S t üs s y x G o l d i e
H
ere at Trap, when we’re not sweating blood and tears to get this little magazine together every two months, we spend our time daydreaming about fantasy interviews and features we’d love to do. Ever since our very first issue, we’ve had a crazy idea of somehow convincing Goldie to let us raid his legendary collection of Stüssy clothing, photograph it and interview the man himself about his life-long obsession with streetwear’s most enduring and iconic brand. And that’s all it was – an idea. Until, that is, we heard that Goldie was granting press access ahead of the release of his career anthology, ‘The Alchemist’, reflecting back on his most influential and important sonic works. Seizing our chance, and with no expectation of even hearing back, we sent our pitch to Goldie’s press team and forgot all about it. Then we got the call. Goldie had read the pitch and was on board. “Meet Goldie at his house next Friday, you have three hours with him; he’s getting some choice pieces ready for you.” One week later we arrived at Goldie’s large suburban house on the outskirts of London, Dictaphone and camera ready. What followed was an experience none of us at Trap will forget. As 90s kids that grew up on jungle and rocked Stüssy whenever our pocket or birthday money could afford it, we were, as you’d imagine, just a little bit excited. Over the next three hours, we rooted around in Goldie’s bedroom and clambered through the crates and crates of neatly packed vintage Stüssy in his loft, dragging hundreds of sweats, tees, hats and varsity jackets downstairs and placing them around the gold-toothed one as he watched Sky Sports News on a massive L-shaped sofa in his lounge. The amount of pieces in Goldie’s collection was staggering – we knew he was obsessed with the brand, but it was hard to actually take in the sheer volume of classic, ultra-rare vintage streetwear from the 1980s and 90s that he has in his possession. As we unpacked the crates of garms around him for the benefit of our cameraman, occasionally, a certain piece would catch his eye; a vintage waistcoat sample, then a Japan-only varsity, then a sweat he wore in an ID photoshoot, and he’d bark at us with excitement as he explained exactly what it was. We were, to coin a cliché, kids in a sweetshop. Once we’d finished unpacking what we could around him, Goldie snatched the Dictaphone from my hand, placed it on his lap and let loose a near-monologue on his memories of discovering, rocking and obsessing over the king of streetwear brands...
coat and hat with the Puma States and Stüssy tee... And DJ Milo; now we’re talking. That’s the shit. I had my first pair of hi-tops from Milo; Wilson black hi-tops; those guys taught me the style. “I just wanted to be like them. But, at the time I was more ‘Alright, I’m, like, Goldie, from Wolverhampton.’ For me, seeing that crew; that’s who I wanted to be and that’s what it was about. That was the lifestyle, and Stüssy allowed me to live that and be that. I just started hanging out with them, got asked to do a few photoshoots. And then I did a few canvases for Stüssy with Kemistry; I did a rare Stüssy logo for Michael for a shoot with Face or ID or something. “That’s where it all started for me. I just got really taken by the lifestyle of it – it was this b-boy hybrid, rocked by trendy kids. And when I say trendy, back then, it was trendy. We used to go to a place called Quiet Storm, you had Brain club, then The Wag and then Quiet Storm came along. We used to go down and hear guys spinning rare cuts. There was this big Japanese connection; I was looking at all these trendy kids from Japan coming over, walking through the door, way before Bathing Ape or anything like that. It was an amazing time. “And I just started going down to the warehouse and hanging out, getting as much Stüssy as I could, hustling. Getting other labels like Soviet and selling that out of boxes in the back of the car, just to go and hook up some more Stüssy, you know? It became an addiction.”
TRAP_The brand really stuck out that much, even back then? “Oh, yeah, Stüssy was all that it is mate. Stüssy was to street fashion what Metalheadz was to D&B. I ain’t blowing smoke out my arse; you look at what Stüssy first released and how people looked at it as a brand at the time and the brands that followed
“I never wanted to get paid by Stüssy to wear their clothes, because it was my lifestyle. It was as raw as that.”
TRAP_When did your Stüssy obsession start? “When I came back from Miami in the late 80s, there was a crew of really trendy London kids that were way ahead of their time. I’m not talking like trendy kids you get today; I’m talking King’s Road. So I started to hang around these people, and I used to go to the Brain and the Wag, two old clubs that are long gone now. One guy I met down there, who was probably the daddy of Stüssy back then, the man about town really, was Lord Barnsley. “He wasn’t a Lord, but he was from Barnsley. He was a bit of a legend, and I’d go and hang around these places and meet these people and it was amazing; we’d go out hang out at Brain and Wag, get shitfaced. From there, I started meeting people like Gordon Hagen, who went on to become a big player at Sony, and people like Michael Kopelman. “Michael K is a fucking legend. That guy is responsible for what you are wearing now. He’s the guy behind so many brands in the UK. He is the man who made it happen. He had the Stüssy store in London, and he obviously now has The Hideout. I love him; he is the quietest guy you’ll ever meet. “But anyway, so I was hanging around with all these amazing kids, and I kept hearing about this Stüssy store on Newburgh Street. I remember my biggest influence in fashion was and is Nelly Hooper. Nelly was part of Soul II Soul and Massive Attack. Without him, I wouldn’t be rocking what I am right now. Nelly and Barnsley, they were the dons. Nelly was wearing the sheepskin TRAPMAGAZINE.CO.UK
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