Volcom Store Launch @ Boxpark, Shoreditch

We headed over to the Boxpark pop-up mall in Shoreditch on Thursday evening (March 22, 2012) to check out the new shipping container space now filled with Volcom goodies. With free beer from Budweiser, music pumped out through the store and an exclusive collaboration line out for the ladies, there was plenty to see.

Volcom x POSSO dress

Our party buddy Lindsay from CultureLabel made a beeline for the new POSSO range, designed and inspired by the LA female DJ duo of the same name. The line references 90s silhouettes, with long-sleeved crop tops and an awesome leatherette body con dress with a low back and tie detail. Yum.

Artwork ceiling that we loved

 For the boys, the brand is continuing to do what it does best: tees, caps and well-cut jeans sat alongside their range of spring jackets and rep that Volcom, easy-going aesthetic. There were some great printed tee designs on show, as well as a line of slim fit trousers in a variety of colours with discreet and tasteful logo detailing. 

Transfer tats on display

All in all we had an ace time, and definitely have our eye on a few items that particularly shone out. Much love to Carly at Canoe, and to the legendary boy who opened all our beers with his special trick. Head to Boxpark Unit 13, on the ground floor, too see the Volcom wares yourself.

photos © Tshepo Mokoena

Lazy Oaf SS12 Launch Party

Last night the lush team at Lazy Oaf opened their store doors to a horde of post-LFW troopers and other fans of the brand, for their new line's launch do. There was free Rekordelig cider, the transfer tattoo bar that's quickly becoming their event signature and a 10% discount on all items bought from the new collection.

They've come out with new dress and slob tee shapes for the ladies, as well as their first ever short-sleeved mens button-up shirts. Needless to say, they've brought the heat once again. Their lovely store manager Steph clued us in on Club Tropicana and colourful fruit being big influences on the ladies' line (see her in the Mixed Fruit Crop Shirt below) and rocked the look herself.

Staying true to their bright graphic prints and tongue-in-cheek humour (see the awesome Barfman tee), the brand looks set for another great season. Lazy Oaf assistant manager Paul also said the 90s were a big inspiration for the mens line, referencing Saved By The Bell, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and bold prints from the decade.

Shout out to Stefan

All in all we had a great time chatting to the Lazy Oaf fans milling around the shop, and it was cool to bump into Alex from The Daily Street as we passed through. Big shout goes to Jerry, as ever, and thanks to the rest of the LO crew for having us. Now go forth and shop: the new drop is available in the online store now.

photos © Tshepo Mokoena and Lazy Oaf

Red Stripe Launch

Red Stripe brings their 'Make a Red Stripe' launch this Wednesday 16th November 2011.
Made from thousands of recycled Red Stripe cans collected at this year's Notting Hill carnival, Suzuki's immense fully functioning 2.5m high sound sculpture draws inspiration from towering, bass heavy Jamaican sound systems.

Taking place: Village Underground 16th November, 6.00-10pm
Full details here.

Win VICE.com Launch Party Tickets

Well, congrats are in order to our pals over at VICE: they finally got their domain name back from the creepy porn site that used to own it. Calls for a party, no?

It calls for a mega-party, in fact. Now that VICE have bid a fond farewell to Viceland.com, they're taking over an East London warehouse space for a ridiculous-sounding night next Thursday (September 22nd). The wondrous Tom Vek, Factory Floor and Iceage are already confirmed on the bill, with DJs playing til the lights come up at 1am.

They'll be giving away free tickets to the party here soon, so keep checking back to get the chance to party it up with us. See you then.

CIRCA at The Nest

Tomorrow night the lovelies at Circa and Stoke Newington's Nest are hosting a massive night of live music and dancefloor-filling DJs. Anything goes pretty much, and it will be kicking of from 8pm until 2am. Check out the details below, and for £3 before 10pm we'll see you there.

Circa__Phase 1__Feat. Script by Circa_beats

Here's a playlist from Script, one of the Djs who'll be getting you out your seats later tomorrow night. Check out the CIRCA site for links to the other awesome-sounding acts.

55DSL x Alex Fakso

Photographer Alex Fakso has teamed up with 55DSL creative director and friend Andrea Rosso to make the greatness that is the FAST OR DIE project. We checked out the Fakso store takeover on Thursday night, and can confirm that the line looks awesome.

 Fakso's photographic style marries really well with the 55DSL brand. He's been behind the lens since he was barely a teen, when he started snapping pictures of his own street art work at thirteen. Now this collection uses shots from his travels across the globe, where he captured urban portraits, cityscapes and the graffiti that adorn them.

Six limited edition tees printed with images from Fakso's latest photography book FAST OR DIE are on the racks now at 55DSL stores worldwide. You can get them and the book and online here, here and here.

Interview with Jerry from Lazy Oaf

At yesterday’s Lazy Oaf SS11 launch, Deerbrains was privileged enough to catch the lovely Jerry from Lazy Oaf to talk about crazy promo video ideas, pet hates and the influence of music on this season’s collection. You can check out their new SS11 collection which is launching online Tuesday 26th and available in store till August 2011.

Name: Jerry O' Sullivan
Age: early 20s
Location: London
Website: http://www.lazyoaf.co.uk/

To those who haven’t heard much about Lazy Oaf, where did it all begin?

It started off with our designer Gemma Shiel, who finished uni doing textile design, and then she started hand screen printing t shirts in her spare time and selling them on a market stall in Spitalfields. It just developed from there really. This year we’re celebrating our 10th anniversary as a brand, so that’s in October, so there’ll be a big party for that.

What about other graphic designers, do you have any favourites at the moment or particular pet hates about different designs?

There’s some good graphic design stuff happening at the moment, I don’t think there’s a huge amount in the UK of graphic design focused fashion labels for girls. It’s a lot of men’s t-shirts and there are some really good ones, but its more from freelance illustrators who turn designs into t shirts ... I guess we used to do a lot of cartoony and more pun driven designs. There are too many t shirts with logos slapped all over them and clichéd phrases, and we’re over that – there’s just too much of it.

Yeah, especially when Topshop and H&M tapped into it... There’s a lot of cross prints in your SS 11 collection, do you think this witch-house electro ‘explosion’ has merged into today’s trends?

Yeah, I can’t pinpoint the exact stem of that trend, it’s suddenly like everyone’s going a bit Goth. I think it was a bit of a reference from 90s grunge; sort of like going back to 90’s films like ‘The Craft’. I think our designer was looking a lot at the films she used to watch from when she was a teenager for her inspiration... music probably has had an impact, but I’m not sure of the exact reference of it. Our designer just literally goes home, draws loads of stuff and designs, so I guess you get influenced by a lot of different things. I think being in East London, surrounded by lots of different trends, you pick up different concepts.

You also stock sellotape adorned in various prints and diaries etc, how did this all come about?

We’ve always stocked other brands stationary and we stocked this really good Japanese tape that had cakes and stuff on it. Everyone went mad for it, so we thought why don’t we turn our own designs into tape, and so we just did 3 designs and they’ve gone really well.

 It must’ve been especially snapped up by the younger customer. Since you did used to have cartoon inspired prints, do you think you’ve attracted the younger audience and are struggling to tap into the older market?

Yeah, but I think our younger audience have kind of grown up with us now and been with us for 5 years. So when we started off, it was around 13-18 years, and slightly older guys. Now they’re 16-20, so they want to look a bit more fashion forward and they’re looking at lookbook and all those kind of things. So we’ve tried to grow up with them and also get an older market because we’re all in our 20s, and want to design clothes we want to wear. I think we’ve just reached a point where we don’t want to wear fitted t shirts and cartoon prints. So we were like let’s be selfish and design collections we really want to wear... as well as hopefully what our customer wants to wear.

And with the new SS11 collection, have you got any promo videos coming up?

Yeah but it’s not launched until May. We went to Spain to shoot our SS11 look book and our photographer Victor Voltaire filmed bits of the shoot like running into the sea and hanging out in the park and stuff like that.

Nice, if you were to come out with a crazy idea for promo video that would completely take Lazy Oaf out of its comfort zone, what kind of stuff would it include?

I reckon it would involve food. I can imagine a giant keg and someone jumping out of it or some kind of giant burger food fight because a lot of our stuff’s fast food orientated. But because we do have quite the young customer we have to keep it slightly tame just so their mums are kept happy too.

And obviously we’re at your launch party. How do you think it’s all going? Was it really stressful to organise?

It’s turned out pretty good, wasn’t too stressful. The main thing was waiting for the collection to arrive. We have all the ideas and all the designs but it’s always the manufacturing which is sometimes unreliable. It’s been nice working with Kopparberg and the girl who does our cakes, Lucy Vanilla. WAH nails have also been amazing. It’s so nice to bring other people in and brings a new element to this event where rather than us all come along to the shop, our customers are getting something out of it as well. It has been very girl orientated – I think that’s because of the nails.... and probably because our new collection’s more fashion forward.