5 Minutes With Johnny Diamandis of J Panther Luggage

J. Panther Luggage Co.™ was founded upon our passion for innovation, design classics and products that are built to last a lifetime and beyond. After design and extensive testing here in New York our bags and accessories are hand-crafted and finished by New England artisans who've been making high-end luggage for generations. Our products draw upon the exacting standards and construction methods of the pre-1960s U.S., yet are very much designed for how we live now.

Johnny Diamandis, J Panther founder and designer.

Innovative functionality and detailing — both inside and out — make them particularly suitable for folk who like to cycle, walk or travel frequently, as well as those who simply wish to make a stylish statement and lifetime investment in their luggage. Be sure to check out our ingredients page to see the care and attention to detail that goes into every item. We hope you enjoy our luggage: it's built for life just like you, and will continue to look better with age. We hope you do too...

Q1. What was the first record you bought and what effect did it have on you?

Johnny Diamandis: My first music was acquired by taping stuff with cassettes off the radio at a very young age. Two huge ones for me were Grandmaster Flash-The Message and Ian Dury & The Blockheads- Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick. I sat in my room and wrote down all the lyrics of both using the archaic pause/record function on my Hitachi cassette deck. I was obsessive about music then and still am. My first bit of vinyl though was The Specials first eponymous album. It was a massive influence to me as at the time growing up in the UK music and fashion were inextricably linked in a way that they are no longer. I followed the Specialʼs fashion style and was influenced also by their lyrics which were very political; anti racist and anti the Thatcherite status quo of the UK at the time. Everything about them resonated with my experience growing up in a small town close to London in the eighties, particularly and epic track called ʻGhost Town”.

Q2. What's the story of J Panther Luggage? Where does the name come from and what is the brand ethos?

JD: I am hugely inspired by the golden era of manufacture (clothing/luggage) in the USA pre 1950ʼs. I wanted to design and build high end/ premium items that you buy once and keep for ever with a business model that had a low ecological impact and was a redress to the throw-away fast fashion that is dominating the market today which claims to be “luxury” but really is not. We have had our business model looked at by enviro-tech consultants to challenge it (rather than making our own bold claims to be “green”) and particularly the fact we use leather. The feedback so far is that the right thing to do as a brand and indeed as a customer is to aspire to products that last and if they wear out or you break them then you get them repaired. These items should never end up in a landfill basically. Our logo was based on my love of wild cats and of animals as logoʼs, Iʼm certainly not the first. JPLC are an ongoing contributor to a fabulous charity called Panthera, leaders in wild cat conservation, as a way of paying back the creature whose image we use.

Q3. How did you get into fashion design?

JD: Really through music. In the UK growing up in the 80ʼs music and fashion went hand in hand. I donʼt think I had the confidence for music or a career in music, playing an instrument and so on but fashion was the next best thing it kept me connected to music and youth culture. I always knew I was going to have a career in the arts in some capacity. When I used to see people commuting into the city to regular white collar jobs I just didnʼt get it. They all looked so miserable, their lives looked so dull. I felt that really they wanted to be in music, fashion or the arts in some capacity.

Q4. Is it tough to get men to buy accessories?

JD: Itʼs tough to get American men to buy accessories especially expensive accessories but fortunately I didnʼt set my business up to try and conquer the USA market or to solely sell to men. I export my products all over the globe thanks to the internet and many of my customers are women. I design my product to have international appeal and not to be too localized in their aesthetic. We are launching in China in 2012.

Q5. Do you think that e-commerce is the future for retail?

JD: I think it has added another excellent layer and created an accessibility that did not previously exist. We have noticed that a lot of our items go to locations far far away from major cites. Whatʼs interesting now is how some new brick/mortar stores are cropping up after the owners had founded their businesses online. A good a example being one of our New York stockistʼs CʼHʼCʼM.

http://store.jplc.com/

James Cauty - A Riot In A Jam Jar

Jimmy Cauty, the Jam Jar rebel

The Prince Of Wales is beheaded by a mob during the student fees protests in a miniature artwork by Jimmy Cauty, who was half of the Acid House pranksters KLF. The piece blends fact and fiction - Charles and the Camilla Duchess of Cornwall were caught up in student protests last year as they headed to the Royal Variety Performance.




1st December 2011 The first of a series of SEQUENTIAL EDITIONS.





1st December 2011 Santas Ghetto / 3 Industrial Scale Jam Jars will be exhibited / Location to be revealed.

ART BOXES at COLETTE, PARIS
Collette / 213 rue Saint Honoré / 75001 Paris
5th December 2011 - 7th January 2012

works in illuminated display cases

New Keanan Duffty Holiday Collection available at Any Old Iron

New Keanan Duffty Holiday Collection available at Any Old Iron









Photos: John Dunn.

http://www.anyoldiron.net/
149 Orchard Street New York, NY 10002 (212) 254-4404

Hours: Sun-Wed: 12–7pm Thu-Sat: 12–8pm


http://www.anyoldiron.net/products.php?product=Keanan-Dufty-Snow-Leopard-Blazer

Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds live in NYC 15th Nov.

Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds Live at The Beacon Theatre NYC

Photos: Keanan Duffty

Set list:
It's Good to Be Free
Mucky Fingers
Everybody's On the Run
Dream On
If I Had a Gun
The Good Rebel
The Death of You and Me
Freaky Teeth
Wonderwall
Supersonic
(I Wanna Live In a Dream In My) Record Machine
AKA... What a Life!
Talk Tonight
Soldier Boys and Jesus Freaks
Let The Lord Shine A Light On Me
Half the World Away
Stranded on the Wrong Beach
Little by Little
The Importance of Being Idle
Don't Look Back in Anger

Vivienne Westwood X Lee Jeans

Lee Jeans has collaborated with a number of great designers. Their latest collaboration which began in 2010, Lee Jeans for Vivienne Westwood Anglomania, saw the influential British designer team up with denim experts for a capsule collection that draws upon Westwood’s archived collections from the 70’s and 80’s and Lee’s denim expertise and iconic styles. The current collection has distressed black velvet skinny jeans, silver jacquard straight-leg pants, and a "marble print" dress that's combines tie-dye and crushed silk. Available at ASOS.com, and retail for between $90 and $350, and between the silver-sprayed bootleg jeans and the "drunk tailored" shirt dress.








http://us.asos.com/search/westwood-lee?hrd=1&q=westwood+lee&r=2

5 Minutes with Louda Larrain

Louda came to Paris from Moscow in 1996 with admiration and curiosity for French culture. With diplomas in hand from the Fine Arts School for gifted children in Omsk (Russia) and from Moscow Institute of Technology, she arrived full of ideas and with a few swatches of hand made fabrics, which were the result of her research in developing new textile techniques.

Miracles happened… Louda receives a telephone call:” Karl Lagerfeld went crazy about your fabrics”. Chanel Couture becomes her first client! Then followed artistic collaborations with Christian Dior, Christian Lacroix, Thierry Mugler, Emanuel Ungaro, Gianfranco Ferre, Leonard, Cerruti, Jean-Charles de Castelbajac, Torrente, Luis Feraud and etc.

The next miracle happened in New York in 2002. She was shopping at Bergdorf Goodman wearing a Louda jacket when she was noticed. Now Bergdorf Goodman was buying Louda’s clothes. Neiman Marcus came next. America stimulates her to create and produce more and more for the Louda label. She loves it! She works on each piece as if it were a painting. They are all one of a kind, timeless, never out of date, out of touch, out of fashion and always evolving.

Since 2006 Louda lives in New York working on various artistic projects.

In June 2009 Louda’s creations became an instant happening installation at the Temple of Dendur in the Egyptian wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

International exhibitions of Louda art-to-wear in2008 and 2010 in Sanlitun Village and “Zhongguancun” in Beijing (China), 2010 in Seoul Art Center (Korea) and in Atrium City Hall in Den Haag (Netherlands)., West Lake Expo in Hanfzhou (China) in 2011.
And her first one-woman show will take place in Ginza (Tokyo) in 2013.



Q1: What was the first piece of music that you owned and loved?

Louda: You know I am very influenced in this case in my taste in music, when I go through life I let myself be influenced by whatever is in my life. At the beginning my father, who played the trumpet, so he loved very much the classical jazz which was Armstrong, Dina Washington and the music from the 1920’s and 30’s…Western jazz, classical jazz, at the beginning when jazz was merging into the establishment. Then I moved on and was influenced by my husband who loved all these British hard rock groups…Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and so I would follow all this. Ian Gillan, I remember loving Deep Purple, because all the concerts were so different. We had all these CD’s, all the recordings from the concerts, even how the voice of young Gillan would change through the years. There was a song ‘Child In Time’, he was young and then alter on. Then my son, and it was Marilyn Manson and then the group with the masks…Slipknot, and then it went into such dark areas that I could not follow him. Then I moved to New York and then it was tango and flamenco and , well there’s always Tom Waits…Tom Waits forever.

Q2: Your fabric technique, the way you create fabric is very unique. It’s very difficult in this age to be making something entirely new. How did you create that technique?

Louda: Thank you for the compliment. When I was a little girl a gypsy read my palm and said that I have incredible capacity to create new things. It implanted into my brain and so I am trying to prove it is true. The technique just came…it was channeled to me and I just execute it. It is very simple and every piece I make, I love. This is something that people can feel. For example I grew up in Siberia and there was a very poor museum and so I didn’t have the capacity to see original art, so all my education come from books and reproductions. When you see the real artwork, compared to the reproductions the contrast is so tremendous and I think that because artists react a lot to the energy. When artists work we charge the objects with our energy. The technique is part of it, or course but it is more about what the artist feels. I do most of these things myself and when I created designs for Chanel and Dior and Lacroix and many incredible houses and when I look at my archive I can see that what I am doing now is more interesting because I challenge myself and want to go further.

Q3. You had an interesting journey from Russia to Paris and then in New York. Was it planned?

Louda: Let me tell you one thing about Russia. At the communist time your goal, without realizing, was to escape. When I came to Paris this was my first time abroad. I was like, “Oh my gosh”. I went to Paris in November and it was beautiful. I just could not leave after spending a month in Paris. I lived in Paris for 10 years-it took me time to learn French and it took me 3 years before I could tell a story. Luckily my son who was 6 when we moved, he was my best teacher. He learned so fast.

In Russia it was the period of explosion of culture in the early 90’s. All the underground artists came out. Underground music and film…was suddenly available in Russia and after 2 or 3 years it became just about making money. It became so sad.

By 2000 the fashion world of haute couture started to change. There were so few houses left. Big houses shifted, before they would order production from me. By 2000 everything shifted to India and China and they wanted to produce my fabric overseas. Sometimes they would keep the sample and produce it without telling me. What I did for couture would be introduced into t-shirts. So after a few cases like this I stopped showing.
Jean-Charles de Castelbajac

In 2002 I came to New York for the first time I was stopped in the street by people asking where I got the clothes I was wearing. I was asked by a woman at Roberto Cavalli in Bergdorf Goodman, where did I get my clothes. I told her they were my designs and she said “Our buyer is going to call you”. So for a year I was selling in the Artisan section in Bergdorf Goodman. I then received an order from Neiman Marcus and that took all my time. I had a very small collection and I have to say a big thank you to their buyer for the trust they showed. I would love to work with them again on unique pieces because they are amazing stores.

Q4: I want to ask about your teddy bears-how did that project happen?

Louda: Every thing happens in a weird way. There was a kidrobot sale and they had bears that were only $5.00 and I thought what can I do with these? So I created one, and then another one. They started as being just decorative and then I wanted them to become a message. Teddy bears are so important to humanity. They have something to do with the idea of an ‘imaginary friend’. My son had an imaginary dog and we would have to answer my son in the voice of the dog for years.

They are crocheted, embroidered in a small format. The life I have now in New York with Gilles, there are constant photo shoots, someone is always staying at the studio, so the work is more fragmented. So we can have dinners for 5 hours and I can be sitting here working on my bears. It is so enjoyable and not seasonal like clothing.

Christian Lacroix

Q5: Do you think that for you the exhibition process is a good way to work. The show in Japan and the Steven Kasher show. Do you think that’s a better way to work than a fashion show?

Louda: Both are very good-the exhibition is good because it is there for a while. The fashion show is theatre, a fashion show as a medium is a fascinating thing, it’s something I would like to pursue and learn. It’s a fascinating medium. If I can have a fashion show once a year I would be very happy. I would like to do it on a smaller scale. You interact with people- the models and so on. It is also very stressful…a very short period and all the unpredictable things that happen during a show. An exhibition is much calmer. It is very good to bring work out of the studio and I am so lucky to have my designs photographed by Gilles Larrain.

THE HOUSE OF LOUDA:
Post-Couture Textile Paintings and Revamped Umbrella Dress Sculptures

Exhibition: November 2 - December 10, 2011
Reception: November 2, 6-8pm

In the back room of Steven Kasher Gallery, coinciding with our Gilles Larrain: Idols exhibition, Louda Larrain will create her inaugural art installation, her "inner sanctum." It will feature deconstructed textile paintings dressing the walls, in addition to a bas-relief of textile sculpture in the form of toys, heads, female and male body parts and other indescribable surprises.

http://www.loudacollection.com/

5 Minutes With Christian Bruun Dir. Blue Gold : American Jeans

Blue Gold is a documentary feature that celebrates the history and cultural impact of American Blue Jeans, directed by Christian D. Bruun. Currently in post-production, the film tracks the journey from rebels and delinquents, to designers and celebrities; from gold mines to the red carpet. The story takes us from the cut-throat world of vintage jean “hunters” who ring up bids as high as $25,000 to the inner sanctum of industry tastemakers such as Adriano Goldschmied and Calvin Klein. Shot over the past 30 months in Japan, Egypt, Turkey, Italy, Scandinavia, and all over the United States: Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Idaho City, and Las Vegas. Follow the Blue Gold blog for production updates, clips from interviews and historical anecdotes.



Christian D. Bruun is an international producer and director, digital artist, and curator with more than fifteen years of professional experience in Europe, the United States, and Asia. A pioneer in the field of digital film making, digital media, and architectural design,Bruun is also the co-founder and co-organizer of the Sustainable Dialogues International Symposia.

Q1. What was the first record you owned that really inspired you?

A: David Bowie's Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) (1980).

Q2.What gave you the inspiration to create the documentary ‘Blue Gold’?

A: Initially, I was fascinated by the world of vintage jeans, such as the jeans hunters, the insane value of an old pair of Levi's 501®, the obsessive collectors, and of course the pants themselves, in how they fade and change with age. But the film is an attempt to find out why our entire planet somehow chose this blue, rough work pant as the pant to wear. Almost every bit of the design of a pair of jeans comes out of practicality, optimization, and durability.

To this day even the most expensive fashion jeans share these design elements. Yet, as far as I know, few people wear them for mining or herding cattle. It seems that some of the answers lie in the myth, history, rebel spirit, and in some secret, magical properties of the pants themselves.

Q3. You interviewed many iconic people from the world of Denim. What was the most interesting thing that you learned?

A: That would be a couple of things. The passion of the people making jeans would be on the top of the list. Jeans are very limited in the elements that make up the basics, yet they are re-invented constantly within that framework. That's one.
Secondly, it fascinates me that jeans can signal tradition and stability (think Reagan in full denim gear) while at the same time can signal instability and can question authority (think hippies, punk, or people behind the Iron Curtain). We filmed in the Middle East. Mixing jeans with tradition certainly does not go unnoticed there. Personally, I have to say, the most interesting thing I learned was in the journey of making the film, connecting with people from all over the world and combining their stories in the film. It is looking at the world through a pair of jeans.

Q4. How did you get into the film business?

A: I studied architecture in Los Angeles at a time when computers opened up a common ground for artistic expression in design, film, and communication. The tools allowed me to combine 3D set design and animation with digital video for live action. Everything I have done, from visual effects to shooting features and directing commercials came from the digital world. Online publishing and interactivity is another dimension. I look at film as part of getting my ideas out there, and I include design and interactivity as part of the process. It's a way to collaborate and show other aspects of the work.

Q5. Can you tell me a little about the Sustainable Dialogues International Symposia of which you are co-founder and co-organizer

A: I curated and designed the United States Pavilion at the Venice Biennale for Architecture in 2006. We proposed solutions for rebuilding New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. After the Venice Biennale, we set up the exhibition around the world and invited international architects, environmentalists, and designers to discuss how to better build and prepare our cities to minimize the damage and devastation following natural and/or man-made disasters. The idea was to exchange knowledge based on local experiences such as the tsunami in Southeast Asia, in anticipation of ecological disasters in Central America, and floods in the United States.

http://bluegoldthemovie.com/wordpress/

http://www.facebook.com/pages/BLUE-GOLD/100868823302723?sk=info

Brian Eno - The Panic Of Looking

Brian Eno - The Panic Of Looking

Released 7th November 11
CD, Vinyl & Download
WAP322

From the recordings that produced Drums Between the Bells - the collaboration between Brian Eno and British poet Rick Holland – comes an all new EP titled Panic Of Looking.

The 6 tracks continue the exploration of how lyric & song-writing are perceived in the post-everything era. As the Sunday Times suggests, "The poems aren't sung, yet the pieces are undeniably songlike, first because the music refuses to act simply as background, but lurches frequently, sometimes unexpected to the fore, and second because we hear the meaning of the words in the way we normally pick up song lyrics," while WIRED Magazine calls Eno’s soundscapes, "a tapestry of pillowy synths, minor-key melodies, chiming guitars and skittering drums."
All of these elements come together for the November 7th/8th release of the EP, which was produced by Eno and features his original artwork on vinyl, CD & digital formats.
Digital Tracklisting

01 - in the future
02 - not a story
03 - panic of looking
04 - if these footsteps
05 - watch a single swallow in a thermal sky, and try to fit its motion, or figure why it flies
06 - west bay

http://warp.net/records/releases/brian-eno/panic-of-looking



Brian Eno, Stephen Colbert & Michael Stipe sing 'Lean On Me' acappella.

BLK DNM

“NO WOMAN SHOULD DIE GIVING LIFE.”
- CHRISTY TURLINGTON

http://www.blkdnmcloseup.com/

5 Minutes With Ted Polhemus

Ted Polhemus (born 1947 in Neptune, New Jersey, USA) is an American anthropologist, writer, and photographer who lives and works on England's south coast. His work focuses on fashion and anti-fashion, identity, and the sociology of style and of the body – his objective, to explore the social and communicative importance of personal expression in style. He has written or edited more than a dozen books, and has taken many of the photographs that appear in them. He was the creator and curator of an exhibition, called "StreetStyle", at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. One of his most popular books is "Streetstyle: From Sidewalk to Catwalk" (Thames & Hudson 1994), which he originally wrote as the book for the exhibition. Recently, Ted Polhemus wrote an updated version of Streetstyle, which PYMCA published in 2010. Currently he is working on a book that illustrates the on-going social and cultural impact of the baby boom generation as well as researching a long-planned work on the cultural basis and complexity of human sexual attraction.

Q1. What was the first record that you owned that really made an impact on you?

TP: The first 45 single (unbelievably, a small, round piece of black plastic with a large hole in the middle) was ‘The In-Crowd’ by Ramsey Lewis. The first 331/3 LP (a larger, round piece of black plastic with a small hole in the middle – strange but true) was Take Five by The Dave Brubeck Quartet. In the middle of the ‘Take 5’ title track there is a long drum solo. Indeed, it was such a long drum solo that it went on for hours until my father suggested it was faulty. ‘No Dad’ I insisted, ‘this is modern jazz, it’s supposed to be like that’. But father knew best.

Q2. Is fashion being replaced by style?

TP: If fashion is a time machine in which a single ‘New Look’ or ‘direction’ is perpetually replaced with a yet newer ‘New Look’ and single ‘direction’ (as, for example, happened with Dior’s New Look in 1947 or the mini in the mid 60s) then, yes, fashion has gone the way of the dodo. But don’t panic: today’s style offers the greatest possibility of personal expression our species has ever known. For most of our history the tribe prescribed what you should look like and then for some 500 years fashion dictated what was ‘In’ and what was ‘Out’. My book Fashion & Anti-fashion is all about the difference between fashion and style – a new, updated, 21st century edition is out now from lulu.com and amazon.com.


http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/tedpolhemus

Q3. Why have brands become so important?

TP: Phew – this really bowls me over, this brand thing. In my Hippy or Punk days the last thing we wanted was to go around with some big logo on our persons. But walk down the street today and this is what you see. I was particularly amazed by the Hollister thing. Hollister California was invaded by a bunch of crazed Bikers in 1947 and this became the inspiration for the film The Wild One. So when I started to see all these kids in ‘Hollister’ t-shirts I figured they were hip to the film. Sadly not. What is clear, however, is that brands can carry a hefty semiological punch – information, stuff which, by wearing the brand I can incorporate into my own personal statement. Brands are like icebergs – there is just the small bit (the logo) above the water line but then there is this huge conceptual structure beneath. The success of brands today shows just how much people are hungry for visual signifiers which say ‘I’m this kind of person’.

Q4. Is the concept of branding actually stifling the creativity of brand development?

TP: Hard to see how a successful brand can avoid tripping itself up in time. How can you be cutting edge and mainstream successful at the same time? And of course no brand can keep off-message people from wearing its products. Wasn’t that Jersey Shore/Abercrombie & Fitch thing amusing? A brand can develop just fine if it is honest and not pretending to be something it’s not. Fire the brand consultants (well, Ok, not me) and just get on with it.

Q5. Due to the explosion of online information do you feel it is still possible for a street style trend to actually develop before it is over exposed?

TP: When my Streetstyle exhibition opened at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London in 1994 one review wrote ‘You know when something is finished when they put it into an exhibition’. Too true. And this was before the real impact of the Internet (hard to believe kids but true). We just became too keyed up on looking at what was going on. Like in those physics experiments when the mere act of looking changes the quantum particles. And when the ‘cool hunters’ showed up you just knew that the truly cool was an endangered species. But we’re talking London, Tokyo and NY – places which were cool hunted to death long ago. Streetstyle is alive and well in places like Buenos Aires, Mexico, Columbia – indeed anywhere unexpected.



Books:
The Body as a Medium of Expression (co-editor), Penguin
Social Aspects of the Human Body (editor), Penguin
Fashion & Anti-fashion: an anthropology of clothing & adornment (co-author), Thames & Hudson. New revised and updated version with a new introduction and postscript published by the author in 2011.
Popstyles (co-author), Vermilion
Bodystyles, for C4 TV series
Rituals of Love: sexual experiments, erotic possibilities, (author of text), Picador Streetstyle, Thames & Hudson. New revised and updated 2010 edition of Streetstyle published by PYMCA, London.
Style Surfing: what to wear in the 3rd millennium, Thames & Hudson
The Customized Body (author of text), Serpent’s Tail
Body Art [children’s book, author of text], Element Books
Diesel: World Wide Wear, Thames & Hudson.
Hot Bodies Cool Styles, London, Thames & Hudson, 2004.

www.tedpolhemus.com