In April last year artist Stefan Mosebach designed this beautiful shirt for us to celebrate Catch Fire’s first anniversary. This year we continue this tradition, although the second birthday of the blog already has passed by. But there’s another occasion that’s gotta be celebrated: The posting you are reading right now is officially the 1.000th post in the history of this blog!
I’m really proud how the site has changed from my very personal little dumpster for stuff I like into a platform for queer arts and culture with awesome new contributors and a lot of new regular readers. And it makes me even prouder to tell you that NYC based artist J.Morrison, whose work I love and who has done great designs for Xiu Xiu in the past, has designed a gorgeous new shirt for us that I hope you all will like. The shirt is from Americal Apparel and comes in black with a gold/silver print, it will be limited to 100 pieces. It is $15 + shipping (US $5, worldwide $10) and you can order it right below this preview. So celebrate with us and support the blog and the artist! And thank you guys so much for all your great feedback over the last year!
Order the new Catch Fire shirt by artist J.Morrison now!
(Via PayPal, 15$ + shipping US 5$/international 10$)
Designer Holly Fox-Lee has gradueted in fashion print at London’s Central Saint Martins College in 2009. Her pretty awesome graduate collection centers on the street dance krump, which she discovered during an internship with Jeremy Scott in Los Angeles in 2007. Check out Spot On: Textiles for pictures and more background information about the collection and let me know if you know what Fox-Lee is doing in 2011 (couldn’t figure it out online myself). Pictures by Marc Hibbert (from an editorial called “Warriors“), video below by Eldar Bayburin.
Each month the B. Calla LQQKS Project presents an ensemble of designer clothing, embracing lots of contrast in colors, patterns and textures, including frequent use of digital printing for a synthetic club kid feel (with occasional undertones of Burner and granny). Items can be purchased directly through their site, eschewing that darn middleman.
Kevin Kramp, a young designer born in Minnesota and based in London, has just presented a collection of his amorphous, highly conceptual and colorful knitwear at this year’s International Talent Support (ITS) in Trieste, Italy (you find a couple of pictures of the presentation on Zoot magazine). With the collection he has won the “Modateca Award”, a prize sponsored by Deanna Ferretti, whose knitwear company produces for Kenzo, Yves Saint Laurent and Maison Martin Margiela. Kramp got his BA in Fashion Design and Knitwear at London’s Central St. Martins College of Art and Design in 2009, some of his works are currently exhibited at the “Unravel” knitwear exhibition at Antwerp’s MoMu. For more background information about him check out his portrait in the “Talent” section of Vogue Italy online, his profile on Not Just A Label and this interview on the conceptual dimension of his work for more background. Since Kramp’s website is down at the moment the pictures posted here I have collected from several different websites, this is why the sizes differ. All images courtesy ACM Photography + Kevin Kramp.
Swiss photographer Karlheinz Weinberger (1921-2006) started his carreer in the late 40ies/early 50ies when he started taking pictures for the first international homosexuals’ magazine «Der Kreis/Le Cercle» (The Circle), for which he worked under the alias “Jim”. In the late 50ies he started portraying the style of the “Halbstarke” (“half strongs” / greasers), a youth culture dominated by young men from the working-class, who where mixing elements of the fashion of the American pop culture figure of the “rebel” (which was especially associated with the biking culture of the time and male icons such as James Dean and Elvis) with their own ideas of a non-conformism and delinquent fashion. The book “Rebel Youth” published by Rizzoli in February brings together these pictures of the Swiss subculture of the sixties and is an awesome document not only of the stylistic playfulness and inventiveness of the early youth cultures, but also of Weinbergers “authentic” style. The book features a foreword by John Waters and can be ordered via Rizzoli. Here’s a little preview:
Wali Mohammed Barrech is a third year student at the fashion department of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Antwerp, where he has studied under my all-time fashion hero Walter van Beirendonck. Barrech’s latest collection was recently presented at the department’s 2011 student show and deals with questions raised by the progress in modern medicine and the way pharmaceutical drugs affect our lives. You can read more about his intentions in this info sheet that accompanies the collection. Here’s the official shooting of “Reset”, I picked 9 of i think 13 pictures.
Jan-Jan Van Essche is born and based in Antwerp and has graduated in 2003 from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of Antwerp. His second collection “Satta Amassagana” (which means “give thanks” in Amharic, a Semitic language spoken in Ethiopia) is now art and will be presented through an installation at the Paris Men’s Fashion Week June 26 – June 29. It’s Van Essches philosphy to create only one (season-spanning) collection in a year, with most of the pieces available just in one size and made only in small, limited amounts – check out his website for more background information and his first collection “Yukkuri”. “Satta Amassagana” will be presented as an installation at the Paris Men’s Fashion Week June 26 – June 29. For the complete collection and larger pictures check out Coute Que Coute.
Voguing: The Message is a nice little pre-”Paris Is Burning” documentary about the emerging New York voguing scene with a lot of footage and some awesome performances and statements by Willi Ninja from the House of Ninja. The film was shot in 1988 by Jack Walworth, David Bronstein & Dorothy Low and released in 1989.
Feral aka MC Kinky is an artist based in London, where she’s know for her DJing, spacy outfits, and her performances as the first white female ragga MC ever. The awesome head pieces for this shoot were made by Dutch born & Berlin based designer Rein Vollenga, except for the coin mask in the fourth picture made by Dean Bright. The shoot was originally published on glass magazine, where you find detailed credits for the clothes and accessoirs as well as a little introduction to Feral. I found this this version of the series on Rocket Magazine.
On his website artist and designer J. Morrison currently offers a very special deal – for 200$ you can subscribe to a special series of handmade shirt designed in collaboration with Xiu Xiu singer Jamie Stewart: “The shirts will be available as a special 12 piece year long subscription (which includes 13th subscription only bonus shirt) or as single shirts ordered per month. Each month the shirts will commemorate a figure who has influenced the artists. Part-rock shirt and part-art shirt, the shirts will creatively honor the person’s name with a new illustration and hand made type.” Here are #2 and #3 of the first three pieces, designed in honor of Yoko Ono and Robert Mapplethorpe. All of them can also be ordered sperately. Check out Morrisson’s site for much more stuff like manpurses and screenprinted paper towels.
