As the Helsinki-based brand gears up to celebrate the 50th anniversary of its iconic Unikko (poppy) print, Marimekko is still very much the prolific and relevant design house that it was when it was founded by…
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Advertorial Content: As a small business we know all about the challenges that come along with expenses and budgeting. Tools like FoundersCard, a membership service for entrepreneurs that helps smooth out these problems, play an important part in our day-to-day running of Cool Hunting: Cool Hunting Daily emails, our mobile…
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The entrepreneurial spirit showed no signs of waning in 2012. From new generations breathing new life into faltered family brands to the birth of a Brooklyn surf shop, we welcomed the return of iconic brands and were introduced to some new ones as well. We love when strong brands have…
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The military-grade bag maker goes streamlined
Based in Chicago, Defy is a manufacturer of heavy-duty bags constructed from heavy-duty military-grade and upcycled materials. The products are unabashedly overkill—considering their customers are mostly techies and non-traditional businessmen—but as founder Chris Tag explains, the feel of the materials in hand justifies the lot. Defy Bags has just…
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Iconic British menswear label opens its first London flagship
Two hundred and fifty-seven years after launching, British menswear brand Wolsey opened the doors last night to their first flagship store in London. Located on Brewer Street in the heart of Soho, the store’s aesthetics mirrors the brand’s ethos: contemporary styling of iconic classics. Brushed steel beams, exposed brick walls, aged wooden tables and original draper’s cabinets combine to create the perfect backdrop for the range of quality menswear.
Drawing inspiration from Wolsey’s original Leicester factory (now the location of its brand operations), the store also features a wealth of salvaged, prismatic pendants, 1940s industrial light fixtures and Persian rugs. Down a small flight of stairs and located just outside the exposed brick changing rooms are two vintage leather armchairs separated by a reclaimed-wood table housing men’s fashion titles. Adorning the walls of both floors are framed prints of original Wolsey adverts, old and new campaigns, inscribed wooden boards telling its history and images of some of the explorers and pioneers who helped build its identity.
“We’re very proud of the heritage the brand has,” says Brand Director Stephen Reed. “While we are steering the brand in a new direction with the design of the latest collections, we’re making sure we keep the classic heritage and attention to detail
that has fueled Wolsey’s longevity.”
Attention to detail is key to the success Wolsey has achieved, and it’s a thread sewn throughout the latest collection. Classic woolen jumpers and cotton gilets are injected with modernity through wider necklines and narrower silhouettes. Double-breasted navy blazers—complete with nautical gold buttons at the cuff—and plaid cotton shirts transform a traditional tailored look into today’s casually refined aesthetic. Leather accessories have been designed with today’s technological devices in mind, and the classic urban hoodie has been tweaked with chunky herringbone draw cords, 320gm heavy cotton and ribbed cuffs.
“Our designs are modern and fresh while also being classic and iconic. It’s the choice of material or the details in a button that gives each piece its individuality,” says Reed. “The Wolsey guy is cool and subtly stylish. He takes the classic staples we create and puts his own twist on them.”
Wolsey
83a Brewer Street
London, W1F 9ZN
The infamous French artist creates an invisible installation of his dripping logos at the newest W Hotel
To celebrate the opening of their newest property, the W Paris Opéra, W Hotels brought in the best of young European artistic talent to interpret the spirit of their city. French artist ShoboShobo created a series of characters exercising with macarons, baguettes and wine props to decorate the hotel gym, while Dutch photographer Marcel van der Vlugt reinterpreted French icons into modern portraits of Paul Gauguin, the Marquis de Sade, Marie Antoinette and Louis Daguerre on pillows in each room.
However, not all of the installations are visible to the naked eye. Guests checking in to Suite 112 at the hotel are in for a special surprise that can only be seen with UV light. French artist Zevs, brought his trademark vision to the hotel with new work that is once again exploring not what is seen, but what is left to the imagination.
For the Suite 112 installation, Zevs worked with invisible ink that he created in a laboratory in New York City, mimicking the special red pigment used by police at crime scenes. “This red reminds you of the blood of a crime scene, but it’s also the most visible color, so I like the extreme aspect between the invisibility of the ink and the extreme visibility of the color,” he says.
We caught up with the artist at the opening night party, where a man dressed as a CSI expert shone a UV light slowly over the walls to reveal patterned Louis Vuitton wallpaper with Zevs’ signature dripping logos. “With the idea to place logos into a crime scene, I think simply the idea is to continue to investigate the territory of this fashion victim project I did last year,” he says, referring to a Sao Paolo Fashion Week event in which a naked model was “murdered” by a Louis Vuitton logo and Zevs outlined her body on the street in chalk.
Zevs works with existing objects, often in the advertising world and often playing on art and crime, adding a simple twist to make a big impact on passersby. In his infamous “Visual Kidnapping” piece, he demanded ransom after cutting out a giant image of a girl from a Lavazza billboard in Berlin. The stunt ended up netting a donation of half a million euros from the brand to the contemporary Parisian art institution Palais de Tokyo.
He began his “Visual Attacks” in the 1990s, painting advertisements as though they’d been hit by a bullet. The “Electric Shadows” series explored the idea of revealing the invisible by painting temporal shadows into permanent sidewalk fixtures. His “Liquidated Logos” work trademarked his drip technique to make any logo dissolve before the viewer’s eyes.
This summer in Paris, Zevs will reinvent his “Proper Graffiti” series, a technique he perfected in France in the ’90s, in which he erases existing graffiti to reveal a new fresco on a city wall.
Zevs’ playful use of logos is not so much an anti-branding message as a hint to onlookers to reexamine how they view and interact with logos so that it’s not such a passive relationship. Each invisible spot on the wall took on a new meaning when revealed at the Paris opening, as guests began to feel like investigators discovering essential clues in a case. Zevs also painted into van der Vlugt’s photographs, creating an eery aura throughout the room.
W Paris Opéra
4 rue Meyerbeer
75009 Paris
Amsterdam’s creative communications agency tells it straight in a new book
In their new book “Advertising for People Who Don’t Like Advertising“, the Amsterdam-based communications agency KesselsKramer details the creative side of an industry often considered devilish, making a valid claim that like sex, advertising is “only as warped as the people involved.”
Written in a cheeky, conversational tone, the book imparts some sage advice on how to conduct responsible advertising. Established in 1996, KesselsKramer pioneered the movement for inspirational multidisciplinary campaigns that don’t think like traditional advertising—instead they engage an audience and encourage interaction with a product. In other words, what they call “Open source over hard sell.”
In addition to showing examples of their own work—such as the brilliantly honest “anti-advertising” campaign for Brinker’s budget hotel—the KK team asked top creatives to discuss how they ultimately stay creative in a client-is-right, money-obsessed field. Weighing in with refreshingly candid takes are Alex Bogusky, Stefan Sagmeister, Steve Henry.
KK’s longstanding creative director Erik Kessels puts things into neat perspective in a chapter called “The Laws of Creativity and How to Mess With Them”, offering snippets with intriguing and sometimes provocative titles like “Make News Not Ads”, “Follow Not The Process of Others”, “Never Brainstorm” and more.
Kramer’s rebellious approach to design and creative, responsible advertising—or, communications as KK calls it—helps inject a little confidence in the future of quality brand messaging. The book is out May 2012, and is available for pre-order from Amazon or Laurence King.
L’agence W&Cie a imaginé cette vidéo pour mettre en avant son intérêt pour les marques. Reprenant les codes des logos, la vidéo détourne avec intelligence et rend hommage à des marques reconnues. Une initiative qui a reçu le Lion d’argent au Cannes Festival of Creativity.
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Dad jeans done right. Next level site from Wrangler’s Euro line Blue Bell.
It’s really unfortunate that you can’t get any of the clothing in Canada. What’s also unfortunate is the coolness factor of the Wrangler brand in Europe as compared to the Wrangler brand in the North America.
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