Streetlab summary..

It’s already been two weeks ago since the first Streetlab festival in Amsterdam ended. Now finally the summary from my side…I took so many picts that I kinda lost interest in resizing and adjusting them all for the blog. Besides we’re in the middle of the sales season and building up our store. Anyways, no excuses, here we go!

A massive update and summary of what was popping these 4 days in Amsterdam. You have to know I like Amsterdam and I stayed there for 4 nights. But I’m from Eindjegramma, the dirty South and Amsterdam kills me. Too many parties, especially that weekend. Well, look at the picts and you’ll see the struggle.

A bit of background about Streetlab: Streetlab is an initiative from the Cultuurfabriek and the community of Amsterdam to support new developments in art, fashion and streetculture. During the last 2 years they’ve organised several events in which they’ve highlighted mainly upcoming Dutch designers. The ‘grand final’ of this project was Streetlab; a 4 days festival at the Westergas area bringing lots of national and international up and coming labels together, besides initiatives as Sneakerpimps, Untitled and Rendez Vous all under one roof. The westergas is a beautiful area with industrial monuments and all shows were hosted in different buildings and outside, close to the city park.

Okay, back to reality. The Ontour crew, enlarged for this occassion, had to leave our lovely town early on thursday morning cause we had to build up our booth. The set up was a bit different then usual: no big white empty halls where everybody had to build their most impressive stands. No, everybody had to present their shit in a sea container and you could do whatever you wanted with it. We decided to do something different then just nicely present our new collection on tables. Besides, on a practical note, I didn’t want to be stuck in this container the whole weekend explaining about what we do and why and being on the lookout for our stuff…So we decided to approach it more like an installation that supports our upcoming A/W07 collection themed ‘Hide Ontour’. We wanted to create something that’s hard to find but when you pay attention and discover our booth, it leaves a striking image from our brand behind. So, how to do that?

Here a DIY guide how to create a booth that no one will notice on a big fair! Hopefully this will become a trend in the tradeshow community, so next time I go to Bread and Butter I don’t have a headache after 15 minutes from all the visual impact my brain absorbs. Step 1:

Bring out Rop and Cosmic Crack to completely empty your space and start making it pitch black..

Step 2: double check that your booth is transforming into a dark never ending tunnel.

Step 3: a big fuck off to all over-designed booths with too much content and clutter..

Step 4: bring or steal some serious tools to create the right size surfaces to close and completely hide your space..

Step 5: a very important detail; drill some Red Light district peeping holes for those who know

Step 6: paint everything black black black..

Step 7: install one item in your complete black space and use half a sphere as ‘head’

Step 8: project some mind blowing animations on this sphere. Again: keep it simple.

Step 9: the final touch: close the container with the black surfaces and add one detail. In our case a Venice mask graphic.

Close up. You can hardly see that you can look through the mask to the inside..

But when you look through, you’d see a spaced out animation of eyeballs projected on the ‘head’ on top of our new hoody.

The effect was really powerfull and spooky, but I guess most visitors missed it…but hey, that was the concept right?

Inside view of enlarging eyeball!

Instead of big screaming fonts, we used very subtle graphics in the corner.

We also released a new booklet based on the ‘Hide’ theme. I’ll drop some inside picts soon!

Those who know - know now

Then the first party started…first the official opening in the area with our hidden container. Bumped into some friends I didn’t see for a while and ofcourse all other usual suspects.

We also made beer mats to go with our installation and we used the infamous eyeball as print. And this kinda began a life on its own that night…have a look and see if you recognise yourself in the Flexbar with Ontour eyes on..

Everybody was popping!!

Big C-yclops!

Multivision!

Cyclops Half Ear!

Triclops!

Ben-Gyclops!

All eyes on me..

As you can see it all went downhill from here and my girlfriend already prepared for that by putting the helmet on so crashing was allowed..

Hi jerney, hi Lijfstijl, hi Man on the Moon, hi Freshcotton, hi

Well, me and these two guys stayed a bit longer, and this was how I felt like the next morning at the festival:

Bumped into Soulland Silas. Fresh and fruity preparing his afternoon lecture. The teacher will begin to speak…

Fats was in town! Having a chat with Martin Untitled / Streetwear Today, well you know who he is I guess. Bringing some knowledge and proper standards to Streetlab with the Untitled expo.

Fats infected with the eyeball virus

Outside the Rendez Vous expo was given shape..

Flying Fortess with Miss Van in the mix

Some good stuff from Holland:

The Little League all the way driving from Eindhoven with their mobile shop:

Soullander vs NumberNine:

And this is the risk these guys take with wearing exclusive sneaks haha:

B-Boying with the Soulland crew all the way from CPH and NumberNine all the way from Harlem:

Dope piece in front of the sneakerpimps expo by concrete genius Juse from I Have pop.com

There surely wasn’t a Hide theme going on in here…Sneakers sneakers sneakers everywhere you could look. Very subtle.

IRAK: a pig is a cop

Hall of fame with the Dutch conaisseurs and their fridges..

And then straight from the poster into the timewarp into real life:

These Lijfstijl guys broke the record of going back and forth between Amsterdam and Rotterdam in one weekend, to be sure not to miss any party..respect!

Some shots of the Untitled expo and some photo expos. Very laid back area, nice and cosy, gezellig, as we would say in Dutch.

Some Haze drawings..

Some amazing Maiden Noir stuff…really nice

Some Mark Gonzales doodles..

Stussy World Tour designs..

Suburban Bliss! I like…

Then the second evening started. For me it started round 5 o clock already. Again some good people. Here La Melodia who just fixed a sponsorship deal with Jesse Freshcotton.

Romeo Obey and Seabass in the Damsko! These guys know how to party.

Our hidden container was still going strong..

YOU CAN RUN BUT YOU CAN’T HIDE!

Part 2 of the eyeball extravaganza:

After a while we couldn’t see very clear anymore and went to Jimmy Woo, famous for its wack crowd but we were lucky and bumped into:

The good people from Denmark; WoodWood and Soulland.

Welcome in Holland!

The day after I took some picts of the Soulland booth. Some very nice new pieces ‘coming soon’!

Gorilli Clique from Rotterdam represent:

Bernie and Nick from Spread magazine showed a nice documentary they made a few years ago. I had a short feature in it and talked about starting up a label. Quite funny to see this a few years later (I’m glad it wasnt busy in the cinema!):

Ofcourse some BMX outside:

And some next level fixed bikes:

That evening we had to hide our container even more, because a big party was going to take place in the same area..

But first a small fashion show on the catwalk by Mr. Silas and team:

Then, for the 3rd night, I could not escape…our friends from Re-Issue joined the DirtyDirtyDirty..

Another diehard with a vengeance: Big C and Hardcore Supplies Mr. DC

Frisco Arnhem joined forces, so fasten the seatbelts

Slammer Slamson and Rob Eastpack ready to Rock n Roll!

Part 3…

Zoolander FC and Frisceau

The Fatsarazzi from Tilburg!

I say RE-ISSUE!

goodnight!

Sunday, I visited the Modefabriek in another part of town. A more commercial fair where my girlfriend designed the Superstore: a 400 sqm space with dope designs, furniture, clothing, jewelry, books etc. Check it out:

We also showed some pieces from our upcoming A/W07 Hide collection here:

Then there was the last evening for me..sunday evening. Obey x Freshcotton x Patta x Ben-G party in Bitterzoet…well, I can’t resist this one. So with my last bits of energy showed my face over there.

Obey marked its territory outside the Bitterzoet.

Pelle behind the decks. He is the master of the wheels of steal FOK IT!! (this is a Dutch joke…check out Hollands finest dj Jean in youtube and you know;).

Roams Obey behind the decks!

Party was nice, but as you can see me and my girl were death..We had an awesome time but now it was really time to go home to our peacefull city of Eindjegramma.

Thanks everybody who were so kind to give us shelter and party with us!!

Peace, R.

More Streetlab reports on these blogs: