Samson Soboye in www.fantasticsmag.com

We don't usually like online magazines we like to turn a page but this one is a visual treat.

Long time Burro collaborator, super stylist and lovely chap Samson Soboye has pointed us in the direction of new(ish) online magazine www.fantsticsmag.com. Forget big names and dull celebs this is about inspired concepts and quality photography.Check out Samson's latest work with photographer Curtis Benjamin here http://fantasticsmag.com/stories/bright-idea
www.samsonsoboye.co.uk

Where Are They Now? part 2

Way back in 2000 Burro collaborated with young musician Jim Wood. We first heard him through his bedroom window (which was in our street) playing Jimmy Hendrix guitar solos. We got Jim to put together the soundtrack to our 2001 Paris catwalk, he played live at the show.....

and contributed a track to the 7” single we put together as a giveaway at the show under the name Jinyl Vunkies alongside Hefner, Murray the Hump and long time Burro associate “Electro Bizarro” aka Justin Anderson.

Later Jim modelled for some of our photoshoots and became something of a fixture in our studio. Much tea was drunk.

We were really pleased to encounter him again the other day playing guitar with “post-dubstep”(!) sensation Jamie Woon. To avoid confusion he’s playing under the nom de plume Royce Wood Jr. . We sneaked onto the guestlist for Jamie’s show at the Scala which was quite frankly splendid. We couldn’t help but think of the rambling vocal and minimal electronic sound of early Fingers Inc., which is a good thing in our book.

Our only gripe was that Jim (Royce) was sitting down for the whole gig so we couldn’t get a decent shot of him!

The debut Woon album has just been released to general acclaim, we’ll definitely be putting it on our Christmas list. As ever, if you fancy a freebie in these straitened times you can get the track "Blue Truth" for free here: http://www.jamiewoon.com/news/2010/12/blue-truth-(sc)

or there's a nice house remix of "Night Air" here: http://www.phuturelabs.com/word/chatter/jamie-woon-night-air-real-rmx-free-download/

Open your Eyes to Pope Joan....

We first stumbled across Brighton based “Art-Pop” band Pope Joan at last summer’s Hop Farm festival in deepest Kent. Playing on one of the small stages, their angular, stylish sound reminded us of a slightly 80’s/early LCD Soundsystem/Micachu/maybe a bit of Roxy Music (all in a good way) and was a refreshing contrast to the folksy stylings of Laura Marling, Mumford and Sons etc. ,the sing-along rambling of Pete Docherty and the disappointing croaking of Dylan (Villagers were good though).

Since that first encounter they’ve been gigging sporadically, recorded some new tracks and a video or two, and we’re pleased to note have just released a single “A Drowning/I Can’t Stand You At All” with a rather lovely video for A Drowning you can see here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ee-S_Nbiu6s

We’re reliably informed that you can download it from i-tunes should you feel inclined.

If you’re not feeling flush and fancy a free track from the band you can download an earlier song “Matthias” here: http://soundcloud.com/popejoan  

They’ve got a couple of gigs coming up too, one on 31^st March at Bread and Roses in Clapham, London and their first gig outside the UK on 6^th May in Tours, France supporting “Publicist” a side project of one our other favourite bands-Trans Am. Should be a good night.

Yohji Yamamoto at the V&A

Yohji Yamamoto is one of our favourite designers, not just for his innovative cutting and detailing but also for showing up in Paris in the early eighties and shocking folk. Daft as it seems now the the things that upset people were big shapes, head to toe black and flat shoes on girls!
 At the V&A's Yamamoto exhibition you can watch videos of his early Paris shows, the clothes are unconventional (particularly for the time) you can see that the models of the eighties don't quite know how to deal with them. In later shows Yohji starts to makes his mark and soon hits his stride with non models and unconventional catwalk presentations- a celebrated one being AW04 featuring Madness doing a bit of a dance and Terry Hall looking pretty cool and very grumpy.
 Very little is in a vitrine here so you can get up close and examine how the clothes are put together. We love Yamamoto's use of "crafty" methods like tie die, hand knitting, stencilling and felting, the results are highly engineered and thankfully not hippyish. Take pleasure in the plain trims: buttons, YKK zips and the total lack of branding and bling. Although dating back to the early eighties many of the garments are timeless, go with a friend and play guess the year- we were wildly out with some pieces.

 The only disapointment for us was with some of the menswear exhibits - there were not enough of them and some had aged badly (nasty embroidery on suiting!). One of the other things we love Yohji for is black and navy our iconic Yamamoto men's look would be a big navy suit and there isn't one here. Every man in the "creative industries" in the 80's had one as far as we remember.

We like new designer Enya Mooney

One of our more random jobs over the last couple of years has been running a BBC competition/project called “Your Label”. Basically it was to give young designers the chance to show a capsule collection during LFW. The whole thing was shown on BBC2 at some ungodly hour.

One of the designers we encountered through Your Label was Enya Mooney whose youthfully sophisticated collection was one of our favourites so we were pleased to receive an invitation to Enya’s first “proper” show, an off schedule catwalk at Fashion Mavericks in the Strand.

Working under the name “Enya Patricia” (not sure why) Enya showed a compact and assured collection, it’s not usually our sort of thing but we rather liked it. Have a look at the whole thing here:www.enyapatricia.com and see what you think.

Keep up the good work.

Lou Goes To The Opera

Lou Dalton is one of our current menswear faves so we were pleased to find ourselves on the front row at her Royal Opera House show last Wednesday sitting opposite 80’s superstar Holly Johnson of Frankie Goes To Hollywood fame.

Lou says of her collection “a feeling of discomfort often drives an individual to look inwardly or to look for acceptance from others who have fallen from the conformity of the world around them”….. and cites the Seattle scene and the Russian criminal underworld as influences.

We say…. lovely knitwear as ever and the best wide trousers we’ve seen in a long while. The show had a really nice “salon” atmosphere and reminded us of our first ever show in our Floral Street shop in 1996 which was all gold chairs and Kraftwerk.

Here’s a few shots from Lou’s show to keep you going until she gets round to posting the full set on her own site.

www.loudalton.com

Letters from Edinburgh

Edinburgh band Letters rather appropriately sent us a letter here at the studio. The envelope also contained a copy of their first single The Grand National/Pipe Dreams.

They describe themselves as “dark cello pop noise” and we can’t think of a more appropriate description. They seem to have a penchant for playing gigs in book-strewn flats and standing moodily in black and white on spiral stairs looking literary. We thoroughly approve of this type of behaviour

You can download the single for your very own by visiting their website.

They’re playing a few shows in Scotland in March with a full tour to follow (hopefully) so keep an eye out in the listings or sign up to their blog…

http://www.wewriteletters.co.uk/music/