK MY WAY DOWN. TYPOGRAPHY BECOMES THE NUCLEUS THAT TIES EVERYTHING TOGETHER.”

OBG ISOLARII TYPEFACE DESIGNED BY OFFICE BEN GANZ

ISOLARII 1 COOKING SECTIONS SALMON:A RED HERRING CREATIVE DIRECTION AND DESIGN BY OFFICE BEN GANZ PHOTOGRAPHY BY LUKE LIBERA MOORE

HOW DID GROWING UP AND STUDYING IN SWITZERLAND INFLUENCE YOU?

You begin to understand the value of design at an early age. It’s cultural. Swiss design with a capital “S” focuses heavily on modernism, and typography pretends to be neutral. My studies at Hochschule Luzern followed this mindset. It was a great way to learn the basics and grasp the amount of detail and craftsmanship that goes into designing a font or layout. However, it didn’t necessarily foster a sense of critical thinking. Hans Rudolf Lutz, a professor who taught at the school in the late 20th century, sought to push the medium further and use typography as a social and political tool. He promoted the idea of using the medium in unconventional ways and thinking beyond standard formats. This legacy was incredibly formative.

WHAT DID GOING TO YALE ADD TO THE EQUATION?

Yale’s Graphic Design MFA program really pushed my practice forward. Sheila Levrant de Bretteville, the head of the department at the time, had a very different approach. On the first day, she told us, “You came here to find out who you are.”

This was shocking and confusing at first, but I began to understand what she meant. I was able to harness the skills I learned before, open up, work more freely, and discover what really wanted to do.

I experimented with different processes and ideas and collaborated with students in other departments. This was backed up by a lot of critical theory that allowed me to assess the Swiss modernist tradition I was trained in from a distance. We were asked to come up with our own content which was new to me. Before studying at Yale, I thought of graphic design as more of a service than an art form. That all changed.

YOU MODIFIED A PRINTER TO CREATE UNEXPECTED RESULTS FOR ONE PARTICULAR PROJECT DURING YOUR TIME THERE.

It’s funny because it was basically a student job. I was asked to make posters for Yale’s Digital Media Center for the Arts (DMCA)—now the Center for Collaborative Arts and Media. The lab had huge printers that no one was using, and I thought it would be fun to experiment with one. I was given free rein to do whatever I wanted. I took out all of its sensors so that I could tear off the paper or canvas I was feeding through the device to stop it from printing or let it print over the same surface multiple times—essentially I was controlling the device by hand. There was an element of chance, which I found intriguing. You might design a poster on a computer but end up with an entirely different result. It’s a mixture of control, giving up control, and happy accidents. took this idea a step further by printing on aluminum, thanks to help from fellow students in the engineering program. This made the posters feel more like objects.

WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY THAT?

The idea of a poster or even a fashion accessory, whatever, being an object adds to graphic design. It becomes haptic. People have a more visceral reaction to something they can hold in their hands instead of what they see on a screen. I always like to consider an object first and think about the layout second rather than the other way around. It lets me start from a macro level and work my way down. Typography becomes the nucleus that ties everything together.

HOW DID YOU USE THIS APPROACH WHEN YOU REDESIGNED NIKE’S LOGO FOR ITS GLOBAL CAMPAIGN?

I worked with Chandelier Creative to reimagine how the brand displays its iconic logo. The previous campaign was colorful and saturated. went with a more muted black and white scheme to evoke its new “back to basic” motto. I was reminded of spending hours as a child hand-drawing the Nike Swoosh and reworking it again and again to get it just right. As an analogy for the idea of improving your own goals, I decided to submit this concept; an iterative system that could be adapted by the company’s numerous global offices based on their specific needs. I’ve also applied this open, big-picture methodology when working on architecture and design-related projects.

AS YOU’VE CROSSED DISCIPLINES, WHAT’S BEEN YOUR OVERALL EXPERIENCE WORKING IN FASHION?

Right out of school, I started working with creative director Ferdinando Verderi. We collaborated on quite a few campaigns for Prada. What I quickly learned is that you might have a clear concept from the outset of a fashion shoot but you don’t need to have a predetermined outcome of what form it might take.

You can test out different solutions until you find the right one. With Verderi I discovered that you can apply the same vision to different mediums in various sizes, so it's okay to begin with complex or esoteric concepts. It’s all about making bigger, bolder moves early on rather than being constrained by a set format.

TELL ME ABOUT YOUR ONGOING COLLABORATION WITH FRANK OCEAN AND HIS LUXURY BRAND HOMER.

The Plus Pendant I developed for Homer was my first object design in collaboration with Frank and Michael Abel, the company’s CDO.

It’s been great to collaborate and we continue to push each other. For the initial product, I was inspired by Swiss typographer Karl Gerstner, who pioneered the relationship between form, color, and sound. It might look effortless, but there’s a lot of precision involved. It’s interesting to translate something in two dimensions—which is how I still think most of the time—into three dimensions. There were challenges given that I’m not trained as a jewelry designer, but I was able to work with the in-house Homer team that offered a lot of support.

WHAT ARE SOME OF YOUR OTHER UPCOMING PROJECTS?

I’ll continue working on my regular projects like Homer, PIN–UP, and ongoing campaigns with fashion brands. Maybe it’s because I’m in the process of redoing my apartment-slash-office but I’ve begun to scale up and explore spatial and furniture design. Abel and Nile Greenberg’s New York-based architecture practice ANY is renovating the space. I’m also currently working on a collaboration with a Swiss design company and the project will debut at Design Miami in December 2022. There will be a lot more of that in 2023.

WORLDBUILDING GAMING AND ART IN THE DIGITAL AGE JULIA STOSCHEK COLLECTION, DUESSELDORF CURATED BY HANS ULRICH OBRIST DESIGN BY OFFICE BEN GANZ

OUT OF THE SHADOWS

There was no lightbulb moment that convinced Oliver Sim to fly solo. “It isn’t something that I’ve wanted to do for a very long time,” he admits over coffee in his native London. The decision to work on his own material—culminating in Hideous Bastard, his just-released debut album—was, perhaps ironically, inspired by his work in the xx, the band he formed with school friends Romy Madley Croft and Jamie XX almost two decades ago. “I’m very happy there, that’s my home,” Sim continues, clarifying it as a side project and not a divorce. “Jamie had just done his own solo record when the band made our last record, and he came to it with so many ideas and new ways of working. That album was all the better for it. I think that was the first time I thought maybe we should date outside of this relationship just for the sake of being better.”

Working with this new distance literally and emotionally gave Sim the opportunity to not only try things differently but to try things his own way. In this spirit, Hideous Bastard takes its general theme and feeling from many of the artist’s beloved horror movies. It also brought Sim to collaborate with Yann Gonzalez on a companion short film in which the artist appears as a hideous green monster, who—spoiler—ultimately leaves his world in dreamy glamor. It’s just one of the many horrific visual references that permeates

the album and Sim’s general aura as of late. For the artist, the attraction comes partly from its mix between light and dark, and, in particular, the genre’s campy dark humor.

As to be expected, the lyrical themes within the album draw more from Sim’s own personal experiences than his previous discography. Most notably, he reveals for the first time publicly that he’s been living with H.I.V. since the age of 17 in its title song, “Hideous.” “Since I found out about my status, my way of dealing has always been control,” he explains. “I know who knows, know if they’re a safe person, and I know if they’ve told anyone else. It’s exhausting. So I started having conversations. They were really fucking uncomfortable, but each one felt a bit less heavy, shameful, and uncomfortable.” In many ways, that is the message of the album. While Sim’s feelings of shame are referenced frequently, Hideous Bastard is also a joyous record that allows his sense of humor to shine through. “My sad moments usually have an air of joy to them,” Sim says confidentially. “I’ve tried to do that on the record. Though some of the themes are heavy, some of the songs are joyful or the way I wrote it had some joy. Some of my favorite songs are songs that you can go out and dance to or you can take home and cry to.”

The xx’s vocalist Oliver Sim is embarking on his own journey, with all of the radical, hideous honesty that requires.

WORDS BY JACK STANLEY PHOTOGRAPHY BY JOE CRUZ

STYLING BY BEN SCHOFIELD LEFT PAGE: SHIRT AND CUMMERBUND STEFAN COOKE TROUSERS DRIES VAN NOTEN BOOTS PRADA BRACELETS HATTON LABS

THE XX RELEASED ITS DEBUT ALBUM 13 YEARS AGO, AND YOU’RE RELEASING YOUR DEBUT SOLO ALBUM NOW. HOW DID THE CREATION OF EACH COMPARE?

The writing [for Hideous Bastard ] was very different. Speaking for Romy and I, we always had an ethos of keeping the songs as general and universal as possible [in the xx]—there are no mentions of time or place or pop culture references that might age the songs or gender specific pronouns. That’s nice, and I stand behind a bit of it, but I think it also came from an insecurity on my side. The listener has enough imagination to still look past specifics and place themselves in a song and connect. This time I haven’t shied away from very specific things.

WAS IT DIFFERENT WORKING WITH JAMIE AS A PRODUCER FOR YOUR OWN MUSIC VERSUS THE COLLECTIVE MUSIC IN THE XX?

Jamie really took a step into my world without any ego. He doesn’t share my love of horror, but he sat with me and watched the films. We don’t have the same record collection but he listened to the music I was listening to. He’s also a straight man and this is quite a queer record. But he got into the conversations. I did try working with other people and I learned a lot, but I don’t think I could have been as vulnerable if it weren’t with Jamie. The first few songs we made were fucking terrible. They will never see the light of day, but it was fun. I didn’t want to try and recreate the xx, so we tried everything and some of it was garbage. But then we stumbled across a happy mistake and we leaned into it, and made another mistake and leaned into that.

NOT ONLY DID YOU WORK WITH JIMMY SOMERVILLE ON THE NEW ALBUM BUT YOU ALSO REACHED OUT TO A LOT OF LEGENDARY QUEER ARTISTS IN THE PROCESS. WHAT WAS THAT LIKE? Really nice. I haven’t had many musical friends outside of Romy and Jamie. I love them, but realistically I do need to make more, especially the queens that paved the way. More than anything I wanted to learn from them, but I also wanted some support. And I’ve got so much support from Jimmy, Elton [John], and Jon Grant. And I’ve learned a lot, it’s given a lot of perspective.

THERE ARE SPECIFIC AND PERSONAL DETAILS THROUGHOUT THE RECORD. YOU OPEN WITH THE LINE “I’M UGLY” AND END “HIDEOUS” DISCUSSING YOUR H.I.V. DIAGNOSIS. WHY DID YOU WANT TO DO THAT THROUGH MUSIC?

It’s much easier to be honest in songwriting than it is in conversation because songwriting is a conversation with yourself. There’s no back and forth: I don’t have to be there when somebody listens to it and I don’t have to make eye contact. My initial reasons for doing it were super impulsive. I was just feeling quite overwhelmed, and I thought I would just throw it out into the world and be done with that. I played [“Hideous”] to my mum, who knows me pretty well. She was like, “This is a little dramatic.” She knows that the thing that scares me more is conversations, and she said to start having those conversations. So I made a film where it was played out to loads of people I didn’t know. I spoke to journalists that I’d just met for the first time. By the time it came to release the song, it was out there. I had no control over it, so it didn’t feel like a dramatic reveal. Since then, I’ve definitely had moments of feeling uncomfortable and a bit raw, but I think that’s O.K. I don’t think that’s me being deep in shame. If you share anything quite personal in a very public way, it’s going to feel like that. But three years ago, just saying hello, sitting down, and talking about this would have been impossible. So at the risk of sounding very American, I’ve done a lot of healing.

HAS IT CHANGED HOW YOU SEE YOURSELF OR HOW YOU FEEL ABOUT YOURSELF?

Definitely. There have been no light switch moments, but noticing things like sitting here and being able to have this conversation is great. I’m by no means a finished product. I don’t feel quite as overwhelmed by shame, but it’s still with me. Which is O.K., I don’t want to be a shameless person.

HOW IMPORTANT ARE THE VISUAL ELEMENTS TO THE ALBUM?

I’ve really tried to create a world with lots of fantasy. Because I’ve made quite an honest record, I didn’t want to package it as being overly sincere and earnest. I’ve spent the past however long in my bedroom…give me some kind of fantasy, give me some kind of an adventure. When stuff is shouting at me this is honest, this is raw, this is real, there’s a part of my brain that will automatically be like this is so insincere. So if I’ve made an honest record, the visual side shouldn’t have to limit that.

WERE YOU WORRIED THAT YOUR HUMOR WOULDN’T COME ACROSS AS WELL AS THE HEAVIER THEMES?

That’s another thing I’ve learnt from all of the queens. They’ve all gone through a lot of stuff, but a common thread between them is that they all have quite a cutting sense of humor that I love. It’s quite British, it’s the best way of coping with shit. It was super tempting for me to be black and white with my thinking and just be like, sad song, happy song, light, dark. But that’s not how I experience things.

HOW DO YOU HOPE THE ALBUM WILL BE RECEIVED? don’t know how I measure what doing well is for it. No one’s bigger than the band, that’s not my objective here. I’ve allowed myself to make some more daring choices because this is my opportunity to do that. If one person dressed up as me with a green face for Halloween this year that would mean a lot to me. Wherever they are in the world. I’m going to start saying that in every interview, just to make sure it happens.

WHO OR WHAT THE HELL IS ANONYMOUS CLUB?

After blurring the lines with Hood by Air, Shayne Oliver and his creative collective are here to test new limits.

To expect a rigid description of Anonymous Club is, ironically, to miss the point entirely. It’s an oasis of the undefinable, which is exactly what Shayne Oliver wants. It’s been 16 years since he launched Hood by Air, the fashion label that would foreshadow (and catalyze) the fusion of streetwear and traditional fashion. Inspired by the New York City club scene where Oliver cut his teeth as a young DJ, HBA kept the fashion world mesmerized while operating totally outside of it. The brand’s gender-bending silhouettes, medium-defying runway presentations, and endlessly cool orbit of cult-famous talent was a celebration of queerness unparalleled within the fashion week schedule.

Unexpectedly, HBA announced a hiatus in 2017. During what would become a four-year break for the brand, Oliver collaborated with other fashion players like Helmut Lang, Diesel, and Longchamp, but more importantly, he planted the seeds of Anonymous Club: a creative studio operating by and for the community values that

galvanized HBA. Alongside a core group of members—including Ian Isiah, Izzy Spears, and Thug Pop—Oliver uses Anonymous Club as an incubator for young creatives (“residents”) across fashion, music, nightlife, and art. The collective collaborates across all mediums and genres—from producing the “Prologue” short film that previewed HBA’s 2021 return, to performing a full lineup and designing merch for Boiler Room’s latest Brooklyn festival. So, what is Anonymous Club? It’s the eye of Oliver’s creative hurricane, and the physical manifestation of his career-long values. It’s a ballroom house where Tamagucci and Arca are house mothers, Bushwick warehouse clubs are the ballrooms, and the category is always realness. It’s a collaborative, creative playground of Oliver’s own subconscious—free from job titles, quarterly sales meetings, or a paper trail of public perception. It’s a safe space built to see, hear, and nurture young talent, while establishing an ecosystem around it. It’s a question without an answer—but that doesn’t mean Oliver wants us to stop asking.

GREGORY MILLER, ART RIGHT PAGE LEFT: TAMAGUCCI, MUSIC / RIGHT: KRISTIN HRYCKO, BUSINESS; PABLO MELENDEZ, ANONYMOUS SOUND; JACKSON JOHNSON, DESIGN; IZZY SPEARS, MUSIC

HOW DO YOU EXPLAIN WHAT ANONYMOUS CLUB IS?

It’s a studio, now formulating inside a brand, with the premise of the original ethos behind HBA. It’s a statement based on that premise without the nostalgia of the actual brand itself.

HOW DID THE IDEA FOR ANONYMOUS CLUB MATERIALIZE? WAS IT HAND-INHAND WITH THE REVIVAL OF HBA?

With [the HBA] hiatus, I felt a need to establish a playground, a place for ideas to flourish without them being commercialized—or before they are commercialized—allowing them to be a lifestyle before they become part of a brand. With the restructuring of HBA, and the lack of community within those conversations, it became evident that there needed to be a place for that to live. The clubs we had before…there weren’t those spaces anymore. Using the runway as a tool to formalize those expressions wasn’t part of the marketing plan anymore. These are things that felt really fundamental to the initial practice—then it became very evident to me that it wasn’t just about HBA as a brand. It was about the practice, the community, embracing those things.

Since I began referencing them, a lot of things are now flourishing, which I think is great—like the ballroom scene, how far that’s come along. I hope that as time goes on, not just the figureheads, but the ecosystem itself gets more support and more structure.

HOW DOES ANONYMOUS CLUB OPERATE? I’M ENVISIONING IT AS AN ONGOING BRAINSTORM.

It’s collaborating with people that I love, people that I’ve known, but also bringing in new faces. I was very sensitive in making sure it was a collaboration not a brand. This is me working with people. I don’t even give titles. I collaborate with younger talents and I see what they’re interested in, what they’re good at. Then, if it’s a longer-lasting conversation, I allow people to grow into positions, and have a place to to grow their own little kids or mini-houses.

WHO ARE THE KEY FIGURES IN ANONYMOUS CLUB? WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MEMBERS AND RESIDENTS?

Members are people that already did this with me at HBA, and are now overseeing things and acting as a guiding voice. The Ian [Isiah]s, the Arcas, the Yves Tumors. I don’t think it takes that long for me to consider people members, or from residency to membership. Friendship and collaboration has a lot to do with that. It’s how much the person is on their own, but is also able to collaborate. Or it’s about how much we become friends, then I become really like a mother and teach a lot—you’re, like, close to the teat. Those are the two avenues I’ve responded to the most. I’m trying to build a system where people don’t get burned through relationships. It’s like a growing garden—a structural garden, but also a healing one.

I LOVE THAT. THAT IS TRULY LIKE A HOUSE. YOU WERE BORN TO BE A HOUSE MOTHER!

No, totally. There are so many queer conversations happening; it’s about us saying that we can be a part of all of these things without being ostracized. We can be considered for the talents and sheer dopeness and design aesthetics that we’re bringing to the forefront.

HOW DO YOU FIND NEW RESIDENTS? DO THEY COME TO YOU, OR DO YOU SEEK THEM OUT?

It’s a bit of both. Kids seek it out. People send out calling cards; you can see people doing things that are familiar, and using things that you’ve done as jumping off points. And you just pay attention to the culture that surrounds you, the people that are paying homage or even revolting against things that you’ve done. Hopefully, the future of Anonymous is rooted within that: we know kids because the kids are coming to us, and they want to be around people that genuinely uphold them to an elite level—not through separation, but because their ideas are fucking incredible.

LEFT: DIEGO UGAZ, PRODUCTION RIGHT: JALIL HOWARD, FASHION

“WE KNOW KIDS BECAUSE THE KIDS ARE COMING TO US, AND THEY WANT TO BE AROUND PEOPLE THAT GENUINELY UPHOLD THEM TO AN ELITE LEVEL—NOT THROUGH SEPARATION, BUT BECAUSE THEIR IDEAS ARE FUCKING INCREDIBLE.”

LEFT TO RIGHT: PABLO MELENDEZ, ANONYMOUS SOUND; JACKSON JOHNSON, DESIGN; IZZY SPEARS, MUSIC ABOVE: CHRISTIAN VELASQUEZ, DESIGN

WHAT’S THE DYNAMIC BETWEEN MEMBERS AND YOURSELF? IN A GROUP OF HEAVILY CREATIVE PERSONALITIES THE MOMENTUM CAN BE INCREDIBLE, BUT IT CAN ALSO EASILY BE STUNTED BY EGOS. HOW DOES THE MIX OF PERSONALITIES ENCOURAGE CREATIVE STRETCHING AND DISRUPTING?

Disrupting is highly proactive. Disruption between the different, clashing personalities forces the work to always take a new shape. When you have a collection, it grounds all of that creativity. It gives a bottom line: there’s a T-shirt, there’s a hoodie, there’s this denim. Then, the free-for-all is the demonstrations we come out of those things with.

WHAT ROLE DOES NEW YORK CITY PLAY IN ANONYMOUS CLUB’S IDENTITY?

It plays a huge role. When I was doing the projects that began to grow roots for this conversation, and the collective, I had to come back here to figure it out. [New York] is an ecosystem that eats off legacy and aesthetic; I’m trying to find the through line of what it really means to be a brand that represents something. New York culture had a lot to do with me refining what I wanted to be known as, or representative of. I came back to break down those walls, and break down myself.

[HBA] made me a renowned designer, you know? I’m trying to figure out ways of becoming that by, in a way, disconnecting myself from it. Even though I created that house, I’m like the first child of that house—going out and venturing into the world.

WHAT WAS IT LIKE RETURNING TO NEW YORK AFTER EUROPE?

It was harsh, coming back with this energy back in 2019, wanting to rebuild things, then COVID happened. That’s when Anonymous became even more important, and the music became really important. I leaned into creating more music and finding an ecosystem. You have to create new systems and ways for people to enjoy themselves. Fighting for that is very hard when people are like, “Your thing is THIS thing.” But, it’s not really that thing, it’s the culture that people are creating from that thing. It really is about nurturing these core people, and actually making these people superstars.

FROM ITS LAUNCH IN 2006, HBA EXISTED IN THE REALM BETWEEN STREETWEAR AND TRADITIONAL FASHION—NOT JUST THINKING OUTSIDE THE BOX, BUT COMPLETELY IGNORING IT. ANONYMOUS CLUB IS REFLECTING THAT AMBIGUITY, ALMOST 16 YEARS LATER—IS THERE MORE SPACE FOR THE UNDEFINABLE AT THIS POINT IN CULTURE, AS STREETWEAR AND HIGH FASHION BECOME INCREASINGLY BLURRED?

It’s actually a very special thing, ambiguity. Virgil [Abloh] could play around with that because he came from those realms: music and culture first, and then going into fashion. It’s sort of the same with myself—being a DJ, being known for creating culture, and then proposing myself as someone that’s focusing on a fashion brand. That was the whole point of HBA, creating a formality for those kinds of creatives to exist within fashion.

It’s hard, because streetwear has traditionally been so specific to certain aspects of the culture, that the aspects brought to the table—which were way more sociopolitical, you know, queer—don’t have funding. Just because my inspiration comes from [queer] places doesn’t mean that I’m making “gay” designs. I’m just trying to open these conversations up, for the perspective of myself and the people around me to flourish. That’s what Anonymous is there for: to give a name to that space. I’m collaborating with my home base. I’m doing artwork for my home base, making music for my home base. It’s more of a timepiece for me, HBA, and Anonymous is the active practice of moving forward.

TOP: JALIL HOWARD, FASHION BOTTOM: KRISTIN HRYCKO, BUSINESS AND PABLO MELENDEZ, ANONYMOUS

THE SOUND

Speaker sculptor Devon Turnbull pulsates between spaces of work and passion, hifi and bespoke, yesterday and today.

SOUND

WORDS BY PAUL HEAVENER PORTRAITS BY MICHAEL KUSUMADJAJA

The atmosphere inside HiFi Pursuit Listening

Room Dream No. 1 at Lisson Gallery in New York City is more like a tea ceremony or a guided meditation than what most would associate with a music listening session. Visitors’ shoes are scattered on the ground outside the door, removed out of respect. There is a sense of anticipation as Devon Turnbull, the master of ceremonies for this spiritual gathering, aptly un-sleeves a record from Brian Eno’s Music For Installations and places it on the neon turntable. The first track breaks the room’s silence, flowing through the show’s 10 purpose-built pieces of Ojas hifi equipment, and it’s evident why the listeners behave the way they do. The sound is special. Immersive and dynamic, as Eno’s music oscillates and drones through the massive gray speakers, it washes over you in waves. This is a sound bath, not a hang out, and show attendees are experiencing Turnbull’s audio enlightenment.

If you recognize his name, it’s because this is far from the first time Turnbull has appeared in the cultural zeitgeist. By his account, this could be his fourth creative lifetime, although he corrects himself by saying his close friend, the late Virgil Abloh, wouldn’t

agree with that assessment—it’s all one body of work. The name Ojas, under which he now operates his bespoke audio practice, has been around since the beginning: first as DJ and graffiti writer, later as co-founder and designer of influential streetwear brand Nom de Guerre, and now as speaker sculptor and sound guru. The Lisson show will be closed by the time this piece is published, but it’s far from the only place that Turnbull’s work is installed. His handmade monolithic speakers can be seen and heard in Saturdays NYC and Supreme stores, at the New York City Ace Hotel and Public Records in Brooklyn, while earlier this year two high profile openings—Nine Orchard in Manhattan and Virgil’s Figures of Speech exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum—offered more people a chance to discover his work.

“MUSIC IS THE MOST POWERFUL ART FORM, SO WHY DON’T WE HAVE ANY VENUES FOR APPRECIATING IT? WE HAVE CONCERT HALLS, WE EXPERIENCE LIVE MUSIC, THAT’S ONE REALLY COOL WAY TO EXPERIENCE MUSIC, BUT FOR A LOT OF MUSIC, THE RECORDED MUSIC BECOMES THE MASTERPIECE.”

SOUND

HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE HIFI LISTENING ROOM DREAM NO.1 TO SOMEBODY THAT DIDN’T HAVE A CHANCE TO SEE IT?

The listening room is a part of a group show of sculptural works. To use the words of a mentor of mine, Herb Reichert, “It's a shrine to music.” The hardware is the work. In that sense, it's a sculpture but it's also a venue for music. In my work, form always follows function, but the function and the form are both extremely important. It's sometimes frustrating to me that so many people discover my work through pictures. This was my first real opportunity to properly present a sonic sculpture...that's it. That's what it is.

YOU’VE DESCRIBED YOURSELF AS A “HOBBYIST,” BUT EACH OF YOUR RECENT PROJECTS FEELS FAR BEYOND WHAT A REGULAR PERSON MIGHT CONSIDER A HOBBY. WAS THERE A POINT WHERE YOU FELT LIKE YOU CROSSED A THRESHOLD INTO THE ART WORLD?

When I originally set out to build my own system, I was still doing Nom de Guerre, and my vision was to be a folk artist— one of those guys that works on something for his whole life. Then maybe after his death it's discovered that he made incredible things and no one knew about it. It’s the recognition from other people that contextualized it as something other than a hobby for me. But hobbies are fucking everything. If you don't have a hobby—shit that you like to do for your own sake, for selfish reasons, and just because it makes you feel good—I worry about your mental health. Maybe your hobby is doing puzzles, maybe your hobby is playing video games, but whatever it is, it's a pursuit that you get a lot of satisfaction from. I'm lucky that at this point my hobby is my work.

WHEN NOM DE GUERRE SHUTTERED IN 2010, YOU WERE EXHAUSTED. WHAT IS IT ABOUT OJAS IN ITS CURRENT INCARNATION THAT BROUGHT YOU BACK TO LIFE CREATIVELY? The timeless quality of it. I feel no obligation to—just for the sake of a business cycle—get rid of my stuff and reinvent it every few months. It's heartbreaking to pour yourself into something and for it to have a one-month shelf life. I made a commitment to myself early on that I would be doing this until I can't hear anymore; to run this thing in a way that it'll stay fun. It is very hard to do that in fashion. It becomes an exhausting cycle. If I were to do clothing again, it would be that if I didn’t want to make a collection this season, just wouldn’t.

COMMITMENT TO DOING IT ON YOUR OWN TERMS. CAN YOU TALK ABOUT YOUR UPCOMING PROJECTS THROUGH THAT LENS? There's a new room we're opening at Public Records that is truly on my terms. It's not an Ojas venue, but they gave me carte blanche with the audio aspect. I [decided] to build a two-channel hifi system at a large scale that is for listening to music on. There's not the murmur of someone ordering a coffee drink and then milk getting steamed in the background. There's not someone shaking a cocktail, there's not even the distraction of just drinking something. For me to really do my thing, to be like, this is my work, purely, there's nothing else happening. Because that's how I use the stuff. Music is the most powerful art form, so why don't we have any venues for appreciating it? We have concert halls, we experience live music, that's one really cool way to experience music, but for a lot of music, the recorded music becomes the masterpiece.

You can't perform [the Beatles’] Magical Mystery Tour There's way too much going on in the record. You're meant to sit and listen to it. With jazz, it’s about capturing energy, and tapping into a collective consciousness between different players. That can only happen once. And we're lucky enough that a lot of those performances were captured in a really special way. You need a two-channel high fidelity music system to listen to that stuff.

WHAT ARE YOUR GO-TO RECORDS FOR TEST DRIVING A NEW SYSTEM LIKE THE ONE AT PUBLIC RECORDS? usually put on the track “Mule” from Kenny Burrell’s Midnight Blue. I'll listen to something by Miles [Davis] or [John] Coltrane. [Herbert von] Karajan conducting Beethoven's 9th is just insane. And then, I'll usually throw on some Aphex Twin or Squarepusher. These kinds of systems are not designed for playing dance music, but I want to be able to listen to electronic music, and that's got to be satisfying.

AS YOU WORK THROUGH MORE HIGH-PROFILE AND TECHNICALLY DEMANDING PROJECTS, WHAT ELEMENTS REMAIN CONSISTENT THROUGH ALL OF THEM?

There’s certainly an aesthetic that has been a continuous thing. And there's a sonic aesthetic. The term “presence” is a big part of it. Modern music is very compressed. Music of bygone eras and usually the music that audiophiles are interested in is very uncompressed. All this new spatial audio stuff like Dolby Atmos is an effort to make you feel like you're more engulfed by music—high efficiency speakers do that extremely well. To make a fashion parallel, Visvim is a brand that references design traditions and heritage materials, and then re-approaches them in an updated way. What I'm doing is more of that, than being nostalgic for the fact that I use a tube made in the 1930s. It's not meant to be old-timey, it's that those things, in my opinion, have never been beaten. I think that a lot of people feel that way about vintage denim, right? It's not that it looks old, it's that it just looks better.

AS YOU GAIN RECOGNITION, IS THERE A DANGER IN OJAS BECOMING A WIDELY RECOGNIZED NAME?

Only if I have to start making stuff that I don't like. I have two goals. To be able to find venues to express the kind of systems and equipment that I want to build. I have vowed to be making one-off things. Those become my fine art. The other goal, which is completely different, is to promote the hobby of DIY hifi. The highest mark of my success for me is more people doing what I'm doing. I'm so inspired by this almost deceased culture of audio building in Japan. There was a moment of it in New York in the '90s, and there's a small culture that's active in Europe. I participate a little bit, but I am decades younger than the next person who's doing it. I'll be incredibly satisfied if in 20 years there's four or five or 20 other people making this kind of work in some way. It’s like we're the Jedi, and we’re making sure the Force isn't lost.

Men’s style is hot for sportswear. Not the basketball shorts or rugby shirts that have pervaded menswear since dawn, but rather the obsession with codes that define hobbies and activities such as cycling, skateboarding, golf, and tennis and how they can be fashion-ified.

Take Demna Gvasalia’s Balenciaga. It got the ball rolling with nods to the mundanity of life and normcore tropes attached to soccer and running, and now it leads the pack, as a marathon of designers push for a sportier aesthetic. But it’s not all about irreverence and purposeful self-awareness. Palace’s collaborative partnerships with the cycling juggernaut Rapha or Adidas’ tennis division make a case for the line between fashion and sporting attire becoming increasingly blurred, with luxury materials and playful graphics combined with workout-ready cuts and technical fabrics promising a “work at five, gym at six” ensemble.

The burgeoning vintage market— which has brought back Marlborobranded merchandise and Wimbledonready skirts—has become a mainstay for many contemporary brands, too.

Take Casablanca for example, a brand that celebrates terry toweling, polo tops, and racing. With this, sportswear is not just reflected in modern style, it has become a part of our uniform. And this couldn’t be truer for lifestyle sports, which sees the average Joe’s performance look now become a source of inspiration. The resurgence of golf, something Jordan Brand has been championing with more daring footwear styles, has played into this as well, as has spectator sports such as boxing— Human Made and Dior have referenced it in recent collections and for athletes, respectively.

Sportswear and fashion are old friends. But what separates today’s understanding of sportswear from the sweaty notes of cheap polyester that terrified our childhoods? We have recontextualized the dress codes and uniforms of society to a

point of no return. Self-care is at the forefront of our minds, sitting adjacent to work-from-home flexibility, and the smash of luxury fashion’s antiquated connotations of an old aesthetic loaded by generational wealth. In a TikTok era where everything has vanished after 20 seconds, people are searching for nostalgia, authenticity, and comfort—and this couldn’t be truer for the clothes we wear.

RTFKT IS BUILDING A NEW

FUTURE

RTFKT Studios has certainly made a name for itself in the nascent space of the metaverse. As one of the leaders shaping the parameters of what’s possible, the Web3 fashion house is providing the tools and resources necessary for creators to find that “next level” of creativity. Launched in 2020 by founders Chris Le, Benoit Pagotto, and Steven “Zapito” Vasilev—all of various backgrounds in the tech space—the group is as mysterious as it is innovative, and in two years the triptych have redefined the boundaries of physical and digital value. Using game engines, augmented reality, blockchain authentication, and NFTs, RTFKT (pronounced

“artifact”) has released “next generation collectibles,” including the $3.1 million sale of 600 physical-virtual sneakers in collaboration with NFT artist Fewocious, as well as the Clonex NFT avatars project. Acquired by Nike in December 2021, RTFKT has helped accelerate its digital transformation beyond a mere “sneaker” company since, opening the doors to a truly customized sport x gaming x tech culture. From AR hoodies and digital sneakers to NFC chips and blockchain authentication, RTFKT is setting and resetting the standard for what it means to bring legacy fashion into the Web3 space.

CO-FOUNDERS CHRIS LE, BENOIT PAGOTTO, AND STEVEN “ZAPTIO” VASILEV REVEAL THEIR VISIONS FOR THE DISRUPTIVE AND AUTHORITATIVE WEB3 FASHION HOUSE.

WORDS BY ANDREW ROSSOW

ARTWORK BY RTFKT

“WE ARE MISFITS, NERDS, AND GO-GETTERS. WE ARE ALWAYS TRYING TO STAY AHEAD OF THESE CULTURES AND WORLDS BY FIGURING OUT HOW TO MERGE THEM TO CREATE SOMETHING NEW FOR THE BRAND.”

Can you spill the beans on your inception story, beyond the many surface-level conversations you may have had previously when asked that same question?

Benoit Pagotto: We started RTFKT to be the open-source blueprint of the brands of the future—made by creators and for creators. I met Chris and Zaptio while was at the e-sports team Fnatic, where we aligned our vision for a new type of brand with no legacy or business model to hold it back, in an era where gaming is the predominant culture.

Zaptio: It began with the creation of an Instagram account, where we created content using Chris’s 3-D skills.

Chris Le: I was designing skins for CS:GO [and] DOTA 2, which eventually led me to designing video game skin sneakers. When the Fnatic League of Legends (LOL) team got invited to the annual LOL World Championship, we decided to make the sneakers real, so that they could be worn during the finals. The rest was history.

How would you define Web3 as it pertains to what RTFKT represents?

BP: Web3 is the start of a truly digital, borderless, alternate, and weird version of the world powered by a totally transparent economy. Within these alternate reality narratives, we are all creating, sharing, and earning income and tokens.

Z: It is the natural evolution of the Internet and social media generation. We are the first generation to have this level of technology, allowing us to be more aware of how brands, societies, platforms, and economies work. We are big believers in open sourcing tools and opportunities to empower the community to create their own utilities and revenue opportunities.

CL: It is the true start to the sustainable future, where consumerism is placed online, giving our planet some breathing room. Humanity will begin to consume less in the physical world, while many habits of buying and collecting useless things will now be done in the metaverse.

How did Nike’s acquisition change RTFKT’s infrastructure in leveraging legacy fashion with virtual sneakers?

Z: It heavily solidified our vision of extending digital and physical collectibles through our inspiration and love for Nike’s sneakers.

BP: It also sent a clear message across the globe: Web3 is the future and everyone should be taking this seriously.

CL: It was inevitable that the world would head in this direction. Coming from the video game and skin industry, I noticed patterns of players showing that they attributed more value in digital assets.

Z: The cultural and collectible sneakers that Nike created changed the physical collectible industry and culture forever. The acquisition has allowed us to maintain a level of independence, where we are able to pursue our same vision.

What drives your conversations of true “disruption” and uniqueness that newcomers in this space should pay attention to?

CL: The Internet and gaming culture is part of our backbone. As three co-founders, we are misfits, nerds, and go-getters. We are always trying to stay ahead of these cultures and worlds by figuring out how to merge them to create something new for the brand. We leverage our expertise from video game mod culture and help empower the creator community to be more creative.

Z: RTFKT is more than a brand. We are building a new culture, and community is the backbone to our brand.

BP: We simply do what we feel is right, and what we love. There is no secret formula, as everything we do here is new to the NFT world, and you can never know what the true outcome will be. It’s what makes this exciting: You can really pioneer concepts, products, and ideas with the best team and best community.

What additional value-add is RTFKT currently working on with some of its other projects?

Z: Everything we do is through a step-by-step process. All of our projects stem from big overarching visions of the potential future we foresee. We are in a position to break traditional norms and be innovative.

BP: We’ve been curating key brand collaborations with some of our favorite brands and people that will extend RTFKT forging mechanics to create NFTs and physical collectibles, opening new wearable categories for clones and our avatar ecosystem.

Z: We have been recently working on creating the bridge between digital and physical products with the use of NFC technology mixed with NFTs. We have multiple drops setting the tone of how we see fashion evolving in this Web3 environment.

CL: In addition to these upcoming, innovative projects, we always go back and continue to build upon our old projects. They are all important IPs! Just like video game studios, we also go back and update and add new features to all our past drops and make sure everything connects together.

What would you consider to be a “reasonable boundary” in enabling legacy fashion to enter into the Web3 space, while simultaneously protecting native Web3 brands and artists that want to build without restriction?

CL: Be lenient with the creators! Creators are there to help build your brand, and it should feel like the brand and creator co-exist with one another. In other words, let them use the IP to create their own brands and products within the ecosystem. By learning to adapt, these legacy brands can help the creators build. You help them, they help you.

BP: As long as legacy fashion brands understand that from now on, it’s not only about them and their quarterly results—but about empowering your community for real—it will be beneficial to the overall ecosystem. There are no boundaries in the metaverse. The people and market will decide if you make it or not.

What do you feel is the biggest challenge RTFKT faces right now that it is currently working to overcome?

BP: The main challenge is keeping up with the scale of the business and hype we generate while keeping the team relatively small. RTFKT is a new type of brand, and Web3 is a whole new way to think of the alliance of creativity, community, and business. This requires us to maintain a team of very different types of talents from different industries and backgrounds—from gaming, hospitality, and collector services to the industry economist. It’s a challenge in itself to shape, assemble, and grow our team of misfits, but that’s also one of the best parts.

What do you feel the fashion industry is still lacking when it comes to the “virtual sneaker” market?

Z: Similarly to traditional sneakers and fashion, I think it comes down to the utility exchange. Brands that don’t embrace culture or evolving customer desires die down. With RTFKT, we are building based on our experiences in traditional sneaker and fashion backgrounds. However, we are reimagining the end-end process in a way that fits with our vision of the future.

CL: A lot of the other projects are just getting FOMO’d in seeing a lot of publicity around Web3. They don’t want to look outdated compared to everyone else, and they’re jumping in without thought and trying to get press coverage. These companies need to study and understand gaming culture, Internet culture, and really figure out how to innovate in the space differently. It’s very early; there’s room for a lot of cool ideas. For the longest time, the industry needed something new—from film, music, and fashion. Web3 is that new opportunity for all these industries to come in and really build something new together, and there’s a lot of time to build.

“THERE ARE NO BOUNDARIES IN THE METAVERSE. THE PEOPLE AND MARKET WILL DECIDE IF YOU MAKE IT OR NOT.”—BENOIT PAGOTTO

ANY AND ALL DIRECTIONS BREAKOUT STREET ARTIST—AND NIGERIA’S FIRST SKATER—OLAOLU SLAWN IS A GENIUS. AND A SCAMMER.

OLAOLU SLAWN

WORDS BY SHAWN GHASSEMITARI PHOTOGRAPHY BY MARTA CAMARADA ARTWORK BY

“I want to have a number one song on Billboard. I don’t know how I’m going to do it, but I’m going to find a way to do it. I want to make a play and have it performed on Broadway. I don’t know how I’m going to do it, but I’m going to do it. I’m going to have a best-selling book. [They’re] just random things I want to accomplish.”

You would be forgiven to believe that Virgil Abloh said those words, for the late visionary was known amongst his close friends and fans for following his creativity in any direction and inspiring millions to do the same. But in fact, they belong to Olaolu Slawn, a young Nigerian skater-turned-artist that carries the same creative spirit that the Louis Vuitton Men’s creative director once did, and whom Abloh furiously championed.

“Whatever I have around me or whatever I can reach with my hands is what I’ll use to create,” Slawn tells me. Improvisation is a familiar creative energy native to his country, from the Naija spirit used to capture the Nigerian Football Team to the complex musical fusion of the legendary Fela Kuti. His path has not been tied to music nor football but rather skateboarding—a sport that has consistently shown to be a gateway to many different industries—and, at the time of his coming of age, was largely frowned upon in Lagos and the country as a whole. There were no skate parks, skaters, nor culture for the young boy to look up to—a limitation that allowed Slawn to carve his own path in any odd direction he saw fit. A chance invitation by Jomi Marcus-Bello, who ran the city’s only skateshop, Wafflsncream, led Slawn to meet

Onyedi and Leo, forming the now emblematic skate crew and brand Motherlan. By 2021, his eye had attracted the attention of Abloh, Grace LaDoja, Angelo Baque, and a number of collaborative projects with Off-White, Awake NY, Supreme, and others.

Floating in between London and Lagos today, Slawn’s artistic style might first hark to the bold compositions of Keith Haring, but, upon further inspection, feels almost like a never-ending African pattern or rhythm you would hear in Fela’s seemingly infinite tracks. Despite his success in such a short span of time, the artist still boasts the excitement he had at age 16, when Slawn first picked up a skateboard. Speaking to me on the phone his voice fills with humor, curiosity, and a desire to accomplish any and everything. Virgil would be proud.

“I LOVE FAILURE. I LOVE MISTAKES, I LOVE SEEING THINGS FALL APART AND RESTRUCTURED. I COULD FALL OFF TODAY AND ENJOY THE PROCESS OF GETTING BACK.”

TELL ME ABOUT YOUR CHILDHOOD AND THE THINGS THAT SHAPED YOU.

I was born in Nigeria and lived there for 17 years. I grew up a Jehovah’s Witness, which made it very difficult to express myself. But I wasn’t looking to express myself anyway. I went to primary school, secondary school, and got into a lot of trouble. I grew up with two sisters and used to doodle a lot. Most of the time I was trying to make things, doing whatever I could put my hands on.

WAS THERE ANY TYPE OF MUSIC OR FASHION THAT SHIFTED YOUR PERCEPTION?

I was already on the Internet and Twitter from around the age of 13. That’s when Odd Future was the shit. At 16, I started skateboarding, which changed everything. My eyes were opened to a lot of things. You go from skateboarding to watching videos, then movies, then you want to direct films. Art was the one thing that people related to the most. I don’t think it was the art that people related to—more my character—but the art just comes with it.

HOW WAS THE SKATE SCENE IN LAGOS AND NIGERIA AS A WHOLE?

It’s so weird that if you Google “first skaters in Nigeria,” we come up. Insane for me. The scene is so huge now, but it just came from us fucking about. I worked in the first skate shop in Nigeria. We basically built it…me and my friend Jomi. He hired me at like 15 or 16 and made me creative director…imagine.

CAN YOU TALK ABOUT MOTHERLAN? HOW DO YOU SEPARATE IT BETWEEN YOU AND YOUR ART?

Motherlan was just meant to be a skate crew. Jomi’s kind of crazy, because he gave me the opportunity at 15 or 16 to help run a brand. [Laughs.] I would never trust any 16-year-old with my shit. One day we were at the shop and [my friend] Onyedi said, “I got a couple blank tees, you should make a design for it.” I made a logo, it just worked. We started getting attention from people outside the country: the Dime people, obviously Supreme came into the picture. At that point, we didn’t really know what we were doing.

VIRGIL ABLOH WAS ANOTHER COLLABORATOR. WHAT WAS YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH HIM?

I became very close to him in a short amount of time. He was always so supportive. I don’t know how he did it, but he was always like, “Yeah bro, let’s do this.” He collected a lot of my art…a lot. He had no reason to do anything for me, but he did. He was that much of a cool guy, he was a mystery. He knew something that everyone else didn’t know.

IS THERE ANYTHING THAT HE TOLD YOU THAT OPENED YOUR EYES TO THINGS THAT YOU HADN’T SEEN BEFORE?

How do I explain this? He never budged to make a move. You go and ask these companies for shares and they’re like, “Yeah cool, we’ll get back to you…blah, blah, blah, blah.” He did it like this. Snaps. I’d send him a random idea, and he’d screenshot it, draw on it, and send it back immediately. I don’t know how he found the time.

YOU’RE BASED IN LONDON NOW, HOW OFTEN DO YOU GO BACK TO NIGERIA?

I go back and forth. Last time I was there was in April for Homecoming [festival]. Actually, Homecoming had a lot to do with me coming to the U.K. I was only supposed to be here for two weeks. It was supposed to be a visa, and I had no plans whatsoever. Grace [LaDoja] told me, “If you want to come stay, you can couchsurf.” I knew skaters, went to parties, and just lived day-by-day.

HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOUR APPROACH TO YOUR ART?

My starting point is improvisation. It’s always been a thing since my childhood. It is very hard to access things in Nigeria, so if I couldn’t buy an Odd Future tee I’d just draw the logo on a tee myself. Even if it wasn’t authentic, I’d still be reppin’. It just developed into my art. It repeats itself in every aspect of my life. Improvisation is everything for me.

YOU’VE DESCRIBED YOURSELF AS A “SCAM ARTIST.” CAN YOU ELABORATE ON THAT?

I say this to everyone: You’re breathing right now, right? Imagine if you could sell your breath. I’m not saying I’m scamming you, but I’m saying you might be scamming yourself. I’m always going to improvise and find the easiest and most efficient way to accomplish my idea in the best form of execution. So, I breathe, I make art. Coming and paying the amount that people pay for it now—obviously it is easier for me to say this because I’m the artist—but it’s kind of like a scam. I was invited to a show in Paris, but couldn’t go because of my visa. So I gave one of my friends clothes and a ski mask to go as me.

DO YOU DEDICATE MORE TIME TO ART NOWADAYS, OR IS SKATING STILL THE PRIORITY?

First is always ideas. It’s not art, it’s just ideas. I’ve written down a couple things that I want to accomplish in the next few years. I want to have a number one song on Billboard. I don’t know how I’m going to do it, but I’m going to find a way to do it. I want to make a play and have it performed on Broadway. I don’t know how I’m going to do it, but I’m going to do it. I’m going to have a best-selling book. [They’re] just random things I want to accomplish. Personally, I love failure. I love mistakes, I love seeing things fall apart and restructured. I could fall off today and enjoy the process of getting back.

ARE THERE ANY GOALS, MOTIVES, OR MESSAGES BEHIND YOUR ART? I’VE READ THAT YOU ALSO WANT TO MAKE HOUSES? One of these days I want to be an architect. I don’t want to learn how to do architecture…I should be writing this down, actually. I’ve always wanted to build weird houses, that’s the end goal for me. And if I can, I’d like to start a proper cult, like a religion. I want everyone to have this huge panic moment, where they’re like, “Oh fuck, he was just fucking with us.” I really want us to have a weird acid-eureka moment about my life.

The Quiet Quality of CoolKeeping

PHOTOGRAPHY BY MAKOTO KUJIRAOKA

DECADES BEFORE THE INTERNET MULTIPLIED HYPE CULTURE FOR THE MASSES, NIGO WROTE THE RULES. AND HE KEEPS DOING IT AGAIN. AND AGAIN. AND AGAIN.

WORDS BY ALEX FRANK

There is no greater influence on the culture of hype than that of Japanese designer Nigo. Through A Bathing Ape, his prescient clothing line launched in 1993, Nigo established so much of what would become our contemporary understanding of style. By pioneering collaborations between brands; keeping product runs tight and exclusive so as to create scarcity and foment intrigue; aligning himself with rappers and DJs at a time when luxury companies were still anxious about any association with hip-hop; establishing clear, concise iconography that was instantly recognizable; bringing together the worlds of youth fashion and high-end luxury, he became the blueprint for desire—so much so that none other than Virgil Abloh once decreed that there was no one like him. “Nigo helped us understand how luxury can relate to a new generation.”

“NOT TEACHING

Now, something of a streetwear elder—a Star Wars fanatic, he recently half-jokingly referred to himself as Yoda—Nigo, born Tomoaki Nagao, has moved on to focus on a calmer brand, the unpretentiously-named Human Made, as well as serve as the artistic director of Kenzo, the storied if niche French fashion house. Long gone is the time of BapeSta -mania, when a fresh colorway of his signature sneaker—a Pop Art patent leather take on the shape and feel of the classic Nike Air Force 1, with versions made in collaboration with Kanye West, SpongeBob, and D.C. Comics—would send kids into a fever just to get their hands on a pair, an early portend of the ridiculously long lines that now snake out of the Supreme store with every single new drop of its clothing. While in the past, Nigo has had a preference for tropes that are somewhat aggressive—military camouflage and illustrations of gorillas—the Human Made logo is encased inside a sweet red heart, and the most recurring print at Kenzo is a joyful motif of a poppy flower.

If he was once the master of hype, Nigo now seems content to create in his little—though still celebrated—corner of the world. Selling a majority stake in BAPE in 2011 before leaving the brand for good in 2013, he was put off by how big it had become. “I look back on the BAPE era as a lost battle. But it taught me a lot,” he tells me. Nigo had what some would describe as a mid-life crisis after his departure and even began to wonder whether his time in streetwear had passed, until his longtime friend and collaborator Pharrell Williams encouraged him to get back in the game. Now, he says the end of that life helped him figure out the future. “In the end I spent so much time looking after the management side that I wasn’t really able to do design,” he explained to WWD at the time.

Turning away from trends to focus more squarely on quiet quality, Human Made, then, has been a humble reshuffling of priorities, allowing him to take control and stay focused, a streamlined collection of classics like warm, cozy hoodies and varsity jackets, festooned with ducks, Valentine hearts, and bunny rabbits, that is more of a cottage industry than a massive mainstream endeavor. “He has a completely vertical fashion brand,” the late Abloh observed in 2020. “In one building, he designs, does the photo shoot, and does the manufacturing. I was impressed by that.”

The line is filled with an array of cute little home and decor products with playful appeal: a papier-mâché sunglasses stand in the shape of a bulldog’s head, enamel mugs and plates for camping, a bottle of sake, a banana hanger for the kitchen (complete with two replica bananas), a paper weight in the shape of a melting ice cream cone, and a windchime covered in polar bears and tigers. They’re silly ideas that feel special, collectible, one-of-kind, tailor made for the quirkiest amongst us. “I wanted to do something that was the antithesis of the way that fashion has gone, where everything’s fast fashion, disposable: buy, use them, throw them away,” he said in 2012. “I wanted to make something that had some weight and value to it—the materials used in the method of construction. This is more about the personal connection to the clothing.”

Nigo likes to make clothes for and with his friends, a tight, ragtag crew of loyal like minded misfits that he’s assembled over the years, including Pharrell (they founded the cult clothing line Billionaire Boys Club together in 2003), Kanye, Pusha T, Tyler, the Creator, A$AP Rocky, Lil Uzi Vert, Abloh, and Kid Cudi, who wore a Nigo-designed blue Kenzo cape and tuxedo to the most recent Met Gala. Abloh, who once referred to Nigo as a mentor, brought him in to collaborate on collections for Louis Vuitton. And Cudi, who actually worked as a retail employee at the New York BAPE store, gets starry-eyed even speaking about Nigo. “I’m always in awe when I’m around him, in his office and atelier,” the artist told me earlier this year as he prepared for the annual fashion event. “I’ve never seen anybody that has a world designed quite like Nigo’s.”

He has made time and space to indulge in more off center creative projects, like a restaurant called Curry Up he’s opened in Tokyo and I Know Nigo, an album he put out earlier this year. On it, he is the maestro, cooking up beats with Pharrell, Kanye, and Tyler, and calling in guest verses from Uzi, Gunna, Clipse, and Rocky. Rolling Stone described it “a collaborative testament to the genuine admiration Nigo has earned for himself in the world of hip-hop.” If fashion is his day job, then music—and hip-hop specifically—has always been his wellspring, the place where he finds inspiration and energy. In turn, he’s been embraced by rappers in a way few designers have, and practically defined hiphop style in the 2000s, as important to the culture as Baby Phat or Sean Jean; it was Lil Wayne constantly wearing Nigo’s clothes (particularly his iconic full-zip hoodie) that really made the designer a household name, and he has turned up as a reference since in lyrics by everyone from Soulja Boy to Drake. “Nigo is just as important and significant to hip-hop as Pharrell, or Slick Rick, or Kanye,” Rocky once said.

“I DON’T THINK OF MYSELF AS BEING INFLUENTIAL, BUT

TO FULFILL A ROLE.”

I’M GRATEFUL THAT I AM ABLE TO CONTINUE

But then again, Nigo has always been a music geek and culture maven. Born in 1970, he grew up in the medium-sized city of Maebashi, capital of the Gunma Prefecture, but used to sneak away to Tokyo to check out the Vivienne Westwood store and buy records from his favorite shop, Cisco. First, he became obsessed with the 1950s rockabilly style of Elvis Presley and Buddy Holly before turning his eyes and ears to hip-hop, dressing increasingly like his idols LL Cool J and Beastie Boys. “My first encounter with hip-hop was Raising Hell by Run-DMC. I was 16 years old. It wasn’t only the music, but the look— I’d never seen anything like it: Adidas Superstars worn without laces. It was shocking,” he tells me. “Up until that point I was dressing in a style that we refer to as ‘American casual’ in Japan: Levis 501s, white Hanes tees, glasses with black frames. After I saw Run-DMC, my whole approach to style changed.”

He moved himself to the big city to attend Bunka Fashion College in Tokyo, wrote for a fashion magazine, did some styling, and fell in with Hiroshi Fujiwara, a Japanese design legend that some have called the godfather of streetwear because of his then-progressive approach to fashion. Nigo actually gained his nickname—which translates to “number 2”—as a reference to his place in the pecking order to the older, wiser Fujiwara, though he admits their bond wasn’t exactly a strict teacher-student relationship as much as it was just a chance to witness how things worked and take that knowledge into the world. “Master Hiroshi didn’t really teach me anything—I learned by watching him during the time we spent together,” he says. “Not teaching is a path to the most valuable learning.”

Eventually, Nigo opened Nowhere in the then-burgeoning neighborhood of Harajuku, spurring him to make his own clothes to fill the store’s racks. A Bathing Ape was soon born, a name that came to Nigo after watching the original Planet of the Apes. Nigo would produce T-shirts—homespun tees featuring the BAPE ape—in runs of 30 or so, handing out around half of them to friends, and the brand eventually caught fire in the trendier corners of Tokyo before making its way to America. “It’s like a generational shift. When I started out, there was really no respect for that stuff and even to the level where it actually had dress codes: like, you can’t come in here wearing jeans and a T-shirt. That kind of thing has really vanished from the world,” he told me in an interview back in 2013. “So, I guess for a younger generation of people that have grown up in a world where that wasn’t the case, it’s not a big deal for them, it’s not even a factor.”

Now, there’s something of that fundamental spirit of imagination in his work all over again. In the decade since we last spoke, Nigo has tried his hand at partnering with Uniqlo, where he served as creative director for its UT line, making graphic tees to appeal to the Japanese company’s gigantic global audience, to making more sophisticated work at Kenzo and Human Made, which feels special, small, strange, and, most importantly to any modern designer, cool. He has turned his interests to more peaceful endeavors. “Recently, I’m deeply into Japanese Chanoyu [tea-ceremony] culture,” he says. “Maybe that’ll be reflected in what I make in future.” When asked how he stays in touch with what’s happening in youth culture, he says it’s a mere matter of keeping your eyes open, paying attention, and putting the more chaotic modern distractions—the kind he may have loved as an avant-garde upstart—aside. “I see the city through my car window while I’m traveling,” he says resolutely, “not through my iPhone.”

As for the culture of hype that he helped hone—the one that has sent sneaker prices skyrocketing, made certain coveted products nearly impossible to buy except at insanely high prices, and created a frenzy for fresh product so massive it’s almost become madness—he is even keeled and practical about it all. “You could make an analogy with any other kind of environment,” he says. “There are good and bad aspects depending on where you are situated within it.”

And of course, he is humble about his influence on the world of streetwear, instead focused on what he’s creating now, and just happy to still be in the game—a game he helped establish the rules for—after all these years. “I don’t think of myself as being influential,” he says, “but I’m grateful that I am able to continue to fulfill a role.” So are we.

WRANGLER / DURING THE 1960S AND 1970S WRANGLER RELEASED A VARIETY OF PATTERNED PANTS. THIS DESIGN IS PROBABLY THE MOST MEMORABLE AMONG THEM. YOU COULD DISPLAY THEM AS ART THOUGH THESE PANTS WERE MADE TO BE WORN. TO MATCH WITH THIS THEME OF WEARABLE ARTWORK, YOU COULD PAIR THEM WITH A PATTERNED HAWAIIAN SHIRT WITH EUGENE SAVAGE’S MENU CARD ILLUSTRATIONS FROM THE EARLY 1950S.

CULTURAL CURRENCY

“JH photoshop sketch,” 2022, Jeanette Hayes

The traditions of commerce have changed. Check-outs no longer require checking accounts nor Amex cards, and cold hard cash is virtually a thing of the past. Quite literally by means of Venmo and crypto or less explicitly with social capital, payment forms have become as technological as they are transient. Inspired and somewhat flustered, HYPEBEAST prompted this group of visual artists to challenge these notions in their own disciplines: If one could conceive a new kind of currency, what would it look like? Would it revert back to ancient precious metals, speed forward into the meta-abyss, or be somewhere or something entirely different?

“TO PREPARE FOR A PAINTING, I USUALLY DRAW OR I COLLAGE, SOMETIMES IN PHOTOSHOP. THIS IS A PAGE FROM MY PHOTOSHOP SKETCHBOOK. IT’S A MOCK-UP OF A FLIER FOR A JH PARTY. OR A GROUP SHOW? AT JACK HANLEY? WHO WOULD SPONSOR IT? JACKSON HEWITT? JEWISH HERITAGE MUSEUM? JOHNS HOPKINS? COULD IT BE AT JACKSON HOLE? OR JAMAICA HILLS OR JACKSON HEIGHTS? NO REQUIREMENTS, JUST HARMONY.”

CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS REIMAGINE MEANS OF EXCHANGE IN THIS ORIGINAL PORTFOLIO.

“Am I Rich Yet” 2022, Eri Wakiyama “Bank Love Note” 2022, André Saraiva

“CURRENCY WILL ALWAYS BE CURRENCY, WHETHER IT’S TOKENS, OR PAPER CASH, OR BITCOIN, WHATEVER. GREAT BUT EVIL. HOWEVER, THE WORTH AND VALUE OF SOME THINGS WILL NEVER BE REPLACEABLE WITH CURRENCY, AND THOSE ARE THE THINGS THAT WILL MAKE YOU SPIRITUALLY WEALTHY. SOME CURRENCY IS CURRENT FOREVER. SOME CURRENCY IS WORTH WAY MORE THAN ANYTHING ELSE.”

“OFTEN WHEN I DIDN’T HAVE MONEY, I USED TO TRADE MY DRAWINGS FOR FOOD IN RESTAURANTS OR FOR DRINKS IN NIGHTCLUBS. DRAWINGS HAVE ALWAYS BEEN MY LOVE CURRENCY.”

“Quantum Nature” 2022, DRIFT “ON CHAIN CASH” 2022, FVCKRENDER

“THE INTERSECTION OF DIFFERENT MEDIUMS MEETING INTO A NEW CURRENCY.”

“‘QUANTUM NATURE’ IS AN INTERACTIVE DIGITAL SCULPTURE THAT USES CUSTOM SOFTWARE, QUANTUM COMPUTING DATA, NFT, AND QUANTUM CALIBRATION METRICS TO ILLUSTRATE AND TO UNDERSTAND THE MOST ADVANCED HUMAN-MADE TECHNOLOGY TO DATE. DRIFT’S ICONIC EXPLORATION OF NATURE AND TECHNOLOGY SERVES TO ILLUMINATE POETIC PARALLELS BETWEEN THE INNER WORKINGS OF QUANTUM COMPUTING AND THE NATURAL WORLD, UNITING EACH IN A CREATIVE COALITION.”

“A0K1VERSE CREDIT,” 2022, by Steve Aoki “Deez Coin,” 2022, by Harmony Korine

“IN THE A0K1VERSE, THE CURRENCY OF CHOICE IS THE CREDIT. THROUGH CREDITS, CITIZENS ACQUIRE THEIR DIGITAL PASSPORT ALLOWING ACCESS TO A DIGITAL AND PHYSICAL WORLD OF OPPORTUNITY AND EXPERIENCE. THIS IS THE FUTURE OF COMMUNITY.”

“IN THE FUTURE THERE IS NOTHING LEFT. ONLY DEEZ.”

“I will be a cash guy”

2022, Sho Shibuya

“I THINK ABOUT THE FUTURE OF CURRENCY A LOT, BUT IN FACT, AM STILL A BIG CASH GUY. USE CASH EVERY DAY FOR PICKING UP A PRINT COPY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES AT THE FARMERS MARKET, AND TO PAY FOR BEERS AT MY FAVORITE BAR. I CREATED A PIECE THAT COVERS THE MAGAZINE IN PENNIES I’VE PICKED UP FROM THE STREET DURING MY LIFE IN NEW YORK AS A GOOD LUCK CHARM. IT SHOWS THAT EVEN WHEN HYPEBEAST MAGAZINE REACHES 999 ISSUES FAR INTO THE FUTURE, WILL STILL BE A CASH GUY.”

“Pemba,” 2022, Brian Rochefort

“WHEN INVITED TO REFLECT ON THE NOTION OF CURRENCY, THE ABSURDLY ABSTRACT, VIRTUAL FORM THAT MONETARY EXCHANGE HAS TAKEN TODAY SEEMS BEYOND REPAIR: VALUE IS NO LONGER MATERIAL, AS IT IS DETERMINED BY STOCK EXCHANGES WORLDWIDE, [WITH] PRICES FLUCTUATING BEYOND ANYONE’S CONTROL. WHAT IF, AS A RESPONSE TO THIS WHIRLWIND OF ABSTRACTION BEYOND CONTROL, WE WERE ALL FORCED, BY A CATACLYSMIC EVENT LIKE A METEORITE HITTING US, TO GO BACK TO SOMETHING PRIMARY? ALL THAT WOULD BE LEFT WOULD BE ROCKS AND DUST.”

2022, Sarah Coleman

“Blob (Flat Sculptures)” 2022, Erwin Wurm “troll 01 (the myth)”

“IF I COULD CREATE A FORM OF CURRENCY IT WOULD BE A LITTLE TROLL LIKE THE ONE I DUNKED IN PAINT. THE LITTLE TROLL WOULD RID YOU OF ANY FINANCIAL TROUBLES. IT WOULD ALSO NEVER BACKFIRE. EVER. NO CURSED TROLLS. YOU WOULD KNOW THE VALUE OF MONEY AND TIME AND YOURSELF. EVERY TIME YOU RUB ITS BELLY, ALL YOUR DEBT IS CANCELED, AND YOUR WORRIES ARE REPLACED WITH BUTTERFLIES AND RAINBOWS.”

“THE CURRENCY OF THE FUTURE GROWS FROM THE PAST AND MOVES WITH TIME. IT WILL BE AN ABSTRACT, MOVABLE, GROWING UNICELLULAR ORGANISM SIMILAR TO A BLOB THAT WILL ADAPT BY ITSELF, AND FORMS AND DEFORMS ITS OWN EXISTENCE.”

“YOUR MONEY IS NO GOOD HERE,” 2022, Lucien Smith “PayLike” 2022, Harry Nuriev

“FOR SERVING THE PEOPLE, A 501(C)(3) NON PROFIT ORGANIZATION FOUNDED BY THE ARTIST.”

“IMAGINE IF ‘LIKES’ WERE THE NEW CURRENCY, AND BY PRESSING THE HEART YOU PAY FOR GOODS—WILL WE BE MORE CAREFUL WITH WHAT TO ‘LIKE?’ IN A WORLD WHERE ‘LIKE’ IN SOCIAL MEDIA ARE MORE IMPORTANT THAN REAL CONNECTIONS, WHERE VIRTUAL REALITY IS MORE COMFORTABLE THAN PHYSICAL, AND CASH IS NOT EVEN USED ANYMORE —IT IS A LOGICAL TRANSFORMATION FOR THE MOST DESIRED THING, ISN’T IT?”

“SO-LOW TABLE,”

2022, Heron Preston

“I WANTED TO DESIGN A LOW SITTING SHORT LEGGED TABLE THAT WAS ONE PIECE. NO JOINTS, NO PARTS, NO SCREWS, NO NAILS. IT’S SHAPED BY HAND USING PAPIER-MÂCHÉ, INSPIRED BY WOOD CARVED FURNITURE.”

In Search of Softness

WORDS BY JOSHUA GLASS PHOTOGRAPHY AND ARTWORK BY PETER DO

New guard fashion designer Peter Do exclusively documents the creation of his longawaited menswear debut.

attending New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology.

In 2014, the fashion designer won the inaugural 2014 LVMH Graduate Prize only to be headhunted by Phoebe Philo to join her (and Daniel Lee, later of Bottega fame) in Paris for a very different era of Céline. In 2018, he established his eponymous label back in New York not as a one-man show as per the norm, but rather, a collective. In the few years since, the brand has gained a cult-like following, in part for its sophisticated sculpture and subversive expression of fashion but also its intellectual and cultural proximity.

tions, employing sharp construction, rich fabrics, and functional design typically native to Savile Row. “Traditionally, men shop less than women, so their clothes are made to last longer. I wanted to make women’s clothing the way people have made men’s forever. I wanted my women to be strong and tough and empowered.”

But not only did it work—it also garnered a dedicated fanbase of men, too. “Ever since that first collection we’ve had a huge male following,” Do explains, himself and staff included. “They have just been buying the pieces that fit them. Men’s stores too,

ing for women to then ‘women’s’ clothing for men.”

Chronicled exclusively in this portfolio—from inception and development in Europe to its debut in New York this September—the line is a fluid extension of the designer’s reckoning of gender with many motifs familiar to the Peter Do brand, from slinky tanks and asymmetrical pieces meant for layering to its signature statement boots. While categorically these new garments are “for men,” many in fact, are meant to be “shareable,” with adjustments in fit and preference added and detachments easily made. It’s a visual exercise not dissimilar to a phrase

or too feminine, and introducing a line for men specifically allowed me to think freer than I ever thought I could.”

LIFE

Fighting food insecurity and empowering through agriculture, the non-profit based in Upstate New York puts community first.

Dan Colen—the world-famous artist known for canvases covered in chewing gum, spray painted with the words “Holy Shit,” and “Candle” paintings inspired by a single frame from the Disney animated film Pinocchio—wanted an escape from the downtown excess he grew accustomed to in the aughts, running around with the likes of Ryan McGinley, Kunle Martins, Nate Lowman, and the late Dash Snow. He discovered a 40-acre property in rural Upstate New York, but felt the need to do something more than simply live on a farm.

“Founding Sky High wasn’t a decision I made one day but rather a part of this kind of process,” Colen tells HYPEBEAST. “Eleven years ago, it led to my initial conversations with friends and mentors about agriculture and food apartheid.

It also introduced me to my first lessons on how fraught the food system is and the ways in which it is used to oppress certain communities and destroy local cultures and land.”

The artist learned that in New York state alone, around 10.5 percent—or just a little over one in 10 households—are faced with food insecurity. Some families don’t have enough money to buy nutritious food, go to bed hungry without eating, or have to decide between buying groceries or purchasing medication. (A problem likely to worsen today with the current economic downturn, inflation, and rising rents.) Colen knew he wanted to do something to contribute, so he created Sky High Farm.

Located about a two-hour drive from New York City, the 501(c) (3) organization combats food insecurity through a multi-prong approach that serves as “a bridge between regenerative farming and food access initiatives,” according to its mission. The first is food production and donation, using sustainable farming practices to cultivate produce and livestock, 100 percent of which is donated to food pantries, food banks, and other organizations throughout the state that provides access to nutritious food. The second is regenerative agriculture, which fights against climate change through a multitude of practices that are centered around local ecology, soil health, pasture management, and water conservation. The third is community involvement through fellowships, collaborations, and communities of practice, allowing fellows from nearby communities to gain experiential knowledge about farming through an intensive on-site paid program that pairs agricultural work with formal education. Sky High Grants, meanwhile, provides grants for farms and farmers—priority is given to those who are BIPOC and/or LGBTQIA+ identifying—by building equity in agriculture and supporting a range of projects. Simultaneously, the organization inspired the creation of Sky High Farm Workwear, a clothing label created with the help of DSMP, the Dover Street Market incubator, worn on the farm that boasts collaborations by creatives like Quill Lemons and Tremaine Emory.

“WE PROCESS ALL OF THE POULTRY AT THE FARM. WE SLAUGHTER, PACKAGE, FREEZE IT, AND DISTRIBUTE IT,” EXPLAINS SKY HIGH FARM’S COO JOSH BARDFIELD.

“I’M INTERESTED IN WITNESSING MY LIMITS AS AN ARTIST, AND I WANT MY PURPOSE TO BE INFORMED BY MY EXPERIENCES INSTEAD OF JUST ASSUMING THE DECISIONS

I’VE MADE EARLIER ARE STILL MEANINGFUL TO ME. THE BIRTH OF SKY HIGH FITS WITHIN THIS TRAJECTORY.” —DAN COLEN

One of Colen’s close friends that was key to forming the farm is its chief operating officer, Josh Bardfield. He grew up with the artist in Northern New Jersey, and earned a master’s in public health from Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health before working in academia and non-profits. Now, Bardfield runs the show at the farm, working with a team of about a dozen people to make sure that everything operates smoothly. “Farming is a very difficult profession,” says Bardfield, who also oversees the Sky High Grants program. “The agricultural system in the U.S. is not one that is built to support small, sustainable agriculture. It’s an industrial system that favors efficiency over ecology.”

Sky High Farm’s grantees come from all over the United States. One recipient is Ashokra Farm, a four-person queer and POC collective in Albuquerque, New Mexico. “We are using our grant funds to expand our farm,” shares founder Anita Ashok Adalja, explaining that the grant has been used for several things, including a new trailer, liability insurance, stipends, and even to offset its annual Quickbooks subscription. Another recipient is Saugerties Free Food, part of the Underground Center in Saugerties, New York. “With the grant, we can start scaling up in our community,” says program director Chase Randell. Some of its funding will go towards recruiting teens for its compost initiatives and garden-building squad as well as reopening the area’s free farmers market.

MOST OF SKY HIGH FARM’S PLANTS ARE FIRST GROWN IN AN ON-SITE PROPAGATION HOUSE.

“THE AGRICULTURAL SYSTEM IN THE U.S. IS NOT ONE THAT IS BUILT TO SUPPORT SMALL, SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE. IT'S AN INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM THAT FAVORS EFFICIENCY OVER ECOLOGY.”

—JOSH BARDFIELD

“Systemic inequity is what drives our organization,” says Colen. “Nutritious food is a basic human necessity and right, yet industrial agriculture and profit-driven policy continue to devastate the health of our land and bodies, the effects of which are most prominently seen in marginalized communities. We believe that by investing in community-centered small-scale farming, these sustainable methods of nutrient-dense food production can be led by and feed the people, not only the wealthiest few. Among other things, we see ourselves as a model for what our food system can and should look like.”

While there is a lot of work that needs to be done to allow food security for all New Yorkers, Sky High Farm is making moves— since 2011 it has donated 87,000 pounds of produce and 50,000 pounds of protein to food pantries, food banks, and other organizations across New York state.

HIGH FARM HAS APPROXIMATELY A DOZEN PEOPLE ON ITS CORE TEAM, INCLUDING FOUR SEASONAL FELLOWS, A COO, A DEVELOPMENT MANAGER,

PROGRAM MANAGER, AND AN ASSISTANT PROGRAM MANAGER. “IN TERMS OF LIVESTOCK, WE HAVE COWS, SHEEP, PIGS, EGG-LAYING CHICKENS, AND MEAT CHICKENS,” SAYS BARDFIELD.

Raf Simons has been spending a lot of time thinking about his roots as of late. From fondly looking back on memories of his childhood in Neerpelt, Belgium to revisiting his creative beginnings as an industrial designer, it seems that even the most cerebral of creatives aren’t immune to nostalgia. “When I was a teenager,” the 54 year-old tells me one warm afternoon in Milan, “the small village I lived in had nothing but a little record store, and the only thing I thought about was getting out. Now, all I want to do is buy a house and go back to the countryside.”

It’s a notion that many of us have experienced over the past two years—an impulse feeling that became a movement and led to the so-called “mass urban exodus” from major cities on the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, when subsequent lockdowns across the globe coerced city dwellers to trade in their flats for country cottages. Having said that, before long, the stories of regret emerged, citing a sickness of silence or a longing for late-night grocery stores. In the case of Simons, the issues are likely irrelevant. Even if he were to relocate back to his hometown it would surely be impossible for him to find himself in any one place for too long of a period of time.

Over the course of his fashion career, Simons’ roles at the houses Jil Sander, Christian Dior, Calvin Klein, and Prada have brought him to live cross-continentally for the majority of his adult life. That was, of course, until the pandemic grounded him in Antwerp, where he has been confined within the walls of his own home, which he shares with his beloved dog. It was during those peak restrictive months that Simons got to thinking about the objects surrounding him—how he feels about them, how useful they are, and what he couldn’t live without. It was also at this time, that he was in the midst of an ongoing conversation with Danish textile brand Kvadrat about taking their pre-existing collaboration to the next level.

“The most important thing was no furniture. I said to them, ‘I don’t want to do a sofa, or a chair, or anything like that.’ It just didn’t feel right,” Simons says in his typically definitive style, which, should you be on the receiving end, you can imagine makes you trust whatever call he makes almost instantly. His relationship with the Ebeltoft, Denmark-based company began through the legendary graphic designer Peter Saville, who had provided an early creative influence for Simons—he discovered Saville’s work through cover art on record sleeves in the aforementioned music store nearby to his Neerpelt home. Living in a place that, Simons felt, was lacking in cultural hotspots, the boutique became his artistic escape, and led to a keen interest in music and the subcultures surrounding different genres. It also led to a desire to work alongside the art director, which, remarkably enough, eventually ended up happening—and not just occasionally but frequently. Their professional relationship today has spawned over 20 years’ worth of collaborations. Saville himself had already been working with Kvadrat for a long time, and was responsible for all aspects of the company’s visual communication. “He told me to get in touch with them, because he knew I’d like what they were about and what they do,” recalls the designer. Not only did that turn out to be true, but the feeling was also reciprocated. And so, Kvadrat got Simons on board in 2014. Together, they have gone on to create immensely successful ranges of fabric that are used across apparel, furniture,

Captured exclusively, a new collection of objects from the cult fashion designer exhibits his practice in industrial design.

WORDS BY ALICE MORBY PHOTOGRAPHY BY GEORGE HARVEY DESIGN BY DAVID WISE

spaces, and even large-scale installations. It’s a comfortable space for the Belgian designer, he says. “I don’t really feel like the end voice with fabric. I am making something that serves another creative,” he explains. “I feel like I’m just an ingredient, and I’m very at ease in that position.”

But eventually Simons came to an idea that he felt compelled to create. He put it to the brand’s CEO Anders Byriel and the two set about making it a reality. The result is the Shaker System, a simple-looking storage solution made up of a wall-mounted horizontal bar—from which hangs a series of accessories, including a key chain, cap, tote bag and shopping bags, woolen throws and cushions—a leather-clad mirror tray, accessory boxes, a leather magazine strap, and storage sleeves. It has been designed to bring together all the loose ends we so often lose track of around our homes, which for the designer, just like the rest of us, range from house keys, to “poo-poo bags” for his pet. It feels almost naive to think, but there’s something incredibly reassuring about the fact that one of the greatest designers of our time might too walk out of his home having forgotten something vital or had indeed put something down in another room only for its exact location to escape him.

“I sometimes get in the house, and an hour later think ‘Shit, where did I put my glasses!’ and I then have to go hunt for them everywhere,” he says, laughing at his own misfortune. “That very simplistic way of thinking of a human being’s daily behavior brought me to create these objects and pushed me to try and find a solution.”

When it came to developing the design, Simons took his inspirations from a range of sources. Its name derives from the bare-necessity lifestyle of the Shaker people, who famously forgo ornamentation when crafting furniture, instead prioritizing functional form and proportion. This often leads to an aesthetic closely aligned to minimalism, which, given its huge resurgence in popularity in contemporary interior design and decoration, has seen Shaker methodologies and aesthetics adopted by the masses. He also cites an exhibition of Joe Colombo as providing a conceptual springboard, in which the Italian design maestro created an adaptable domestic system. As in his previous work, Simons also looked to the aesthetics of American minimalist artists Donald Judd and John McCracken and the French decorative arts designer Jacques Adnet—all longtime influences for the designer. But his final point of reference came from his mother, who had a giant cut-out key in their childhood home on which everyone in the household would put their keys onto when they entered. “Deadly ridiculous and ugly, but so smart. Nobody ever lost a set,” he jokes. “In all seriousness, though, it helped me to think about the way in which people live their lives right now. In a sense it felt like I was going back to my industrial design roots,” he says, referring to his formative education; he completed a degree in the subject at the LUCA School of Arts in Genk in 1991.

“Rather than making a statement piece, I felt drawn to thinking about the way our worlds are now, and what we need from our increasingly domestic situations. What are the objects that are always what you need?” This problem-solving, no-nonsense attitude is something that Simons’ creative process is founded in. Despite spending the majority of his career in fashion, his approach to collections often seems way more synonymous with that of a designer of objects, rather than clothes. “There is a strong connection to my past—from when I graduated as an industrial designer—in this new series. It’s still in my system, of course, but being a fashion designer brings about a different daily life in relation to time and the speed at which we have to create things.”

Despite finding his creative feet as an industrial designer—his 1991

“RATHER THAN MAKING A STATEMENT PIECE, I FELT DRAWN TO THINKING ABOUT THE WAY OUR WORLDS ARE NOW, AND WHAT WE NEED FROM OUR INCREASINGLY DOMESTIC SITUATIONS. WHAT ARE THE OBJECTS THAT ARE ALWAYS WHAT YOU NEED?”

graduate collection “Accessoiremeubles,” for example, encompassed seven pieces of furniture based around the human torso— Simons’ strong interest fashion has always existed. As a student, he would spend time at the Antwerp cafe Witzli-Poetzli with the likes of photographer Willy Vanderperre and stylist David Vandewal musing on the work of Helmut Lang and Martin Margiela, the latter would be the first fashion show Simons would attend while interning alongside the designer Walter Van Beirendonck. Soon after that in 1993, he founded his now-iconic eponymous menswear brand with an aesthetic rooted in his obsession with youth culture. In the early days, collections would be shown through videos or presentations, and the Raf Simons label’s first runway show took place in 1997.

In October 2000, Simons was appointed head professor of the fashion department of the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, where he remained until 2005. In the same year, he was also appointed creative director for the Jil Sander brand, where his use of innovative tailoring and impeccable minimalism was credited with restoring its commercial appeal. Luckily for the Prada Group, Simons’ appointment helped to move the brand away from the turmoil it had experienced after its founder herself had resigned on two occasions, citing difficulties with its parent company’s CEO Patrizio Bertelli, who had purchased her label in 1999. By late 2011, reports were flying around that Simons was in the process of interviewing for the top slot at Christian Dior, which had remained vacant since John Galliano was fired in March 2011. He got the title to much acclaim, but it was there that his view on the trials and tribulations of the fashion world as it currently exists became relatively well-known. Simons seemed to struggle to keep up with

the excruciatingly relentless calendar of couture and ready-towear while at Dior, as documented in the 2014 film Dior and I by director Frédéric Tcheng, which shadowed the designer as as he prepared for his first couture collection at the house.

“Fashion became a monster, it’s always against the clock,” he tells me, reflecting on the differences between the disciplines he works across. When the unexpected news of his planned departure from Dior broke, journalists in their troves began to speculate over the reason for his leaving. “The news threw me back to the startling honesty of something Simons told me the day after his wildly lauded first couture show in 2012,” wrote Vogue’s Sarah Mower to commemorate the occasion: “‘I’ll stop if I have no ideas anymore,’ he said. ‘Fashion is not the only thing that can make me happy.’”

Two years later, he arrived at Calvin Klein, where he would once again weave together his love for both object and adornment, most notably updating Gaetano Pesce’s “Feltri” chair for an exhibition at Design Miami and Art Basel. Then in 2020, Miuccia Prada and Bertelli announced his appointment as co-creative director of Prada, a role that seems to fit him very comfortably given its intersection of fashion, academia, and high-concept design. The twists and turns of Simons’ career have been much discussed by fashion historians and enthusiasts alike, but it seems that the decisions he makes are never on a whim and are always intrinsically authentic to the person he is at his core. Thanks to this appointment at Prada, and of course, the work he creates through his own label, the enigmatic presence of Raf Simons continues to inspire creatives across the globe.

During our time together—and despite being a relatively private person—he is willing to share details about his younger life with a vulnerability that we’ve come to expect many creatives of celebrity status not to have. Returning to his childhood and formative years, Raf and I find a number of common grounds: we were both raised in families not particularly au-fait with design professions, his mother a cleaner, his father an army night watchman; we have a shared love for Yorkshire in the north of England, where I was born and where he had visited alongside photographer Terry Jones decades earlier; and finally, an excessive amount of empathy for inanimate objects, namely stuffed animals. In fact, Simons credits his infant companions as the first belongings he recognized as being “designed.” “When I was a young child, I really loved certain objects around me,” he recalls. “I was a child of the 1970s, and at the time, Greenpeace was always making toy animals to raise proceeds. I was obsessed, but I had to have them all out and organized on show. I couldn’t have them stuffed into closets.”

Thinking of Raf as a young boy, living in the countryside and obsessively organizing his furry toys doesn’t seem a million miles away from the mindset he is in now. Designing with Kvadrat has allowed him to take a breather while returning to his creative beginnings, providing time to indulge in the process, the references, and the preexisting knowledge of which he has by the bucketload. His Shaker System almost draws on this innate need to make sense of the space around him via organization. Its textural fabric applies a sensorial element, which he remembers vividly from the Greenpeace bears, while the simplicity of the system as a whole speaks to this longing for a simple life.

“These days, my perception of time feels so different,” he says. “When I’m back in my village, and I’m connected to nature, everything seems to change.”

WORDS BY KEITH ESTILER IMAGES PHOTOGRAPHED BY ELON SCHOENHOLZ AND ED MUMFORD. COURTESY OF MATTHEW BROWN GALLERY.

ARTWORK BY ALFONSO GONZALEZ JR.

RANFLAS

ALFONSO GONZALEZ JR. CAPTURES THE BEAUTY OF IMMIGRANT COMMUNITIES, A THEME HE HONORS IN HIS WORK AT LARGE AND ILLUSTRATES IN THIS EXCLUSIVE COMMISSION ABOUT THE CULTURE OF LOWRIDERS.

Alfonso Gonzalez Jr.’s neighborhood of East Los Angeles is an important place for the artist. It’s where he finds beautiful elements and subjects that comprise his interdisciplinary approach to art-making. From weathered surfaces to hand-painted signage, Gonzalez Jr. uses his overall practice to highlight communities that are quite often overlooked, especially in densely populated cities across the globe where they are typically unbeknownst to tourists and new residents. These ethnic havens are usually sidelined by creative industries that favor star-studded locales like Los Angeles’ decadent Beverly Hills neighborhood or New York’s ritzy Upper East Side, both home to the powerful and wealthy. Through his mixed media works—that involve everything from painting to sculpture—he is on a mission to shift perspectives of neglected cultural regions and the people who live in them.

On a late Friday afternoon, I chat with the artist over the phone while he runs errands in his car. During our conversation, we draw parallels between our respective coastal home cities. I grew up in the most ethnically diverse urban area in the world: Queens. Popularly described as the “World’s Borough,” where locals identify closer with their neighborhood rather than the city as a whole. This is the same for Gonzalez Jr., who mentions that many locals in his neighborhood have immense pride for the streets they grew up on rather than their regions. And while it’s easy for some to succumb to the attitudes and personalities of the neighborhoods that raised them, the two of us ping-pong the thought of how exploring various communities beyond our own can introduce unique perspectives.

But Gonzalez Jr. isn’t solely focused on a particular individual

or ethnic background in his work; instead he concentrates on showing the multiplex of immigrant identities in his practice. “Sometimes it’s on a singular subject,” he explains. “Sometimes it’s more of a traditional landscape that captures the essence of my surroundings.” Most importantly, he wants to preserve the aesthetic nature of his community and compel onlookers of his work to discover the beauty of these overlooked parts of his city—all of its cultural modes and even imperfections.

“With things drastically changing in the world, I’m really just trying to capture what’s going on right now. With the rapid advancement of technology the world’s changing at an unprecedented pace. There are certain things that are tough to talk about. Since COVID I’ve seen local businesses go under which has led to the rise of houselessness,” he says.

“I’m just giving the L.A. experience that I don’t see in art or even on T.V. And if it even is on T.V. or movies, it’s the very gangster— cholo—sort of thing. All of these things are real. The Hollywood thing is real. The gangster shit is real, but that’s not always my experience. I guess, to some point, it is, but that’s not me. I’m neither of those things.”

The artist’s passion for shining a light on his community and unconventional approach to art-making is rooted in his own self-taught development. After years of working as a sign painter—and following in the footsteps of his father—he achieved a great understanding of painting techniques and how to utilize them in all sorts of public settings. He took his practice internationally; painting ads all over the world and exposing himself

to other communities beyond his westcoast residence. But eventually, Gonzalez Jr. found the work monotonous, and he left to focus more seriously on his contemporary art practice.

To get his name out, Gonzalez Jr. launched numerous artist-led shows. He founded empty spaces in L.A. and organized exhibitions with works by his close peers such as Mario Ayala, who is known for his intricate airbrush paintings, and artist Diana Yessenia Alvarado, who specializes in ceramic sculptures. They were eventually noticed by acclaimed curator and gallerist Jeffrey Deitch, who put them in a major show called Shattered Glass, which gathered a group of 40 international artists of color. More recently, Gonzalez Jr. gained exclusive representation from Matthew Brown. The gallery

launched his first solo exhibition, There Was There, which showed works that reassessed the “clichés and misinformation about Los Angeles” earlier this year. In it the artist spotlighted “an entire world that is immigrant, that is low-income, working class, that is Black, Brown, Asian, set within the rich cultural enclaves that sprawl throughout the city—a world that already has always been the true fabric of Los Angeles culture.”

We end our call with thoughts on his overall art practice and where he’s taking his work next. “An art practice is something that I don’t think you’ll ever fully arrive at,” he tells me. “I think there’s good moments, but I think if you arrive, and you know what it’s all about, it’s kind of like, What’s the point of it? It’s cool to keep looking, and I’m still looking.”

“I’m just giving the L.A. experience that I don’t see in art or even on T.V. And if it even is on T.V. or movies, it’s the very gangster—cholo—sort of thing. All of these things are real. The Hollywood thing is real. The gangster shit is real, but that’s not always my experience. I guess, to some point, it is, but that’s not me. I’m neither of those things.”

MODELS M’BENGUÉ, TURNER BARBUR, THOMAS WRIGHT MAKEUP AKIKO OWADA HAIR EDWARD LAMPLEY PRODUCTION OLIVIA GOUVEIA FOR FAMILY PROJECTS CASTING NATALIE LIN AT IN SEARCH OF SET DESIGN BJELLAND + CLOSMORE LIGHTING DIRECTOR DAVID DIESING STYLIST ASSISTANT AVERY MCQUEEN PRODUCTION ASSISTANT IAN KING

In honor of the sportswear juggernaut’s 50th anniversary, we break into the archives of its Beaverton, Oregon headquarters to study the iconic pieces that have impacted the last five decades of culture and foreshadow the exciting future ahead.

WORDS BY ELLIOT SANTIAGO PHOTOGRAPHY BY ASATO IIDA

Nike’s co-founder Bill Bowerman once said, “If you have a body, you are an athlete.” It’s a statement that—for anyone hearing it for the first time—might cause an eyebrow to raise. After all, not all of us possess the natural ability to soar for a tomahawk, jam like LeBron James, execute a forceful running forehand like Serena Williams, or shatter a two-hour marathon barrier like Eliud Kipchoge. The phrase, however, perfectly encapsulates why the brand has garnered so much success in its 50-year lifespan: Nike has always been predicated upon driving culture forward by reaching the masses—even those that don’t have an ounce of an interest in sports in their bodies.

1972 MOON SHOE

CORTEZ 1982

AIR FORCE 1

1983 WINDRUNNER JACKET

1985 AIR JORDAN 1 DUNK

1987 AIR MAX 1

1988 AIR JORDAN 3

1990 AIR MAX 90

1991 AIR HUARACHE

DRI-FIT

1995 AIR JORDAN 11

AIR MAX 95

1996 AIR MORE UPTEMPO

1997 AIR FOAMPOSITE ONE AIR MAX 97

2005 FREE

2009 AIR YEEZY

2010 KOBE 6

LEBRON 8

2011 AIR MAG

KD 4

2012 AIR YEEZY II

ROSHE RUN

FLYKNIT RACER

FLYKNIT TRAINER

2014 KYRIE 1

2015 FLYEASE TECHNOLOGY

2016 TECH FLEECE

HYPERADAPT 1.0

2017 VAPORMAX

FE/NOM FLYKNIT BRA FOR WOMEN

OFF-WHITE X “THE 10” COLLECTION

2019 TRAVIS SCOTT X AIR JORDAN 1 HIGH “MOCHA”

2020 DRAKE’S NOCTA LINE

ZOOMX ALPHAFLY

SPACE HIPPIE LINE

2021 GO FLYEASE

2022 ISPA LINK

FORWARD APPAREL LINE

Of course, there’s a plentitude of ingredients that go into this recipe for success, and Nike’s products themselves undoubtedly rank towards the top. Everything from the imprint’s boundless catalog of footwear offerings to its vast portfolio of lifestyle and performance apparel are what draw the consumer in, rake money into the company’s pocket, and ultimately allow the brand to propel forward because of the data and feedback it receives from its athletes of all calibers.

Tracing the evolution of Nike’s footwear from 1972, when Bowerman took his wife’s waffle iron and created the Waffle Racing Flat, to present day, where the brand is pushing out sneakers that can lace themselves up with the simple push of a button and kicks that are crafted from recycled scraps, it has always been led by the powerful intention to improve performance. Whether in the literal competitive sense or in a larger, lifestyle meaning. Anytime Nike approaches a new task, in fact, its designers constantly question how a specific product can help someone run faster, jump higher, walk more comfortably, and, of course, look swaggier. One can ramble on for days about the silhouettes and technologies that the sportswear giant has brought into fruition and have transcended the industry as we know it: The entire Air Max lineage paved the way for sneakers to have more flexibility without compromising structure. Air Jordan 1s are the definition of a shoe that can effectively function both on the court and on the runway at the highest level. Nike Flyknit technology demonstrates that sneakers can simultaneously be reductive and durable. The Roshe Run proves that minimalism and an affordable price point can set off an entire new wave. FlyEase gave new hope to those with disabilities for the future of assistive footwear. Dri-FIT tees and Tech Fleece sweatsuits carve out new lanes in the athleisure realm. The list goes on. “The brand’s founders have ingrained a progressive mindset into the company’s ethos and its employees,” says Andy Caine, Nike’s VP of Footwear Design. “It’s permeated throughout the years continuously, and is still relevant today.”

There’s no doubt these products have become treasured in the consumer’s everyday life. Take the allwhite Air Force 1s, for example; one of the most popular lifestyle sneakers in history because of their sheer omnipresence. From streetwear aficionados to high school kids that know nothing of fashion to soccer moms, everyone owns them—not to mention Dr. Dre, whose closet holds a crispy pair for every day of the week. Then there are the die-hard Air Max, Jordan, Dunk, and SB collectors and those constantly tracking down the rarest of pairs. “I mowed the lawn all summer to buy my first pair of waffle trainers when I was 15,” remembers artist Tom Sachs. “My collaboration with Nike has brought a lot of people to the sculpture that I make, but it’s also helped people to see a sneaker as a work of art. I draw no distinction between a sculpture and a sneaker, it’s all art to me.” The heritage of the brand runs so deep that it’s provoked obsessive behaviors that cause consumers to accumulate the same models in hundreds, sometimes even thousands, of colorways. The fervor is unmatched and often collectors will go so far as to sift through infinite amounts of eBay pages, travel to different countries,

force all of their family members to enter store raffles, and pay astronomical resell prices just to make sure their grails are safely in their own possessions.

Beyond the actual products themselves are the ambassadors that promote them, and for the Beaverton-based entity, it chooses to split this into athletes and catalyst marketers, many of whom are seen not only as pro sports players or favorite artists but heroes, too. The former is made up of some of the most legendary competitors that the planet has ever witnessed. Nike’s basketball department is loaded with bonafide legends, such as Michael Jordan and the late Kobe Bryant, as well as future Hall of Famers in LeBron James, Kevin Durant, Paul George Giannis Antetokounmpo, Ja Morant, Devin Booker, and more. “Over the course of my career and my time here at Nike, for all of this to come together is surreal,” James tells HYPEBEAST. “Together we push what it means to continually innovate and break the timeline of what they say is your prime.” Moving into other sports, you’ll find names like Tiger Woods, who has unequivocally raised the standards of golf excellence. There’s tennis phenoms galore; Andre Agassi, Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer, Serena Williams, and Naomi Osaka have all been sponsored by the Swoosh at some point during their illustrious careers. “As a longtime partner of the brand, I have learned that Nike sets goals and then achieves them,” Williams says about her relationship with the imprint. “They start each quarter with intentions and plans. Nike taught me that planning your business and having long term goals are super important.” NFL superstars Russell Wilson and Odell Beckham Jr. have been major representatives for the brand on the gridiron, as have football superstars Cristiano Ronaldo and Ronaldinho, whose influences have been respected across the globe.

The catalyst side of the coin is replete with some of the most recognizable names in pop culture. Ask any religious follower of sneaker culture and they’d likely confirm that Nike’s collaborative roster is second to none. Musicians reign supreme in this category as the brand has connected with heavyweights such as Travis Scott, Drake, J Balvin, Billie Eilish, and G-Dragon, and this, of course, was spawned by the blueprint that creative genius Kanye West laid when he first introduced the Nike Air Yeezy in 2009. These alliances resulted in a deluge of effective collaborations that range from Scott’s ongoing Jordan partnership to Drake’s NOCTA line and G-Dragon’s own signature silhouette and beyond. Fashion brands and culture-shifting designers also land under this category. Whether streetwear or high fashion, Nike has tapped into the scene with force and tallied up impactful partnerships with the likes of Supreme, Stüssy, Off-White, Comme des Garçons, Cactus Plant Flea Market, Union, Sacai, Jacquemus, Dior, Patta, Ambush, Fragment Design, Undercover, and others.

This history has been cemented with even closer connections to the fashion designers behind the fashion brands, from Sachs to Matthew M Williams to Yoon Ahn to Kim Jones to Jerry Lorenzo, all of whom have lifted the Nike universe to new heights with their own perspectives.

“TOGETHER WE PUSH WHAT IT MEANS TO CONTINUALLY INNOVATE AND BREAK THE TIMELINE OF WHAT THEY SAY IS YOUR PRIME.”

—LEBRON JAMES

“Working with Nike has allowed me to express Ambush in new ways and to new audiences,” Ahn explains. “By collaborating across Nike’s product catalog—most recently with the Air Adjust Force—I’m tapping into both Ambush and Nike and creating something new.”

Of course, the profound impact that the late Virgil Abloh made during his tenure teaming up with the company is imperative to note, and has forever earned him a spot on sneaker culture’s fictional Mount Rushmore. “Our relationship was pivotal,” says John Hoke III, Nike’s Chief Design Officer. “Virgil brought in a voice of the youth and the street with ‘The 10’ project, which was a major lift for us in design and helped the company regain its footing in 2018.” Through the lens of his coveted high-end streetwear brand Off-White, Abloh was a creative force that delivered a breath of fresh air into the space by dissecting a barrage of Nike’s most iconic silhouettes and giving them new life via deconstructed builds. And with this momentum, the multi-hyphenate carried this over into his artistic director role at Louis Vuitton Men’s, where he assembled 47 LV x Nike Air Force 1 colorways that could arguably be the most iconic sportswear-meets-luxury joint venture to-date.

Humanization and storytelling has also been central to Nike’s DNA. “It’s been great to be able to brainstorm with Nike, and be in meeting rooms with people who do hear the athletes’ perspective and where the athlete feels like their contributions can be the most authentic,” says three-time Olympian and two-time medalist, U.S. soccer player Alex Morgan. “I was really proud to be a Nike athlete when they started the maternity line, because that was actually right when I became pregnant in 2019. It was great to give my input and support other soon-to-be mothers in their journeys.”

It’s one thing to sell millions of collegiate Dunk colorways, moisture-wicking workout tees, and weatherproof ACG jackets, but allowing others to connect to the brand on a personal level is how Nike has rallied its loyal fan base. Creating an annual collection devoted to the LGBTQIA+ community exhibits its desire to champion inclusivity. Endorsing Colin Kaepernick’s protests with a full-blown commercial is an iconic moment in its own right. Marketing Michael Jordan’s shoes as the commodity that will help you “fly” is simply genius. And fashioning a split-screen ad that encourages you to keep on pushing when society was infiltrated by a global pandemic was a spiritual uplifter the world needed. “Nike has meant a lot to how I’ve shown up as a creative,” says Janett Nichol, the company’s VP of Apparel Innovation. “It has made me a more thoughtful and creative person. I’m more apt to critically identify the things that I need to do to make somebody better at what they do and make the world a better place.”

The 50-year moment also serves as a celebration of reaching an atomic level of design. Nike’s cutting-edge technological advancements over the last five decades have permitted it to go from sketchbook to prototype in a matter of minutes, which positions the brand to create with precision and at accelerated speeds for the decades to come. You can expect a constant stream

of innovations to pour out in the future, such as its groundbreaking Forward apparel collection and its allnew Air Max Scorpion model that are all first and foremost earth-friendly, and fashioned to help you move more fluidly and look more fly. “Our advanced robotic arms and machines allow us to come up with crazy form vocabulary and the ability to play with aesthetics, which will ultimately continue to push us into the future,” says Hoke. “You’re going to see a Cambrian explosion of product.”

Despite having sold-out SNKRS releases every week, a laundry list of unforgettable athlete moments, and billions in revenue gained every year, the sports-centric titan will continue to hone its “never satisfied” mentality to drive its creativity forward and separate itself from the pack. Speaking of NOCTA, Drake has a line on his song “When to Say When” off of his Dark Lane Demo Tapes album in which he raps, “How you getting hyped off of one hit? Do that sh*t again,” and Nike can certainly resonate with this when defining its business strategy in the past, in the present, and for the future. It’s going to keep innovation and inspiration on the frontlines. And it’s going to continue to remind us why rocking a Swoosh logo—whether on your chest, pants, or below your foot—is synonymous with feeling like the greatest version of yourself.

“THE COLLABORATION HAS BROUGHT A LOT OF PEOPLE TO THE SCULPTURE THAT I MAKE, BUT IT’S ALSO HELPED PEOPLE TO SEE A SNEAKER AS A WORK OF ART.”

SACHS

IT’S NOT THE VIBE

“THESE DIFFERENT THINGS THAT WE’RE PASSIONATE ABOUT IS A REFLECTION OF WHO WE ARE AS PEOPLE AND WHAT IS IMPORTANT TO US.”

—HUMBERTO LEON

PHOTOS BY HUMBERTO LEON AND CAROL LIM

When Opening Ceremony first launched in 2002, the fashion world—and the world at large—had not yet been inundated by constant social media sharing, collection drops, and viral moments. Instead, the acts of connecting, finding new brands, and creating talked-about experiences happened in-person, and the lower Manhattan store founded by Carol Lim and Humberto Leon was where it all went down. It launched everyone from Hood by Air to Telfar and Luar, and encouraged a cross-pollination between cultural interests. Beyond its curiouslycool fashion collections and curation of other of-the-moment brands, OC became a hub for innovators and hype kids alike; a status that transcended its brick-and-mortar locations that popped up everywhere from L.A. to Tokyo before their permanent closure two years ago. While the brand remains a connective and creative force, it now operates in a vastly different landscape than when it was established. On the 20th anniversary of OC, fashion disrupters Lim and Leon revisit five unique social changes—or “vibe shifts”—over the last two decades and how each influenced their cultural incubator or was accelerated by it.

THE SHIFT TO SOCIAL MEDIA

Carol Lim: When we first started Opening Ceremony, it was really this time of connecting, and going from analog to digital. You would hear people say, “Oh, are you on Friendster?” That was a really big moment. The initial phase felt really different and new and community-based—a precursor to everything that we know now. Back then, we didn’t even have digital cameras; all of the moments and culturally-defining experiences that happened in the store were really just there in our memories. With that came a lot of freedom, because people weren’t taking pictures of you to post online. It was a different way of interacting.

DESIGNER DROPS

Humberto Leon: We didn’t realize what we were creating at the time. Carol and I had limited funds back then, but we would go around the world to find these super unique creators. They could only make as much as we bought, so we would buy five or 10 pieces at a time. This is before the online shopping that we know of today. Shoppers would then come into the store and would be like, “Oh I tried this on, but I’m going to think about it after lunch and come back.” When they’d come back, a lot of times it would be all gone. People would be literally crying. It was this idea of exclusivity and limited-edition. That has existed through the years—and even before us—but there was a modernity to it in the early 2000s because it wasn’t used as a marketing tool. Along with that, it was kind of everyone’s secret; people didn’t want too many to know about it. Now, drops are sought-after because of the resale market, which has gotten so big that resellers make way more money than the brands do. In our early days, people were buying to wear, not to resell. It came from a much more organic place.

COLLAB CULTURE

HL: People have said that we are the king and queen of collaboration. We definitely don’t say it ourselves…but we did have the desire to use Opening Ceremony as a tool. It led Chloë Sevigny to Spike Jonze and Where the Wild Things Are. Opening Ceremony was the only place that you saw it all come to life in the most insane way. There were so many different ways that we would approach different things. Now, collaborations have a different meaning, and are driven by business and money and less by storytelling. It’s rarer to see them happening with more obscure artists or brands, which we were lucky to do with our platform. I loved it whenever we had to explain why we were collaborating. Those always

came from personal interest, goals, or curiosities, and when it came to create something exciting we always trusted our guts. We would uninhibitedly do collaborations that we were excited about.

THE ADVENT OF STREAMING

CL: If you were getting CDs from Kim’s Video or another music store, you were limited to what you bought or shared with friends, but iTunes changed the game of how you would access different genres of music. All of a sudden everything was at your fingertips. It really exploded people’s exposure to what would normally have been segmented. It opened up a new kind of gateway.

HL: Music was such a defining thing for us at Opening Ceremony. One of the first events we had at the store was a concert with one of our favorite bands, Ride. And all these amazing musicians would come in and get dressed before they went on to whatever late night shows. Then we started to be that place to launch albums. Solange, Santigold, Rattata, etc.—all these people would come and sell [their] CDs in the little cashier area a month before the album came out.

THE 2016 US ELECTION

HL: Carol and I have always used Opening Ceremony as a place to talk about politics and celebrate under-voiced communities and causes, whether it’s been LGBTQ, women’s rights, or indigenous groups. All these different things that we’re passionate about is a reflection of who we are as people and what has been important to us. Right before Trump’s election, we had done this runway show called Pageant of the People. We had Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein host, and interspersed between all the models were Natasha Lyonne, Rashida Jones, Ali Wong, Jessica Williams, Sarah McBride, and Rowan Blanchard—all these amazing women. Carrie got them to talk about all things that were happening. We also registered like 75 people to vote there, which felt huge at the time. I think that’s when the world started using politics in their business.

CL: His election forced brands to take a stand. Consumers were very much about calling out—whether that was good or bad. It’s the reality of this digital world we live in, but it was a shift to see everything that came out, who supported who, who made a donation. It’s good for brands to be held accountable, because people want to support people who hold similar values.

“ALL OF THE MOMENTS AND CULTURALLY-DEFINING EXPERIENCES THAT HAPPENED IN THE STORE WERE REALLY JUST THERE IN OUR MEMORIES. WITH THAT CAME A LOT OF FREEDOM, BECAUSE PEOPLE WEREN’T TAKING PICTURES OF YOU TO POST ONLINE. IT WAS A DIFFERENT WAY OF INTERACTING.”

—CAROL LIM

REMEMBERING 1993

WORDS BY SOPHIE SHAW ARTWORK BY JENNET LIAW

As we embark into Web3’s new dimensions, HYPEBEAST editors look back to 1993— the year that the World Wide Web was made public—and revisit pieces from entertainment and pop culture that captivated our attention right when the Internet began to compete for it. Look carefully to find these hallmarks in this nostalgia-filled game of “I spy.”

I spy a Beanie Baby, Prada Fall/Winter ‘94, Mulder, Scully and The Sandlot, three witches, Fran Drescher, a baby flower; a Houston hit, an adventure 65 million years in the making, Nike Air Max 93, Cheers’ spin-off, Salt-N-Pepa’s man, Perry Ellis Spring/Summer ‘93 and Intel, Meg Ryan on the radio, Air Jordan 8, and “Giddy-up”

12.INTEL

13.BEANIE

14.GRUNGE:

SPRING/SUMMER 1993 BY

15.‘90S

FALL/WINTER 1994

16.NIKE AIR MAX 93

17.AIR

1.JURASSIC PARK

2.HOCUS POCUS

3.SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE

4.THE SANDLOT

5.SEINFELD

6.THE NANNY

7. FRASIER

8. THE X FILES

9.“CREEP” BY RADIOHEAD

10.“I WILL ALWAYS LOVE YOU” BY WHITNEY HOUSTON

11.“WHATTA MAN(FT. EN VOGUE)” BY SALT-N-PEPA

INTRODUCED THE PENTIUM MICROPROCESSOR

BABIES

PERRY ELLIS

MARC JACOBS

MINIMALISM: PRADA

JORDAN 8

5.

1.

15.

11.

16.

2.

8.

7.

4.

17.

10.

9.

6.

SEE KNOW EVIL: FROM THE DIARY OF DAVIDE SORRENTI

Pages of the late photographer’s diary create a portrait of his arresting vernacular of New York City in the ‘90s, where he made his graffiti tag, Argue, and started the skate crew See Know Evil. Highlighted in the upcoming exhibition Our Beutyfull Future at Milan’s Spazio Maiocchi and the third-edition of ArgueSKE: 1994-1997, which was edited by his mother, the photographer Francesca Sorrenti, Davide’s personal portraits are full of grit, angst, and endless inspiration.

ACNE STUDIOS acnestudios.com

ALTU altu.world

ANONYMOUS CLUB anonymousclub.club

BALENCIAGA balenciaga.com

BLESS blesswebshop.com

BLEUE BURNHAM bleueburnham.com

BODE bodenewyork.com

BOTTEGA VENETA bottegaveneta.com

BRAIN DEAD wearebraindead.com

BRANDT-SORENSON brandt-sorenson.com

CELINE celine.com

DANIEL W. FLETCHER danielwfletcher.com

DIESEL shop.diesel.com

DISTRICT VISION districtvision.com

DRIES VAN NOTEN driesvannoten.com

FACESTASM store.facetasm.jp

FELIPE PANTONE felipepantone.com

FENDI fendi.com

THE FARMERS MARKET GLOBAL thefarmersmarketglobal. com

GIVENCHY givenchy.com

GOODFIGHT goodfight.shop

GUCCI gucci.com

HATTON LABS hattonlabs.com

HEVEN seeyouinheven.com

HUMAN MADE humanmade.jp

HUNT & COMPANY thehuntandcompany.com

IKEA Ikea.com

JACQUES jacquesnyc.com

JOHANNA PARV johannaparv.com

JUDY TURNER judy-turner.com

KENZO kenzo.com

KVDRAT/RAF SIMONS shaker.kvadratrafsimons. com

LACOSTE lacoste.com

L.E.J. lej.london LOEWE loewe.com

LIBIDEX libidex.com

LOUIS VUITTON louisvuitton.com

MAISON MARGIELA maisonmargiela.com

MARINE SERRE marineserre.com

MARNI marni.com

MIU MIU miumiu.com

MYKITA x MAISON MARGIELA mykita.com

NIKE nike.com

OJAS ojas.nyc

OPENING CEREMONY openingceremony.com

PETER DO peterdo.net

PIERRE PAULIN pierrepaulin.fr

POST ARCHIVE FACTION postarchivefaction.com

PRADA prada.com

QASIMI qasimi.com

RESSENCE ressencewatches.com

RTFKT rtfkt.com

SAINT LAURENT ysl.com

SKY HIGH FARM skyhighfarm.org

SPACE PERSPECTIVE spaceperspective.com

STEFAN COOKE stefancooke.co.uk

TELFAR telfar.net

VALENTINO valentino.com

WINNIE NEW YORK winnienewyork.com