Burro take part in 1989-2014 A Street Style Journey 5th-7th Dec at The Londonewcastle Space in Redchurch St. Curated by youth archivist Tory Turk to celebrate 25-years of  British streetwear brand Boxfresh.
The show documents styles and trends in youth and streetwear from 1989 until now and examines the organic nature of how wearers evolve a look from a mixture of sources and cultural influences. 
Burro designers Olaf and Su Parker were  also the original designers of Boxfresh, starting the brand with Roger Wade and Ben Joseph in 1989, initially customising American sportswear imported from the US. Su and Olaf left Boxfresh in 1994 to develop Burro.
Burro are showing pieces from our archive dating from around the time we split with Boxfresh in the early nineties the time of "acid jazz".......

“The term “Acid Jazz” first appeared sometime in the very late 80’s, coined by DJ Chris Bangs as a tongue in cheek play on “Acid House” which was the dominant club music at the time. The scene was a development of London's “Rare Groove” warehouse party scene from the mid 80’s adding hip hop, house, electronica, disco & Brazilian to the rare 60s and 70s funk, jazz and soul tunes. Our outfit reflects this mixture of styles and eras. People were wearing vintage stuff from the 60s and 70s (Gabicci cardigans, Farrah, Gucci Loafers, old Levi Sta-Prest etc.) with new pieces from shops like Duffer of St George, Mau Mau, Burro, Hyper Hyper, and Bond, mixing styles, genres and cultural references. What we now know as “the high street” had no input, influence or impact on men’s fashion at the time.”

Other exhibitors include Fiona Cartledge, Cass Pennant, Rhiannon Barry and the What We Wore Archive.

No Alla Violenza T shirts are available from our  online shop at www.burro.co.uk 

No Alla Violenza T shirts 2014

To coincide with World Cup Brazil 2014 we have have reissued two of our classic No Alla Violenza T shirts using the original art work we created in 1989 to promote a peaceful Italia 90. The designs Centre Spot and Big Ball are available on plain grey or white ringer T shirts, 
we are also producing the designs on grey sweats. They are currently only available from the Burro online shop  http://www.burro.co.uk/#/shop/4565560649 

Beware imitations there are a few rubbishy ones out there!

For more history on Burro and No Alla Violenza see our website http://www.burro.co.uk/#/no-alla-violenza/4545395340

Beware the Hawk!

Just lately we've been doing some work with the lovely Julie Hawk and her band. Julie is an Irish singer/songwriter now based in London who has come to some prominence on the North London open mic/folk scene (although to our mind the music she makes is much more interesting than the usual folky strummings).
Now operating as a band with bandmates Matt, Chris and Sam, she's been slowly building a following here and in her native Ireland. You can hear some of the band's music on youtube here: http://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_hNyAVfJTZjsRArYhg3eqA
her facebook page has a link where you can buy an ep recorded last year https://www.facebook.com/JulieHawkMusic, we've heard some of their new material and it's fab. We've collaborated with the band on a couple of t-shirts which we're really pleased with.

They're only available at gigs at the moment but should be online soon...............................................

Whilst sheltering from the rain in a branch of Cos in the West End recently we were flicking idly through the A/W edition of Arena HOMME+. Imagine our surprise when on turning the pages of the magazine's 90's inspired shoot there was a full page shot of one of our classic and much copied "No Alla Violenza"t-shirts which the stylist had sourced from Contemporary Wardrobe. The design featured was one of three we first produced in 1989 but the ringer t-shirt in the shot was from a batch of Hanes "dead stock" t-shirts we found in a warehouse in the East End and printed up in early 1990, ah.... happy memories....!

This chance discovery has prompted us to re-issue some of our favourite archive t-shirt designs. We've started with two of the original No Alla Violenza prints from 1989 and our "I Hate The Beatles" from early 2001. We've printed up a small batch and they are currently on sale in our web shop. We'll be adding new designs occasionally so keep looking...

 Photographer Alasdair Mclellan

Roger Wade Entrepreneur

Roger hails from our old South East London stomping ground. We started ground breaking streetwear label Boxfresh with Roger and Ben Joseph in a council business centre in Deptford in the summer of 1990.

The following January we made our first foray into the international world of fashion with Roger when we drove to Paris through the snow with a collection strapped to the roof of his dad's car. Roger's plan was to use his charm and tenacity to hi-jack customers from one of the big trade shows, drag them to a hotel room and ply them with cheap red wine to get them place an order.

Roger's considerable business instinct was as apparent then as it is now, Boxfresh was sold to Pentland in 2005 and last Autumn he opened Boxpark in Shoreditch High St, a" pop up mall" made from shipping containers...... he used to go on about shipping containers in the early nineties we just did n't know why!

Here's Roger in the Brighton sunshine shot by Ivan Jones sporting Burro shirt and scarf from AW11.

Paul Burgess in Action

Paul Burgess is an old art school friend of ours back then we thought he was a bit Bowie-esque which can't be a bad thing. He is an illustrator, photographer, artist, lecturer, pop culture obsessive and co-author with Alan Parker of the acclaimed book Satellite: Sex Pistols a comprehensive record of Sex Pistols memorabilia. Paul is a bit of an expert on punk graphics and has a huge collection of them as well as clothing, tickets ,posters, original scraps of paper with lyrics on and so on which are complied in the book. The book also suggests a site seeing tour of key London locations in the Sex Pistols story.
More recently Paul has also spent six years photographing and filming Jarvis Cocker and Pulp one day he promises there will be a book and film at some point in the future.

Paul had an exhibition of paintings and collages in our Floral St shop in 1997. He is currently course leader for illustration at the University of Brighton.  

The other day he kindly posed in a box for that other Burro favourite Ivan Jones wearing our Action Time Vision intarsia jumper from AW02.

Charley Speed

Way back in the nineties the then teenage model Charley Speed, made his runway debut for us, he had a great "look"and was a pleasure to work with. Most importantly he laughed at our jokes which was one of our prerequisites for booking a model more than once. Charley continued to walk for us in our Paris catwalk shows where a sense of humour came in really handy to say the least.
As Charley recalls... "Their shows, backstage at least, had a quietly chaotic vibe with improvised production values! I always felt staunchly loyal to Burro. Even when turning Westwood down I still walked for them."
Meanwhile he made it big, working with Kate Moss and winning Male Model of the Year. These days he's a judge on Sky's "Britain's Next Top Model" and working in TV and acting whilst continuing his modelling career.
Being rather sweet though he still found the time to meet us at the South Bank to have his picture snapped by Ivan Jones for our portrait project. Here's Charley in our geometric jumper of AW09.

AW97

Paul Ablett-Renaissance Man

Star gazer, (former) saxophonist, writer, artist manager and old friend of Burro Paul Ablett has just posed for our portrait project with his huge scope! He's wearing a Burro geometric intarsia V neck from our AW05 collection and a nicely aged leather jacket from AW92.
Paul has written for the likes of The Face, Sky, The Observer and the cult music magazine Soul Underground. He has worked with Carmel, Earthling, Morcheeba, The Ghost Frequency, Weird Dreams and many more. Currently he is managing excellent new Brighton band Black Black Hills and co-managing acid jazz veterans The Brand New Heavies.
Shot by Ivan Jones.

Paul Gorman-in demand

Writer, journalist, cultural commentator and old friend of ours Paul Gorman is a busy fellow. He's currently curating an exhibition at the 

Chelsea Space  "Lloyd Johnson: The Modern Outfitter" which opens on 24th January and he's just completed a book titled "Mr Freedom" about the legendary Tommy Roberts to be published in April.
As if that wasn't enough he's just been to Paris to interview Pierre Cardin for Vice magazine, he's lecturing all over the place, he's developing a film based on a true story told to him by Nick Lowe and he's writing another couple of fashion books! Here he is taking a break from all of that, reclining in a timeless Burro shirt from our Spring '94 collection.
Shot by Ivan Jones.
                                        

Adam Howe

This week we slunk off to Hackney with Ivan Jones to snap acclaimed stylist and designer Adam Howe. We've know Adam since we were all students in London in the eighties.
 Adam had spent the previous day shooting Ricky Gervais for the New York Times. He is currently working on the costumes for Elaine Constantine's debut feature film Northern Soul which we are really looking forward to and he is also designing a new label Work Not Work for Japanese clothing company Urban Research. Here he is in Burro's spider jumper.

Jean-Pierre Braganza Star of the Future

J-P in Burro Mohair Stripes

One of our favourite designers is Canadian-raised, London-based Jean-Pierre Braganza.

He's a true original interpreting the perennial themes of Sci-Fi, Anatomy and Rock n Roll into bold, beautifully cut clothes which are interesting and unusual without take me to your leader ridiculousness. There is often some nice leather and lovely use of print and colour. It sort of reminds us of The Matrix but in a good way. 

Wisely J-P likes to wear a bit of Burro now and again so we asked photographer Ivan Jones to shoot him for our portrait project. 

http://www.jeanpierrebraganza.com 

Jean -Pierre Braganza SS12 

Wear Tweed

It's turned chilly at last make the most of it winter is the time for creative dressers to go tweed hunting -big trousers (must be lined), traditional single breasted two vent jackets jackets, coats, bags, owls, deerstalkers they 're all out there. Proper Harris Tweed (with the orb symbol) is what you really want, hand woven in the Outer Hebrides. It's got to be wool no synthetic mixes. The traditional tweed we like best is a bit rough and scratchy and the colours are mossy and Autumnal. There's a lot of fake rubbish on the high st. at the moment, not a good investment but no worries if you can't run to brand new, secondhand is as good or even better.

Mr Samson Soboye of Shoreditch

This week we breezed into Shoreditch with photographer Ivan Jones to capture super stylish stylist and designer Samson Soboye for our forthcoming book and portrait project.
 Samson owns Soboye an inspiring luxury boutique at 13 Calvert Avenue E2 where he stocks exciting fashion accessories such as embroidered leather bags from Buba, jewellery by Fiona Paxton, shoes by Finsk and coming soon Erickson Beamon jewellery and Vivienne Westwood wallpaper by Cole and Son.
The Autumn light was a gift and Samson worked a Burro striped bamboo polo neck to perfection then we retired to Shoreditch House to put the world to rights and drink tea on raspberry velvet cushions... very posh.

Nothing in the World But Youth, Turner Contemporary Margate

Teenagers lives have changed a lot over the years but society's attitude to them is consistent, whilst their youth and energy is valued and envied their unpredictability and explosiveness is often feared and they are often viewed in a negative light. Nothing in the World But Youth at Turner Contemporary reminds us that being a teenager whether you know it or not at the time is an important and highly creative period of your life.
Margate with all it's seaside town associations inspired this show it's long been a place where young people have gathered to have fun, dress up, mess about and experiment.
 There is work from a diverse selection of ninety four known and lesser known painters, photographers, writers, film makers and so on and there is even work by the teenage Turner himself.
We particularly liked: Mark Leckey's 1999 film Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore complied from found footage taken the inside clubs in the 70s,80s, and 90s, David Haines pencil drawing Nike Air Sneakers vs Colonel Sanders, Julian Germain's classroom portraits and the photographs and the piece in the fanzine-y style catalogue by Margate born writer Iain Aitch called Can't go on no more:A personal history of Margate's youth culture.

There is loads to see so you might have to have more than one awayday, but that's ok because the light over the sea keeps changing, the local chips are cheap, it's free and it's on until 8th January 2012. Get down there.

www.turnercontemporary.org

The Orphans Arms

This week we took tea with Jay Shipley of The Orphans Arms. Jay used to be an intern and occasional model for Burro. Now with business partner Josh Wilks he's capturing the spirit of old Shacklewell with dark and twisted graphics on perfect T shirt shapes. Spot on for for the bicycle riding hoards of East London......and other people of course.

Jocks and Nerds in print.

Last week photographer Ivan Jones shot journalist and photographer Marcus Ross for Burro's book project. Marcus has just published his online magazine Jocks and Nerds in print, we would say go out and buy it but it's free from independent menswear retailers and other special places so get your skates on.

http://jocksandnerdsmagazine.com/

Get the look: Boiler Suits

We stumbled upon these spooky minimal scarecrows in Suffolk, we don't know if the crows are worried but we were, nice colours though. 

Ivan Jones for Burro

We are shooting a series of portraits with photographer Ivan Jones for our forthcoming book. All the subjects are wearing a bit of Burro and they are all people who have played a part in Burro history. Last week it was time to focus on spec King Jason Kirk. 

Burro's Britain 1-folk