VG包起來 / 2021 Happy 牛 year！這20款「牛包」好牛逼，過年就拿來裝紅包！

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新的一年就想換換身上的行頭開開運！迎接2021年牛年，精品品牌們紛紛推出牛年專屬包款，從可愛牛牛造型零錢包到托特包，各種尺寸、造型，滿足想藉由換新包開運的大家，以下VOGUE精選20款「牛逼包」，不論送禮或自用，絕對是拜年超吸睛包款！

牛年小知識：你知道嗎？牛年英文不是Year of Cow，而是Year of the Ox。

2021年十二生肖上半年【財運】解析！

英國小眾品牌Strathberry也推出結合了蘇格蘭高地牛和恰逢牛年的元素而成的新年限量款，以醒目的寶石紅色搭配迷人的蘇格蘭氣息來慶祝農曆新年牛年。高地牛，也稱作Heilan Coo（蘇格蘭語）以其溫順的性格與它標誌性的毛茸茸長毛髮而聞名，是蘇格蘭的備受喜愛的象徵。

小牛吊飾 £95 »這裡買

STRATHBERRY NANO 大容量手提鏈包 £325.00»這裡買

MAFS RECAP: Who Wants To Tell Bryce’s M8s That They Accidentally Blew His Cover On National TV

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Welcome back to another trip ’round the hell-pit, MAFS fiends! Tonight is something called “final dates”, which sounds an awful lot like one of those A Walk To Remember situations – are the producers going to kill everyone at the end of the season?! Wouldn’t put it past them. Let’s get stuck in!

Everyone is doing the customary post-commitment ceremony breakfast debrief, surrounded by various product placements. Stop trying to get me to drink [squints] Sienna & Joms, MAFS!

ah, delicious tsuJ thgiR

Bel and Pat are closer than ever, because of course they are! I truly love that MAFS definitely cast them as comic relief (a la Beth and Russ) but despite the odds they have forged a real connection. Sea witch and Mathlete: a match made in mean-spirited reality TV heaven.

Melissa, meanwhile, is still visibly elated after Bryce told the room last night that he was “falling in love” with her. I am very deeply skeptical about this but I also want our lost intergalactic empress to be happy so I will say, from between clenched teeth… good for her.

bleurgh

Resident emotionally-turbulent root rats Alana and Jason both decided to stay last night, but are still sleeping in separate rooms. They’re taking things slowly while the lizard tries to rebuild his trust in Hot Teacher. I simply cannot blame them for this and despite all my reservations wish them nothing but happiness.

Anyway who cares, apparently the number one MAFS gossip item is Bec totally blindsiding Jake last night by writing LEAVE. How many times do I have to say this!!! She is an elemental being made of ice and disdain who cares not for the pleasures of the flesh or the joys of emotional closeness! All she wants is to say mean things and look hot while doing so and us mere mortals should not stand between her and her chilly desires!!!

restore me to my throne of frost or perish

What’s this though? Something has touched the icy royal heart? Aww no! Bec’s dog is sick! She has to go home to take care of him! Awwww no don’t make me actually sad you guys!!! Don’t bring real dog lives into this!!!!

Bec needs to leave because she’s a good dog mum, and Jake is 100% supportive because he’s a good human being. It’s bad timing, but what can you do? She reckons she might not even come back. Take your chance for freedom, Your Majesty! Grab the dog and run!!!

no bullshit experiment is gonna come between the ice queen and her puppy

For everyone else on the MAFS set, it’s their last chance to convince their partner that they’re worth all this time, effort and humiliation: FINAL DATES. God it’s ominous. Not helped by Expert Mel doing her best Satan’s minion impression.

if Hell had a head of HR

Pat is wrapping an obscure something that’s intended to demonstrate his romantic feelings towards Belinda. The secrecy and his total ineptitude with gift-wrapping combines to imbue this activity with a very threatening aura.

cursed

Meanwhile, Johnny is doing cute stuff for Kerry, like leaving her a bunch of her favourite flowers. Obviously they’re sunflowers, because the gal is nothing if not uncomplicated. He’s taking her on a date to (where else) the theatre!!!

Back in Mathlete HQ, Bel has discovered her inexpertly-wrapped gift. The note accompanying it confirms my greatest fears: it is a garment. Or garments. If this is lingerie I’m going to throw myself under a truck.

Thank CHRIST I get to live another day: it’s a t-shirt!!!

“Middle Aged Football School”?

It says her name on it. It’s adorable. My relief is overwhelming. Off she goes in the MAFS limo to… some big fucken sports field. The producers drag her into the middle of the oval, and here comes Pat, sneaking up behind her with – what’s this? A MARCHING BAND!?! King of the Nerds!! KING!!!

if euphoniums be the food of love, play on

Ohhh my god this is enormous 80s teen movie shit and I am HERE FOR IT. Surprise cheerleaders? Patrick with silver pom-poms? A bad cartwheel? Fucking slay me, you magnificent dorks!

you may not like it but this is what peak male performance looks like

And a bunch of roses to the producer who greenlit this psychotic display. Belinda is so into it. She’s seen movies! She knows what love looks like!! If Pat doesn’t get laid after this, I’ll banish the sea witch back to her watery kingdom myself.

who’s the Toddlers and Tiaras champ now, huh?

Back in the hotel tower of torment, Jake is cementing his Perfect Man status by doing a bit of stress-cleaning to deal with Bec’s sudden departure.

that’s right, mummy likes a clean boy

Blah blah, he’s still hopeful that they’ll work things out, he wants her to miss him – she’s gone! Let her go! Come over immediately so I can console you! GOD.

READ MORE Booka From MAFS Serves Passive Aggressive Vibes With Live Performance Of Song About Brett

Meanwhile Bryce’s surprise last date is to take Melissa back to his hometown of Canberra so she can meet his friends. Dreadful. I hate it. She’s obviously absolutely thrilled at the prospect of being further isolated from her own support network.

As the voiceover lady intones, though, this is also a chance for Liss to see if Bryce actually DOES have this secret Canberra girlfriend that was the subject of all those rumours a couple weeks ago. Yes! Give me the SCOOP!!!

“Canberra’s in the middle of bloody nowhere,” says Liss, not even trying to disguise her extraterrestrial origins any more.

Canberra: the fuck-off city

Bryce wants to take Liss to lunch to meet his good friends Jason, Elly and Michaela. He says Jason is “the gay best mate you have to have”. Charming. They sit down in a deserted high rise for a totally-not-staged interrogation. Jason in particular needs to know what’s been going down in the experiment.

READ MORE The MAFS Blokes Made Absolute Turkeys Of Themselves At An Event Thrown In Their Honour

Liss is like, Uh, well, Bryce has been involved in a lot of… confrontations. She tells them about the water-chucking incident, and then reveals that there was a rumour about a girlfriend outside of the experiment. There’s a lot of queasy music and sideways glances from Elly and Michaela. Jason’s like… how did this start? Bryce’s complexion begins its rapid calibration with the colour of his shirt again. Why does he keep wearing red?

because he is a fucking clot, that’s why

Liss says she obviously believes Bryce, and then the brick in question conveniently goes to “get drinks” (from whom? There is definitely no-one else here). Everyone immediately leans forward and is like, But how are you really.

She says she’s “rapt” with Bryce. Gross. And also: if she really were rapt, why is she asking his three closest friends to tell her if there’s actually any truth to the girlfriend rumour? Not the actions of a woman/alien who implicitly trusts her idiot partner!

judges you in minor celebrity

We’re kept salivating for a little longer on this front, though, ‘cos back in Sydney Johnny is treating Kerry to some extremely musical theatre bullshit.

the PHAAAAAAAANTOM of the opera is heeeeeeere

I mean, sure, it’s just a rug and some pillows under a spotlight in the middle of an empty theatre but it’s about the VISION, darling, the DRAMA, the THEATRICALITY of it all! SHOW BUSINESS, ahahaha!

Johnny talks for what feels like forever about how much he likes Kerry. She feels the same. We know! How many times must we be subjected to images of this balanced, respectful, deeply boring relationship. Get these two charming hotties out of my sight and into the real world.

Wow okay Channel 9 is really pushing the boat out this season: Johnny’s gift to Kerry is a Louis Vuitton keyholder with her initials embossed on it and a KEY TO HIS HOUSE.

la dee fucken da

Back in the wasteland of Canberra’s finest upstairs dining establishment, Liss is trying to draw out the details from the three sphinxes in front of her. She says that Bryce’s version of events was that he was seeing someone from Tinder for a little bit before the experiment, and then he broke it off. Come on, you cagey Canberrian motherfuckers! SPILL!!!

One of the women makes this weird, tight-lipped little speech that includes a lot of words but tells us absolutely nothing. Meanwhile Jason tells the camera that uh, yeah, Bryce definitely was seeing a girl on the outside – and he can only assume that it ended when he went on the show but he hasn’t actually confirmed that with him. The man looks like he’s got a gun pointed at him and I feel an unexpected surge of sympathy.

blink twice if you need help

Bryce and Liss head off into the bustling heart of our nation’s thriving capital, and Jason, Elly and Michaela pull the rookie move of forgetting that their mics are still hot and everything that comes out of their mouths belongs to MAFS now and in perpetuity.

“Do you think he’s lied to her?” says Jason. They all agree that he probably has. With friends like these, etc.! Oh my god, and apparently the gift thing is TRUE.

pro tip: camera men are not soundproof

Wow. I mean I do love that Melissa appears to immediately elicit a protective response from literally everyone, including complete strangers/friends of her “husband”, but YIKES. Liss tells the camera that the friends’ response to her questioning was “a little unnerving”. Trust your gut, babe! Get out of there! Just wait until he slows at one of Canberra’s many roundabouts and tuck and roll!

now, Liss! now!!!

Back in Sydney, Pat has taken Belinda to some kind of forced-perspective theme park attraction. No, sorry, it’s a penthouse apartment. Boring.

heh heh i’m tiny

He’s got her a slinky black dress and some gaudy bauble fit for the new human form of an oceanic being born out of pure kelp-driven witchcraft. She is fucken stoked.

Ugh gross but now we have to go look at Liss and Bryce have a packaging-heavy picnic in one of Canberra’s many urban green spaces.

enough trash on your picnic blanket, Betty Draper?

Liss remains confused by Bryce’s friends’ cagey reaction to her questions about the girlfriend rumour. Why didn’t they just say No, absolutely no girlfriend?

“I don’t know,” lies Bryce. It’s really like some vengeful god collated all the worst qualities for a human man to have, slapped a maroon shirt on it, and punted it down here to ruin the lives of every woman watching.

“I just don’t want to be thinking about this anymore,” says Liss. “So we can move forward – there’s absolutely nothing that you need to tell me?”

“No, I’ve been so open and honest with you the whole way through the experiment,” he says, while I grope around on the carpet for the eyeballs that just fell out of my head from rolling them too hard. “Sometimes it’s been my downfall. I don’t know how to prove to you that it’s just not true.”

She says she wants reassurance, and he spouts that shit about how he’s starting to fall in love with her again. Fortunately the shine seems to be starting to wear off this particular phrase.

you earth men are all the same

He reckons he brought her to Our Nation’s Capital because he wants her to come home with him and start a family together. Revolting. Unacceptable. Grounds for dismissal, imprisonment, death, drawing and quartering. Liss is still hesitant.

“If I found out five months down the track that any of these rumours were true, I would just be completely and utterly humiliated,” she tells the camera. Golly, I wonder how that’s going to pan out for her!

Back in the theme park, Belinda and Pat have relocated to the wind tunnel and are impressing each other with their fancy clothes and ability to make themselves understood over the 100 knot gale.

I SAID YOUR OUTFIT HAS BLOWN ME AWAY

Back inside, a slightly windswept Belinda says that she’s finally getting butterflies around Patrick. The sea witch’s transformation into a human woman is almost complete! A thousand congratulations for our favourite Knight of the Times Tables.

Does this mean there’s going to be some long-awaited nerd-on-nerd action tonight? “Can I kiss you on the lipstick?” says Patrick. Well… alright.

let me steal the breath from your body real quick

Bel feels really good about her relationship. She might even be falling in love. God speed, you gorgeous dorks.

Georgia and Liam are going on their final date in an extremely schmick and similarly deserted restaurant. He’s wearing a bowtie and she’s looking the most Elle Woods she’s ever looked and I am frothing on it all, quite honestly.

the bend and snap!!!

She has a dainty little cry at the idea that Liam got all fancied up for her, because even though he’s a simply country farm boy he knows she likes fancy! The bar for men truly is on the ground but it’s nice to see my favourite flirty dad clear it.

Georgia does want to address the question of how they’re going to adjust to being a couple out in the real world. They’re both a bit nervous about it, and who wouldn’t be? This is a relationship entirely predicated on trauma-bonding via suffering through the MAFS emotional gauntlet together. Also, Liam is still worried that Georgia could have reservations about his sexuality.

“You know from the start, you being bi is not an issue, it doesn’t affect me one bit, I’m not worried about it,” she says. “But I am also aware that like, I can’t give you everything that you need – or might need, I dunno! But I don’t know that we can define that, because that’s up to you, because it depends how much – I don’t know how to put this eloquently – it depends how much you need dick in your life.”

I have spat my gin & Diet Coke all the way across the room. A crumb of this woman’s transparency and confidence, please! A molecule of Liam’s grace and generosity! Leave some good character traits for the rest of us plebs!!!

ha ha no

Liam reassures her that he doesn’t believe in cheating. There will be an adjustment, mostly because he’s been single for the last six years and being in a monogamous relationship is a big change! But once he’s committed, he’s with that person. He’s invested in Georgia. It might be a struggle, but he’ll never cheat on her and he won’t ask her for an open relationship either. A crown for the king, please!

“I think we are unconventional, we are different, that’s what makes us work,” he says. I couldn’t agree more.

it’s noice, it’s different, it’s unusual

Back in the penthouse suite, Patrick and Belinda are in the bath, both wearing a lot of each other’s lipstick.

the sea witch likes a pretty boy, yes she does

Ah the bath: the site of so much of this pair’s trauma. Seems like this time around it’s a helluva lot more comfy than their initial honeymoon tub sesh (remember the feet clapping? Would that I could forget!). In fact, Belinda is open to “going all the way” tonight. Congratulations! Can we cease our surveillance of these guys’ sex life now?

READ MORE One Of The MAFS Brides Is Already Trying To Offload Her Wedding Dress On Facebook Marketplace

With the slam of the bathroom door, that is the end of this high-budget but surprisingly low-drama episode. Tomorrow, though, we’ve got the return of all the original contestants, Coco in a ravishing white jumpsuit, Bryce getting his ugly ass handed to him by Pig Sam yet again, and Samantha swanning in with a secret that Melissa is not going to like. Fuck. Yes. See you then, gremlins!!!

Cover Story: Virgil Abloh & Shayne Oliver In Conversation

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Lead Image

This article is taken from the Spring/Summer 2021 issue of AnOther Magazine. To celebrate our 20th anniversary, we are making the issue free and available digitally for a limited time only to all our readers wherever you are in the world. Sign up here. It was a T-shirt that predicted fashion’s future. That T-shirt was an off-the-cuff collaboration in 2012 between upstart New York label Hood by Air, founded in 2006 by Shayne Oliver and Raul Lopez, and Been Trill, the art and DJ collective that included Virgil Abloh (then best known for his label Pyrex Vision), Heron Preston, who launched his eponymous brand in 2017, and Matthew Williams, who founded 1017 Alyx 9SM in 2015 and, last year, became creative director of Givenchy. Black and emblazoned both with Been Trill’s dripping Rocky Horror-font branding and HBA’s logo, it had an effect that, spurred on by still-fledgling social media and it being seen on Kanye West, soon snowballed beyond the garment’s intended audience, placing its creators firmly in the spotlight. An expression of downtown New York’s melting pot of music, culture, clothing and nightlife that was the backdrop for its creators, its hype-generating design foreshadowed what was to come in fashion, both literally and figuratively.

In a matter of years, graphic-driven ‘streetwear’ would dominate the industry, with luxury houses running to keep up. Oliver would win acclaim for HBA’s collections, showcased at New York Fashion Week, while Abloh would go on to found Off-White and lead Louis Vuitton’s menswear. Despite establishment approval – Oliver has taken home the LVMH Special Jury Prize and a CFDA award, and Abloh’s Off-White, bolstered by partnerships with the likes of Nike, has become one of the most coveted brands of the past decade – the two designers, both Black and American, struggled to have their work taken seriously at first, let alone understood. Oliver’s output – a confrontational blend of conceptual high fashion, hip-hop, club world and ballroom culture that resulted in voguers, Pornhub logos and double-footed cowboy boots appearing on his label’s runways – was often categorised simply as disruptive. Comments directed at Abloh, meanwhile, centred on his perceived unoriginality, or snidely accused him of not being a ‘real designer’. While Abloh has blazed a trail at Louis Vuitton, Oliver has partnered with brands including Helmut Lang and Diesel, and has just relaunched HBA, which he had put on hiatus in spring 2017. He’s also been working on Leech, a shapeshifting concept that simultaneously combines and transcends music, art, fashion and performance, and Anonymous Club, the multidisciplinary creative studio and talent incubator that develops all of HBA’s visuals and content – as well as collaborating with resident artists and other partners. But all Abloh and Oliver’s work is a continuation of the conversations they started years ago, when discussions of race and identity remained conspicuously off the fashion industry’s radar. Through it all, they have stayed friends. And when AnOther Magazine asked Abloh who he would like to be in conversation with for this issue, he had just one suggestion.

Photography by Paolo Roversi, Styling by Ibrahim Kamara

Virgil Abloh: Legitimately, when this came through, I was like, there’s only one person I can talk to [Laughs.]. Shayne Oliver: That’s what I was thinking too. Obviously, we’ve known each other for so long. VA: We’ve been at this exact space – let’s not call it fashion, let’s just call it people producing ideas – for the past ten years. And now there’s been value placed on ‘fashion’, placed on ‘Black’, and there’s been value placed on what we identify ourselves with, and we’ve just been outputting, consistently true to ourselves, when no one was watching, all the way until now. Any questions people would have asked us ten years ago, we would answer the same now – the only thing is now it’s recorded on Zoom. SO: We met at a time in New York when everyone was crossing paths. Through meeting Matt [Williams], and really just being in the arena where ideas usually flourish, which is downtown. Not because of the cachet of downtown, but because of people just being open to each other’s ideas – everyone was sort of figuring out what they wanted to interact with, and what made sense for their worlds. With fashion, you enter it and it’s like, all for fashion. I think that was what was intriguing about that space – we had ideas to bring to fashion, but not specifically for fashion. “For 2021 the pressure’s off. There’s nothing more satisfying than instead of looking for acceptance, or looking for a fairy-tale existence, all of a sudden realising there’s no gatekeeper” – Virgil Abloh VA: When we both started, we were kind of the outsiders making noise. And then the industry started paying close attention to it. We were telling our own stories. And when people find things viable in that, they’ll call it a word, they’ll take control of it, they’ll try to make a trend. SO: And in the beginning, everyone thought it was gimmicky because no one really understood what the reference points were. Fashion likes to have pop words and things they can grab onto, to feel like they’re building a moment. So people can link adjectives to clothing, you know what I mean? VA: Right. Obviously, we’re both Black and American, which are characteristics that are important to our story, as that transcends time. It could be trendy in a moment, it could be at the forefront, then there could be an attempt to unravel it by calling it streetwear or whatever, and the cycle keeps on going. In a year like 2020, when the outside world was trying to say, “Hey, we want to be inclusive, we want to be diverse,” you could forget about the existence of the narratives that we were telling. These talents were coming through in the years before 2020, and we’re still here, we’re still creating. SO: A lot of times, fashion has dealt with Black conversations only through trend conversations. But the conversation that a Black person is having is not a one-time conversation.

Photography by Paolo Roversi, Styling by Ibrahim Kamara

VA: Right. SO: It’s like, we’re here, we’re creatives, we’re not going to be here and then go away. There are multitudes of European designers and there are multitudes of Black conversations. These conversations are valid because they’re continuous, actually, and we’ve been here for a while, trying to create that landscape for those kinds of things to be taken seriously. VA: What you see, between you and me, is two of a multitude of approaches to bearing the weight of, “You’re the trend for the moment,” or, “You’re the outlier,” or, “We’ll let you in to occupy this space.” Or, “We’ll try and trend-ify your movement.” Or, “We won’t really count it next to the European canon, but we’ll let it live just to spice it up.” What people fail to realise is that we’re often not understood. We have a huge weight to bear for our own community and our own sets of minorities that we represent. But also, on the other hand, we are often slighted, or not given the proper space to just have the idea sit. SO: That’s partially why I took a hiatus, because I want to be able to create a space for myself so that people can have a chance to speak about the world of what I represent in a more serious way than season by season … I think that, now, I’ll be able to have more of a language and conversation via my work, because people will be educated on it. VA: We could sit here all day and recap on the nuances of what the media or the critique [of our work] misses, or just its bias. The right mind can see the adjacency between myself, Kanye, Jerry [Lorenzo, of the label Fear of God], or [rising label] Bstroy, these kids in Atlanta. It’s like, we see Air Force 1s as a Tabi boot, do you know what I mean? SO: [Laughs.] Yes! VA: We see the barbershop, we see kids get shot, we see police, we were born with a different eye to the world. And then we each individually – Kanye to his, you to yours – packaged up our DNA of design. There’s a lineage between us that maybe a journalist just hasn’t put the categorical term on, but we can’t be preoccupied with that.

with mixed-stripe ribbon and cotton jersey durag by LOUIS VUITTON. Kestelmann is wearing a striped cotton poplin shirt and tie, tailored wool trousers and crushed felt fedora with mixed-stripe ribbon by LOUIS VUITTON

SO: What’s so funny is, even when it comes to design, it’s a physical feat, like a struggle, in a sense, where within the production routes you’re working with, no one even understands the things that you’re inspired by. So there’s this uphill battle of, “Why is this important? Why is this being made?” VA: Arthur Jafa broke it down in a very simplistic way. He was like, Black people are born conceptual artists. SO: Yeah. Mmm. VA: He was like, pressure creates diamonds, right? So when you’re born, you just hop on Earth at a young age and don’t understand, you don’t know, the systemic rules of the world. You only feel those when you go to school and some kid says, “You must behave like this, you must talk like this, you’re a different human being.” And then that pressure, as you grow older, it just keeps crushing down and it creates diamonds. So when we output, we conceptually do this calculation that inherently comes through our skin and our perception of our skin. So for me, instead of being hardened or pessimistic, driving myself crazy, as a profession like this can make you, that idea just sort of reorganised my operating system. “There are multitudes of European designers and there are multitudes of Black conversations. These conversations are valid because they’re continuous, actually, and we’ve been here for a while, trying to create that landscape for those kinds of things to be taken seriously” – Shayne Oliver VA: Now I always want to centralise this conversation about the missing documentation of a new voice within fashion that predominantly comes from Black culture, from pop culture, that has never been documented in a profound way. I never went to school and found a book that taught me about that in the same way I know about Leonardo da Vinci, or Yves Saint Laurent, or the way I know about Margiela. In January, I started making this sort of oracle book – it’s a figurative book, not a literal one – called Black Canon, a textbook that no one has ever made, or read, to understand why Black culture is fascinating in an artistic-production sense. SO: It’s also this idea that there is a line of people who are using the same modes of communication, and every time [one] gets broken, that research library gets erased. So we always have to redo that library and, right now, it’s about keeping that library consistent. So when kids are coming up who aren’t surrounded by those same influences, they understand that there’s… VA: …A bible that you can’t erase. Not an Instagram video, right? Like, shit happens and then it disappears. And then someone can say it didn’t actually happen, because it’s not there any more. When we were teenagers, we obsessed about shit on the internet, music videos, websites, and you realise if you type in those URLs now, they’re not there. SO: Totally.

Shirt and tie as before. Ottawa is wearing a padded wool vest, tailored wool trousers (throughout) and plastic corsage by LOUIS VUITTON. Shirt, tie and hat as before

Photography by Paolo Roversi, Styling by Ibrahim Kamara

VA: If it’s not frozen on the internet for 30 years, people will just rewrite it. So that’s what really woke me up. It’s not about what’s popping today. It’s that our archives are strong, that they are built, printed, verbalised and contextualised – that they can’t be erased. It’s like, shit, I’m at Louis Vuitton. I’m not gonna make it to Louis Vuitton and be like, “I’m not gonna come out at the end of the runway because I just don’t want that pressure.” I’m gonna do that because I want other people to see that we’re active and given the opportunity. There’s a responsibility that I have to my whole community. SO Where we’re coming from, you produce so young – the diamond pressing. We get so used to that high level of producing. Because anything that we present has to be stellar, you know what I mean? What you’re saying with this book is, whether it’s physical or not, it’s very, very important. VA: And when you zoom out, you’ll see that I was making this book this whole damn time, right? All of a sudden HBA is linked to Ye, is linked to the countless soldiers from all the parties, you know, from Total Freedom, Arca to Venus X, everything. It’s this web. People think my career might be just me, I’m just scribing in other people’s books, it’s graffiti. It’s like, we have to write graffiti on every wall. That’s the learning of a steep ten years of understanding. SO: But if it’s not documented well, the next person will have to start over, regardless of where we’re at. Period. VA: I talked to Dapper Dan and it disheartened me. This man is still alive and there’s a 14-year-old in Chicago who doesn’t know who he is. I go to Instagram, and I say, “How many kids have read this Willi Smith book [Willi Smith: Street Couture]?” They’ll be like, “What are you talking about? Show me the Raf book!” SO: In this hiatus, I was like, I need to make this moment work for me. What do I need to know about myself? Back in the day, I would be like, “Oh, it would be great if I can work with this artist.” Now, with this new phase I’m moving into, I can’t wait on that person to exist – I have to be that artist, I have to be that musician. Those years [at HBA] were my youth. People didn’t understand that that was actually my twenties. And I didn’t realise that I was the artist at the time. It took me until this year to understand that. VA: When you don’t have access to production, everything is a ready-made. I know the canon of HBA, so I know that there’s a platform Air Force 1. I’ve said it 30 times but the Air Force 1 is a Duchamp urinal. It’s a loaded object and we know what it means. We know what it means in Harlem, we know what it means downtown, we know what it means all white, we know what it means all black. We know what it means. What we’re saying is that streetwear, as a collective consciousness of production, has already run its course – it’s on its hero’s journey. I said streetwear was dead for a reason. To give me space. But also to give space to those of us who are sitting in our studios, seeing a scene that we partook in ten years ago now evolving into a multibillion-dollar business – seeing fashion houses that were trying to say that we weren’t fashion adopting our DNA. Now we’re slipping into our 2.0 mode of production.

Rayan is wearing an oversized tartan wool coat, padded wool vest, striped cotton poplin shirt and tie by LOUIS VUITTON. Kestelmann is wearing a tailored leather coat, striped cotton poplin shirt and tie by LOUIS VUITTON

SO: Mmm. VA: Now we realise that we can tap into the furthest extremities of our creative brains. It doesn’t need the wow factor of 2020, which is, “Oh shit, he collaborated with, you know, ‘legend brand’, or something we didn’t think of,” because that shit is tired. SO: [Laughs.] Yes! VA: That came from when we had no access and needed those ready-made modes of production. That’s passé now. And what I’m excited for is Leech, seeing what that is, because I have no reference for it. Or Anonymous Club, which is like mutual aid, it’s community service to the highest degree. So that younger kids don’t feel like they have to go through the gauntlet to express themselves. “I want to see this as a renaissance. I want to see some non-genre-defining amazingness, because I believe that our generation has that. I can’t wait to see what the pressure from 2020 built” – Virgil Abloh SO: What I’m hoping for with Anonymous – and speaking openly about that process – is that the kids can become more comfortable with making mistakes. I think that, right now, with Instagram, it’s just about perfection. Meanwhile, the people they look up to have flip-flopped all over the place throughout their careers. Me doing fashion concepts and all that stuff in the club world allowed me to learn about myself and learn my practice, so that I could then formalise it and do it in more of a fashion context. VA And in our ecosystem, there is no sort of discipline, and that’s what makes it unique. As long as there’s space for these ideas to exist – your music project, whatever I do – I’m happy and confident, you know? For 2021 the pressure’s off. There’s nothing more satisfying than instead of looking for acceptance, or looking for a fairy-tale existence, all of a sudden realising there’s no gatekeeper. I know what I need to create with my time. SO: It sounds so backwards to say, but you have to break a lot of disciplines in order to create a new version of a discipline. VA: Like if you have a modern car, you don’t put the key in to turn the engine on. You just push a button. Fashion is still trying to start the car with a key.

Rayan is wearing a cotton trench coat and cotton poplin shirt and tie by LOUIS VUITTON. Ottawa is wearing a sheer knit jumper with intarsia detail by LOUIS VUITTON. Shirt, tie and trousers as before

SO: To me, that wonky old key is taste, right? And it’s this idea of, “Oh, no, that couldn’t work because it doesn’t look like this key that’s in our hands, so it couldn’t be the way to turn it on!” But fashion needs to make what might be considered ‘distasteful’ moves. When conglomerates first began to invite younger designers in, it was very, “Whoa, what is that decision?” VA: What fashion before this era had was real renegades, whether that’s Gaultier or Alaïa, Galliano or Marc Jacobs, who is the forefather for me – they’re exuberant, plus, “Hey, I can do the conglomerate thing.” Those young talents are here today. You are one of them. SO: Take Margiela at Hermès. For me, that’s what started these conversations that are now so mainstay, you know, and no one’s taking those risks. VA: I think if fashion becomes a hotbed for the conversation, rather than the consumer and the trend centres dictating what’s cool, it can make those risky moves and find avant-garde, true talent that’s in the shadows. You know, there are amazing kids coming out of London, I’m sure – RCA, Central Saint Martins. But there are also kids coming from Atlanta. There are kids coming from New York, Brooklyn, the Bronx, who are Black kids, maybe with no formal training. SO: When things are running amuck, people tend to go traditional, and it’s weird to see when people take that route. We have to reflect the times. We have to create that renaissance. VA: What I’m excited about is the non-judgmental space. I don’t believe in genres, or disciplines of creativity, I like when they blur. I want to see this as a renaissance. I want to see some non-genre-defining amazingness, because I believe that our generation has that. I can’t wait to see what the pressure from 2020 built.

Ottawa is wearing a cable-effect fur jumper and cotton jersey durag by LOUIS VUITTON. Shirt, trousers and hat as before