Before I begin my rant on what was an awesome weekend, I have to extend a huge thank you, congratulations and props to Andrew Montell and the rest of the crew at Acclaim Mag, you have created the best thing that has ever happened to streetwear in Australia, Buffet the corner stone in the building of a broader community amongst Asia-Pacific streetwear aficionados, , which in my opinion can only be a good thing and something that you cannot put a dollar value on, I hope to see this event continue to grow in the future, as I am sure it will.
Friday saw us dragging our arse’s out of bed at 5am, to catch a bus at 5:30, which inevitably was late and then transferred across to a different bus which left at 5:50, bus trip for about an hour then smashed down the worlds shittest coffee at Seymour train station, got on the train and rolled in to Melbourne some time around 10. It was cool coming through the suburbs on the train, slowly as you got closer to the city the graff gets better and better, there are definitely some burners along that line!
“If you can’t sell it, you have to eat it, that’s why i want to open a bakery in my store” Frank Liew’s philosophy on having too much product
After a bit of a walk around Melbourne city, we arrived at Buffet, Friday was industry and media only, which was good as it made it a lot easier to network and talk to everyone, I put some faces to names and sussed out what everyone had on offer, and damn! There is some fresh shit coming up this season!
We hung around doing the whole meet and greet deal and talking shit for most of the day, then headed off to LTRHDS. The event was curated by Alex Mitchell and James Reka, basically, 26 artists of all different backgrounds were selected and each assigned a letter from the English alphabet to incorporate into an artwork. With artists like Graham Base, Luca Ionescu, Anthony Lister and Phibs, this event was destined for success, by the end of the night i’m fairly sure that most of them had sold.
“Even though it’s evolving to cut and sew, it’s not something you have to do, cut and sew is a bitch, a big, freakin bitch!” Jeff Staple on the evolution of streetwear.
The Buffet launch party was held upstairs and/or in conjunction with LTRHDS, free VB raw was flowing so i’m not too sure on the details, Mafia was rockin’ the decks, and mother fucker it was hot up in there! By the end of the night everyone was a wet and sweaty mess, haha, needless to say things got messy, thirst’s were quenched and lots of laughs were had.I read somewhere once that “the best deals go down at the after party” and i’ve got to say, who ever said that was right on the money.
Day two began drunk from the night before…After a big juice and some coffee, we were off to Buffet to get our photo on, my camera wasn’t working properly, combined with the fact that i’m a nothing more than a hack when it comes to taking photos, I don’t think that I got too many decent shots, lucky Nicky came through with the goods.
One thing that was bought to my attention over the weekend was the streetwear scene in New Zealand. I think as Australian’s we are slightly ignorant and under estimate our trans-Tasman cousins and perhaps write them off as some wanna be state of Australia – But don’t get it twisted, the Kiwi’s know how to hustle!Buffet boasted a strong Kiwi contingent, and from what i gather they really have the streetwear scene on lock over there, lots of cool stores and boutique, lots of labels, not to mention the amount of NZ Expats behind labels, stores and distribution companies that are based here in Aus.
“Be your own brand, not just the brands that you carry” Caine, Heist Store.
Day two saw the beginning of the Forums, and obviously hearing the likes of Jeff Staple speak in person was amazing and insanely informative, not to mention inspirational, the dude started his entire empire breaking in to his school at night and printing tees! It was crazy seeing how attentive and captivated the audience were when Jeff spoke, there was definitely a lot of respect for him amongst that room.
“I always prefer to sit down and break bread with people, it’s when the big deals are made, though the biggest deals are always made at breakfast” Jeff Staple
Just listening to any of the speakers was a humbling experience for me, knowing that the heavy weights of the streetwear industry are having the same thoughts about you in regards of what to and what not to do is very reassuring.
“I wasn’t gonna have a global business sitting in Fitzroy drinking Chai, smoking a rock” – Woody, Sneaker Freaker.
I definitely walked away a lot richer in knowledge and with a different perspective on a lot of things. Staple was excellent as I said, but in my opinion Frank Liew was the stand out speaker of the forums, his presentation was brilliant, and I think he was the most effective in getting his point across to the audience, not taking anything away from any of the other speakers, I learnt so much from every single one of you and for that I thank you.
On problems faced when owning your own company, “Fuckwits. Make a douche bag list, so when you get big enough you don’t have to deal with those people” Nick, Second Family Dist./ FreshIn
On that note, hearing how real and down to earth everyone who spoke was, was really cool, no one was trying to pull the whole elitist deal, it was rad seeing hearing peoples personalities come through, even in the more pre planned presentations.
I could go on forever, but I will wrap it up and let the pics do the rest of the talking, speaking of pics, you might see some new names and faces around here at thslfe, Nicky Proctor and Michael Danischewski have come on board and will be posting pictures and keeping things fresh, thslfe is moving forward this year, get pumped!
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