Quick street style interview

Connor snapped along the Southbank wearing beige pants, a knitted scalf, vintage hand bag and army boots.

This look is classy chique mixed with sturdy street wear.

Connor's listening to...soul, rnb, Mariah Carey.
Going out to...Oxford Street
Eating...chicken fried rice

NEW ERA 90th Birthday

Yesterday in the spacious Dray Walk Gallery (off Brick Lane), budding young artists paid homage to the 90th anniversary of the brand New Era. The now infamous cap company challenged emerging artists across Europe to design hats, styled as their artistry should dictate including a brief spiel about their work.

Ranging from hats with clocks to hats with faces to hats that were decorated with other hats the exhibition merged fashion and art in aesthetic harmony. The attention to detail in some of the finished products was incredible- one artist actually used miniature trees, model people and fake grass. Although not entirely wearable (unless Peacocking) the hats were inspired, and all great fashion grows from wacky extraverted seeds.

Particular favourites include a computer keyboard and screen cap, produced by twenty one year old Spanish artist Roser Moll Pascual. She said- “I wanted to base the design of the cap on a metaphor, making the cap become a computer. As well as a computer, ‘New era’ caps changed the market 90 years ago and they still do. Good inventions never end but evolve and improve.”

Despite there being tonnes of great entries, the winning hat was the weird and wonderful Craig Green’s ‘mask of masculinity’. He chose to explore the role of men in Western society using materials that referenced ideas of currency, masculinity and nature (copper having connotations to English currency and class, whilst the use of suede brings in the natural element, along with wood in reference to hunting and nature). The artist said he wanted to look “at the outdoorsman; hunter gatherer and the boyhood fantasy of adventure”. Creating a cap that is as much about culture as it is about escapism who would have thoughts hats could go so deep!

New Era is undecided as to whether few of the designs will be manufactured but their cap exhibition proves a lot of exciting art is happening at the moment and projects like this are a great way to get it recognised- hats off to hats! The exhibition is open to the public over the weekend.