Menswear Focus: Heresy

Originally featured in The Real Runway, July 29th. HERESY

Portrait of Jasper and Dom. (above)

Last Thursday marked the launch of menswear label Heresy, made and designed by TTR favourite Dominic Owen, and fellow illustrator, the super-talented Jasper Dunk. The launch promised booze 'n' lolz at one of our favourite Shore-bitch locations, Beach Gallery. But after all the free beer had been drained and the dull hum of Friday's hangover recided, the strength of the duo's first offering seriously stuck in our minds.

The collection boasts wearable, hard-wearing Tees, hats and baseball shirts, all hand screen-printed with the precision and attention to detail you'd expect from designers from an illustrative background. However it was more the content of their prints that gives Heresy such a strong backbone. With what the boys call an 'atheistic lean' their bold and beautiful prints depict daggers through bibles, Owen's ominous beaked characters doing unspeakable things perched on inverted crosses and a black humour that makes Heresy more than your average t-shirt start-up. Echoed in the colours of their truly beautiful lookbook images, they have chosen earthy tones, charcoals and burgundys to bring a maturity to the pieces that isnt always a given when you have a message to give. 

Our picks from the collection are the baseball tee, and charcoal five panel hat, that puts the supreme clones to shame. With a super website and installations planned in Dalston's Jaguar Shoes later this month, Heresy have their hands full, and they've even had time to pop some mixes onto their site to bob along to while you shop. Amen.

http://heresylabel.co.uk/

'Classist' in Chelsea

So something has come to my attention. Prepare yourself, because for a minute, stuff's about to get real high-brow. Don't worry- I'm telling you it with the confidence that you can handle it. 

It starts off with me bludgeoning out any sense of reality I have left, by watching E4's Made in Chelsea; see, I told you. One of the dead-eyed girls had an altercation with another, and it was pretty funny. Like many others, I often find half the hilarity from this kind of mind-numbing occurrence comes from the response on twitter during and after, so as I blithely cast my eye over the variously directed death-threats my attention was drawn to some twitter whining; twineing if you will. The twiners in question were musician professor green and his reality tv sort Millie Mackintosh. They've had it to the back teeth of the twittersphere taking the micheal out of the 'class divide' in their relationship. 

'I find it really interesting how it’s spoken about because people are so quick to point out the difference in class but I’ve always believed that your class is dependent on how you treat people, not your financial situation,'  Says Pro Green. Monsieur Green hails from Hackney and his Mrs from Chelsea; as her claim to fame so clearly states, and they're like totes worlds apart.

His observation is, I believe correct, but not exactly ground-breaking. I can tell you with the utmost confidence, that this is not the first posh girl that's fallen for a boy with a neck tattoo, who grew up in a council house that cost as much as her first pony. And it won't be the last. 

Nevertheless its the stuff of tabloid fodder- the heiress and her bad-boy; they lap that stuff up. In the grand scheme of things, it's nothing surprising, and in the real world it's certainly nothing new. You can't fight biology; human attraction is chemical, and their relationship is no different. In their case, their 'heritages' are bus-rides away (or a black cab ride; whichever mode of transport you favour) My parents, along with millions of other Londoners from mixed heritages, are from different continents, and I don't hear them whining. Oh right, professor Green has something to say on that too:

'If the difference were race people wouldn’t be so quick to point it out – it’s still prejudice isn’t it? I find it weird that’s it such a big thing.'

Yeah, people were quite quick to point it out until relatively recently, but your memory's short, so we'll let that one slide. But hold on Stephen; as Ms Macintosh sultrily refers to you, I think these (lets be honest; relatively light in terms of 'prejudice') jibes might not stem from your grime artist exterior and tough guy tatts, but  in fact from the whole reason your lady friend is notable in the first place. Millie Macintosh, along with every other person on 'Made in Chelsea'  has aligned herself with a piece of programming that directly focusses on 'class', in an era where the very notion was beginning to seem irrelevant.

The whole premise is that these people are 'made' in the royal borough, have inheritances, good pedigree, perfect lighting and unspoken (barely) superiority. The watcher buys into the fact that these people are wealthier than the average, better spoken than the average, and at a tangible advantage to the average Hackney pleb. 

It's all relatively light-hearted; it's e4, not an ideology akin to the third reich. "Some scenes have been created for your entertainment" :It's not all real, its just a bit of a laugh; to club the banality out of a Monday evening. But the twitter responses to a relatively innocuous disagreement that I touched upon earlier, do show that people are aware that the viewer is very much placed at the bottom looking up. People's reaction to the social minutiae of these people is different to other reality TV. Their opinions are shaped by the fact that they present their lives as being better than theirs. The knee jerk twitter yobbo rationalises that these people have so much money that they don't deserve to have problems. Everything that goes wrong for them is self-inflicted. Down to their snobbery or snootiness. Perhaps this is prejudice, but every detail of the production encourages this way of thinking. 'Made in Chelsea' gets viewers, but not necessarily sympathisers. 

The British love an underdog, and Made in Chelsea is the antithesis of this, these people pointedly portray themselves to ooze a certain brand of success and prosperity. Simply by agreeing to be on a programme like this Millie's nay-sayers, I believe see her as clambering up onto a high horse. Now she's asking to be let back down to live as the plebs live, and it won't be an easy journey. 

She's caught the eye of a regular Joe, a boy from Hackney prospering from a less than favourable background, articulate and warm; ironically exactly the kind of underdog Britain loves. No wonder Millie wanted a break from the Chelsea set, but living your life on TV leaves you open to conjecture, and by doing something so far from everything you've been urging us to believe about you; you are going to come up against criticism.

I can understand that Professor Green is surprised by the reaction his new relationship is receiving from a section of the press and public. He just met a pretty girl and went through the motions, but comparing the reaction to something like mixed racial relationships, with its thickly weaved cultural and social significance I believe is misguided. I'll take my chances and say he's experiencing predjudice-lite; specifically commissioned by e4.

I've seen Millie use the word 'classist' whilst briefly commenting on the subject, in between posting pictures of her bronzed bod. I think when it comes down to it, this over-simplistic nomenclature is just her wielding a clumsy fist at a disillusioned public whom she originally hoodwinked into believing she was something she wasn't. 

When it comes to her It doesn't make her a bad person, but it shows the fragility of fame for fame's sake when it comes to the public's opinion. And when it comes to him, he's a white guy from Hackney, making urban music that's making the transition into the mainstream. He probably can't believe that this is a situation in which he's coming across prejudice. 

Union Jack- Who do you think you are?

Oooh, it's such an exciting time to be British aint it. Oooh the olympics. Oooh the Jubilee. Street parties, days off work, cheese and pineapple on a stick, bunting and booze. Don't it just make you all warm inside? Well no actually, but that's just me.

I'm worried about tube delays and rising prices. Gormless tourists and crowbarring the idea of patriotism into every piece of useless ephemera; but don't mind me, I'm just a Londoner; we're sour it's what we do. I'm sure the rest of the country is thrilled at the prospect.

However, when it comes to vacuous stuff like fashion, and design on a broader sense, I find all this British hoo hah actually quite fun. The main thing I like about the queen is when she gets her glad rags on. I like the aesthetic of a British souvenir (aside from an I love London jumper; which all clearly need to be burnt) The sparkle, the pomp and ceremony; appeals to the magpie in me. Its bizarre and lol and British.

 But I do feel like people are taking one thing too far. And that's the union jack.

One good thing about all the BRITISH things happening this year is that I do feel normal, decent British people have been able to reclaim our flag from the racists. The pesky BNP did a bit of re-branding to a flag that is pretty good in the iconic stakes. Racists are pretty good at that; just look at the swastika. For ages those stripes represented the bitter aftertaste of the British fish and chips; not the fried delights of the main meal. But perhaps with Kate and Will as our new representatives and all these dates in the diary, being British means something better (at least for now) and red white and blue is back in favour. Actually to say it's 'in favour' is a massive understatement; it is bloody everywhere.

If your buying your lunch in M&S and the content of your sarny is slightly British (ie. contains cucumber) it's emblazoned with it. Not to mention if you fancy some strawberries. If you open a newspaper, look at an advertisement, turn on your television, oh yes; it's there. Its there, but it's not there. Its meaning is getting watered down. It's become twee; executed in muted pastels, printed on crafty cushions and hung from bunting. Without trying to sound like the racists that squirrelled the flag away to their dingy dwellings  in the first place; that's not the way I see our flag.

For me, the last time I saw this piece of design used successfully and appropriately to personify the country it represents was stretched across Geri Halliwell's boobs at the 1997 Brit awards. Now that depicted a britain I recognised. She literally may as well have been on a seaside postcard. That union jack summed up  page 3, sugary tea and chips from the paper. The pervieness, the gaudiness, the tack. As much as we try to represent a Britain that's got it's shit together and is prepared for the world to bowl into it's capital for sports day, really we're all just in it for the piss up. Whether you're from the royal borough or moss side; if your British, you're more likely than not brassy, pompous or batshit cray or all of the above, and we've got a suitable flag to prove it.

It's nice that waving around a conglomeration of colours and lines doesn't mean you hate immigrants as much as it did, but I vote we save the flag for things that really represent this crackpot of a nation. Leave the bunting up, but find another way to advertise clotted cream.

Archive: Go With the Fro

Originally featured on The Real Runway Beauty Focus February 29th 2012

It's a lazy Tuesday morning, and I'm taking a brain-vacation on the Daily Fail (don't even try and tell me you don't do the same on a caffeine-low) and amongst the it-girls, soap stars and Kardashians my eye is drawn to Thandie Newton. Always stays safe on the red carpet Thandie Newton. Flawless skin Thandie Newton. Elfin beauty Thandie Newton. yeah…sure. As I begin to read the oh-so-subtley worded right-up, my fashion ears prick up, and I notice yet another example of a hair trend I've been noticing more than ever recently- the natural fro. Thandie has given up the chemical straighteners so her daughters don't feel pressured or ashamed of their natural curls, and to set the example that natural is better. Firstly…that is hella cute. Secondly, babes…fro's are seriously in right now, what an excellently well-timed act of altruism. 

Solange Knowles; my favourite human being.

Whilst plodding the streets around fashion week, I couldn't help notice that the fro was out in force (its something I would notice, as I myself sport a do something akin to Scary Spice circa 1997) and not just on the street; some of the most influential fashion darlings of the moment are getting in on the action.

My immediate reference point to this would be Solange Knowles; DJ, model and sister to Patron Saint Beyonce, she's definitely one of fashion's current obsessions. Sitting front row at fashion weeks, and the front pages of magazines, her eclectic aesthetic, and expert execution of the 'print block' makes her a favourite with the fashion pack. And her fro is now exception. Moving away from the lace-front route of most black women in fashion, Solange cut it short and started again, and now has an ample eau natural fro to show for it. The results hark back to the 60's and 70's, compliments bright colours and a mixture of prints; everything that fashion's going crazy for right now.

Another fro-conoseiur, and street-style photographer favourite is Wonderland magazine editor Julia Sarr-Jamois. Her colours are always bright, her mane slightly more untamed than knowles' or Newton's and her voice, decidedly fashion forward. Jamois isn't a popstar or an actress, she's knows her shit, she's a cross-section of the 'fashion woman'. This works to show that the fashion industry is going to take reference from within, and the black woman makes up a tangible, influential and aesthetically rich part of the industry, it's no wonder the hair is getting bigger. We saw Meadham Kirchoff's quaffed luminous fro's sauntering down the runway last season and every editorial seems to be brimming with curly locks; this all has to come from somewhere. 

As the afro crops up more and more on the street, the runway and the magazines, it kind of warms my heart that Thandie is showing her daughters to embrace their curls, (it's not always the easiest thing to do in the awkward years) After all the hairstyle crosses trends, race and gender and symbolises something decidedly fun about personal style. 

I'll end with a sentence I mostly regard with disgust and cringeworthy aversion when it gets used in fashion; but with regards to this style, I feel like it works: "If you've got it, flaunt it."

Peplum Pride

I feel a little short off the mark here, but my goodness, aren't peplums everywhere? No, but like really. I'm a serious advocate of the charity/vintage shop, so sometimes my vision gets blurred when an 80's shape comes back to the mainstream, because its been in my field of vision constantly, but this one really is back.

About 6 months ago it adorned catwalks, and editorials alike, taking on many manifestations, but the celebrity wearer started off as somewhat vanilla. Kate Middleton (not hating on Kate fyi) donned a grey one, Victoria Beckham pouted in a pencil skirted one, and aside from causing Kate's sizeable fanbase to embark on yet another mass shopping pilgrimage to Reiss, it didn't, on the whole make for a lasting trend.

This is probably because Kate kind of needs a peplum. She's a skinny lady, and a pencil skirt is not always the skinny lady's friend. The key to a pencil skirt, is not actually resembling a 2B. So not everyone could relate. A trend like the peplum needs the sex factor to get it across the midriffs of England on a larger scale. We need a sexy-fied connoisseur, we need to see how it fairs on a girl with some meat. aka we need to see how big it's gonna make our bums look. 

Then somewhere along the line, Liv Tyler wore the Peplum. Beyonce wore the peplum, Queen of the derriere Kim Kardashian wore the peplum; the nation was hooked. The peplum style is not going to make you look skinner. No no no. The gathered fabric around your middle, kicking out at the waist makes your bum look big. No two ways about it. And the width of your hips in comparison to your waist can look batshit cray. But who says this is a bad thing? 

Turn on every TV Channel, and we see round bums and cinched in waists, the hourglass is back people. The peplum trend is the final look embracing that, and the nation loves it. And having exaggerated curves  in a controlled way feels good. It exudes sexiness, and we're even starting to see this in editorial. The peplum goes hand in hand with the crop top in terms of styling for magazine editorial, and we're seeing skinny minis like Miranda Kerr and Raquel Zimmerman radiating with accentuated curves in magazines that wouldn't have dained to shoot such cleavage or ass before. 

It works because women feel attractive, and men find it attractive. With so many variations to the style, everyone can find a way of incorporating it so it compliments you. As long as you don't end up looking like a lost ballerina, the peplum, in my eyes, can do no wrong. 

Archive: The reality Star's Guide to Beauty

With 'Made in Chelsea' returning for it's third series on Monday, I present the reality star's guide to beauty. Taken from an article written for ‘The Muse.tv’ on 13th May 2011

I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling my weird love/hate relationship with my television taking on more of the ‘hate’ at the moment. ‘The only way is Essex’ has been followed by ‘Made in Chelsea’, which is soon to be followed by what I can only describe as an embarrassment to our fair isle; ‘Geordie shore’. Oh dear. 

Don’t get me wrong, I am guilty in indulging once in a while in the kind of American vacuous ‘scripted reality’ that have spawned these region based British counterparts; first there was ‘Laguna Beach- the real orange county’ (inspired by the hugely successful fictional drama ‘the OC’), then there was ‘The Hills’ (following the young life of Lauren 

Conrad; a woman that started as a girl on Laguna Beach), then there was ‘The City’ (another spin-off featuring Whitney Port; the one that was slightly more edgy) Then there were a million others, and my IQ was halved. 

Laguna beach started in 2004, and I became aware of it via MTV, probably around 2005, so that gives me a solid dose of 6 years of rubbish swilling around my head, and although I wasn’t ever the biggest fan, I found it a funny kind of escapism, middle ground between a sitcom and a documentary but now that’s all changed. Why is it that this type of TV only now is starting to really bother me? I think the answer is pretty clear. All these programmes have been up until now very far removed. 

I I don’t live in LA or on a Californian beach, nor do I conduct my life around long lunches with girlfriends to gossip/snipe/catfight about the night before and then storm off to my waiting white BMW/Range rover. Its not real life, its just something to laugh at and turn your brain off to and I’m very happy with that. But Essex isn’t LA, neither is 

Chelsea, or for that matter Newcastle. Their all within a short travelling distance, they’re not far-removed and they’re all part of the social make-up of Britain. But these people don’t seem to be removing themselves from hollywood, living in a dream world of boob jobs, scandal and fakery that I don’t associate with the Britain I love, but I think others don’t see it that way.

With this weeks episode of The Muse.TV surrounding beauty, I thought I’d take a minute to examine the ‘Scripted reality’ star’s ‘guide to beauty’ (if you will). When I was filming the latest episode, within the beauty industry, I found professionals who were dedicated to artistry, care of the skin, and not drastically changing what you have, but 

highlighting it. The make-up artists were really pushing the idea of a base for your skin, a primer to allow less actual layers of make-up, and care for the skin underneath. But when was the last time you heard of this kind of regime on TV? no. No no no no no. If I was a make-up artist I’d be throwing my eyelash curlers at the screen in frustration.

To achieve the beauty standards of the scripted reality star, one must start not with a rejuvenating primer, or a good moisturiser but it seems invasive surgical procedures. In ‘The Hills’ these procedures were actually totally ignored by producers, and the viewer was just supposed to assume the way its stars filled their bikinis was genuine. But British reality stars have never been known for their subtlety; ‘The Only Way Is Essex’ could probably be defined by the identicat faces of its female characters, and makes no qualms about openly glamorising surgery and other forms of extreme beauty treatments. There is talk of botox parties, boob jobs, and even mention of the tanning injections

‘melanotan’, which has links to cancer, and causes chronic nausea; but as the buxom and bronzed Amy Childs says “you look good all the time!” 

Amy Childs is I would say the UK ambassador of this guide. She jokes about needing boob holes in the massage table of her beauty salon to cater for all the boob jobs in Essex, and when looking for an assistant wants a clone of herself- into fake tan, boob jobs and cheek fillers. She’s recently been photographed outside of the parameters of the programme dressed in a replica outfit to one worn by Katie Price, so this gives an idea of the genre of ‘beauty’ she puts herself in. I’m not for a minute suggesting that Amy Childs and the rest of the cast of ‘The only way is Essex’ are solely to blame for what I see as portraying harmful and invasive procedures as commonplace, but with 1.55 million viewers of the itv2 programme surely its something to question? 

In the end I wouldn’t class my scripted reality star’s guide to beauty as ‘beauty’. The people in the industry I’ve met aren’t promoting a necessity to cut, jab, and inflate to look your best, it should be something fun and experimental, and as much as these programmes promote surgery and other extreme procedures as this, this is obviously not the case. Each to one’s own, and surgery does work for some people, but it is not the same as putting on eyeliner, or using a highlighter product to enhance your assets, no matter how accessible and acceptable it becomes. 

To conclude, I’d like to turn to a woman who has long fascinated me, and is perhaps who I regard as the first glaringly obvious tragedy of scripted reality programmes. If Amy Childs is the princess, she is the queen, and if we can learn anything the portrayal of beauty in these programmes, its from reality veteran Heidi Montag. After starring in MTV’s ‘The Hills’ from 2006-2010, Montag became completely unrecognisable from the fresh faced girl whose naivety and girl next door looks had defined the programme. At the peak of her surgery she underwent ten procedures in one day including brow-lifts, ear-pinnings, a chin reduction, as well as a second rhinoplasty and second breast augmentation. Her surgery wasn’t mentioned on the show until well into its development, but her face and body were changed dramatically for the viewing public, explicitly talked about or not. Montag is just a year older than me (now 24, but 22 when the main bulk of her surgery was carried out) and has been described as being thrown head first into a Barbie factory. 

In 2010 Heidi spoke of her regret of the procedures she underwent. “Parts of my body definitely look worse than they did pre-surgery. This is not what I signed up for.” She adds, “I definitely think I should have been way more informed. I think that doctors should really walk you through all aspects of it, not just the glamorous side of it. Doctors, it’s like they’re selling you cookies or something.I would love to not be ‘plastic girl’ or whatever they call me. Surgery ruined my career and my personal life and just brought a lot of negativity into my world. I wish I could jump into a time machine and take it all back. Instead, I’m always going to feel like Edward Scissorhands”

Maybe its time to turn off.

Cat-Eye Crazy

My take on Kim Kardashian in Tom Ford's Nikita

OK, so I'm a freelancer. I work from home quite a lot, I have a little studio area, a nice big desktop, a slightly battered laptop and area where I draw and run NKOYO. I'm very lucky I can do this, but as any fellow freelancers know, this sort of set-up can cause lapses in judgement when it comes to a little light entertainment when a tea-break rolls around. Hense my obsession with the Kardashians. This isn't even a piece specifically about the Kardashians, but I feel like its my day in court when it comes to justifying my overall credibility. 


The Kardashians are (in the words of a male friend) everything that's wrong with the world. A shameless display of wealth and celebration of vacuous stupidity, a false representation of life and what should be important...but, I admit it, I'm obsessed. Its cringe-worthy decision making at it's peak, its 72 day marriages, its tantrums, its Birkins, Loubitouns and fake lashes. Its my guilty pleasure. Shoot me.


So it pains me to say that I gleaned what I reckon will be one of this summer's best accessory staples from none other than a Kardashian. It was Kourtney (she's the cold-hearted one.) And the trend was Cat-eye sunglasses. Sure, the Kardashians weren't the ones that pioneered this trend, durr, try Norma Jean, but I love how these 50's throw backs are making a come-back and having a re-work. This generation of cat-eye, are worn to complement the contrasts of the season. Not so much all, out retro, Sandra-Dee, more Rizo with a dose of attitude. The brights mixed with fluoros, the leathers mixed with drapery, the class mixed with trash (hense the Kardashian.)


From a weekend away in Paris I've seen the Kardashian sister's favourites Tom Ford's Nikita in countless windows, and on countless a lady slurping a coffee outside a boulangerie. This didn't surprise me, as they kind of surmise Paris in a spectacle; classic chic with a modern twist. They really are my choice investment for the season. 


If Tom's are a bit pricey, try River Island's for £13 squids.