I went to London last month and I spent a day alone trekking all over central and east London, high on coffee, rubbing brands all over my face and neck.
I went to all the relevant temples to pay my respect and let the visual merchandising of these (with my offerings: a leaking basket full of monkey blood and the skull-fucked heads of my enemies). Here’s my breakdown of the brands: (I’ll make it quick before this piece of writing descends into some sort of nihilist’s guide to coping in a house fire.)
END = Obscene luxe funded by Korean oligarch trust fund kids and unemployed stylists (I bought a shirt there).
DSM = Can I say that a sense of humor is the ultimate intelligence test, and Dover Street Market is way too earnest.
Aimé Leon Dore = Needlessly intimidating. Calm the f*ck down, please.
Aries = High eroticism and legit punker vibes. Aries is the new Westwood. Bullseye if you’re a hot 22-year-old who is spending every $$$$$ they get on fun.
Stone Island = This sh*t is from Planet Whatthef*ck! I go in this store and immediately start kicking myself. Instead of spending a decade’s worth of personal wealth on cocaine and pints, I should have bought a piece every two months and be walking around now looking like a terrace hooligan from the future. Like Apple, I should have bought stock early, and now every time I see the brand, I’m mad at myself.
Carhartt = The uniform of middle-aged surrender.
Palace = Legit London sh*t. Maybe no-one is better at catching the soul of London youth. Lev Tanju is a low-key prophet and warrior poet. Read: The Palace Product Description book.
Supreme = Okay, stop. I want to talk about something quickly. I love Supreme, but I don’t like 99% of the sh*t they make now. I’m just buying BOGO sh*t and the most low-key stuff they make. And it relates to what I’m calling MYTH vs. STORY. The myth of Supreme should be the envy of every single brand in the cosmos. This is Gucci-level mythos, and it comes from a brand that was started by broke people. It’s a lesson in one word, and that word is COMMUNITY. If you are starting a brand in 2024 and you don’t have a way to engage a community around your brand in a more meaningful way than “BUY MY SH*T,” then you’re f*cked.
Stussy = The OG’s OG… I saw some disturbing sh*t at Stussy (I saw it everywhere, but it was super pronounced at Stussy), but I’m going to use Stussy to skilfully transfer from this list part of this write-up back to paragraphs and dementia-laced bile-spew.
I’m a middle-aged man. I shouldn’t be allowed to buy clothes – brands should be paying me not to wear their garms. Me bopping down the street wearing one of your caps with your logo on it should be enough to tank the whole enterprise. BUT equally, young people are out there making these brands feel like pocket-money empires. Meaning: the amount of times I was in these stores, with their ketamine-kool shop assistants, while mums were buying sh*t for their tweens was just as damaging for these brands. It was yucky to watch. The youth might own culture, but their mummies and daddies are queuing for the drop. Yuck.
Here’s the thing about being a customer in general. It’s f*ckin’ embarrassing. Look. Can we be frank? Buying clothes from brands is shameful. The whole thing. Knowing about the brands. Buying them in their stores. Wearing the shit on the streets. Thinking that people are looking at you. That little conversation in your head… “What does this brand say about me? Ohhh, I know about something only a few other people know about. I’m part of a little clubby-wubby.” Brands are cool if you’re the founder or the designer—if you’re not, you’re (me especially) a stan, and we all need to calm the f*ck down. Who else can’t shake the feeling that they are just LARPing as themselves? Just putting on clothes in a vague attempt to describe a person that may or may not be under them. It’s all just so tiring. We’re engaging in some pan-psychist view of fashion where everything has an innate interior life and language, and everything is speaking. Everything is yelling over the top of each other trying to make itself heard. And that’s not even considering the people with sh*t written all over them in actual words. Can I propose a rule? One thing. You get one thing with words written on it. Don’t make me read you. Buying clothes is like some ritual public shaming where you’re running around in front of everyone like a marionette, the golden threads attached to their arms and legs making them dance a little jig. And writing about fashion? FFS. There’s nothing surer to make me into a nihilist than writing about clothes. Find me something that matters less BUT also speaks to everything I care about at the same time. It creates such cognitive dissonance in me, and it’s why I’ve abandoned huge chunks of my soul and intellect in a million online checkout baskets. Is there anything more main character syndrome than caring about fashion? (My clothes are a silent scream for my youth. I’m in mourning. I secretly wish that Liam Neeson would turn up in his leather jacket, cock his Glock 16, kiss me on the forehead, and when I ask, “Where are you going, Liam?” He’d kiss me on the forehead and rely, “I’m going to get your youth back.”)
I have no idea. I’m just some guy drawing toenails onto my Margiela Tabis with a twin pen. Don’t ask me about anything, especially not the future (I’m pretty sure we’re f*cked), BUT I heard about a fortune teller you could hit up—you can probably find her online. What she does is gives you a back-sack-and-crack wax and then looks at the hair on the waxing strips and reads it like a fortune teller looking at tea leaves. She predicted the 2008 financial crash by looking at Bill Clinton’s arsehole hair when he was getting his sh*t waxed right before he boarded a flight to Montauk on Epstein Air that summer.
Who else can’t shake the feeling that the whole world is pressing up against an unseen gossamer-thin layer of reality that will pop at any minute? Imagine 5kg of false teeth, chipped femurs, and hand grenade pins stuffed into a condom being swung round a head like a mace—and zoom in on the stretched part of that latex hymen—where the jagged femur is making itself known to the limits of the latex. The made-up-ness of the whole f*cking endeavor is starting to threaten a catastrophic puncture event, and reality itself is about to tear into thousands of blinking arseholes that we’re all going to tumble through, all breathless and Bambi-legged. And we’re going to be face to face with who? Some hairless, sun-forgotten wretch of a suit pulling levers in an abandoned office. Are we all mad? Because this is f*cking madness. I honestly feel like if I have to hear one more of these VEEP-satire-c**t-clown-leaders make any more of these self-serving statements that have no bearing on reality, I’m going to just have a good search around for the zip on this people suit and step out of it like jeans you’ve spent six hours dancing in.
So listen. Don’t listen to people who say fashion is for ugly people. They’re just jealous of our layering and ability to accessorise.