The new issue of Streetwear Today is out and we’re in the shop section with our store. Nice one! On the same spread as our friends from Invisible - cagliari. Go to your local dealer to get a copy, it has some nice articles again. I especially enjoyed reading the whole Element story about Johnny Schillereff… have a look:

I’ve been following Maurice Scheltens’ work for about the last 10 years. I remember a presentation he gave together with graphic design studio 75B while I was still studying at the Design Academy (long time ago;) and lately he made some super nice new stuff. He’s a dutch photographer working in the fields of fashion, art and advertisement and works for clients and magazines like Nike, Uniqlo, Vitra, Intersection, Fantastic Man, Wallpaper, for whom he produced amazing photographs, I would say art. Maybe you’ve seen the photo of the Patta x Asics shoe in the latest All Gone book? That’s him. Besides he’s also busy with his autonomous work in which he explores the boundaries of todays visual culture. You can see all this on his site http://www.mauricescheltens.com

But first some highlights I’ve selected; This was the first image I’ve seen from him, made in ‘98, that was published in a Dutch magazine:

Last years he developed this unique style in which he succeeds creating these extreme graphic images made out of 3D products. I realy like these. Have a look yourself on the website (especially the just added series for the Uniqlo trendbook 2008)…amazing. For Nike and Vitra:

Here a bit more background stolen from his site: “Maurice Scheltens creates still-lifes that are both hyper realistic and completely artificial. Objects taken from the worlds of commerce, fashion and design are removed from their natural habitats and placed in a new environment, often exposing them to uneasy conditions. Remote controls, haute couture dresses and cut-out pictures of fruits, vegetables and plants are dangling on cords, balancing on other objects or left all alone, lost in a monochrome background.”

“For a recent series of photographs, Scheltens placed some ordinary household items - a fruitbox, a folding crate, a garbage bag - on a turn table and photographed them spinning full-speed. Paradoxically, the resulting blurry objects have a strong pictorial, almost graphic clarity: they are transformed into pure form, pure shape, pure colour. A similar ‘modernist’ aesthetics is apparent in a series of photographs for the magazine ‘Fantastic Man’. Here, Scheltens arranged a collection of knitted sweaters and scarfs in such a way that the geometric patterns and straight lines, planes and surfaces conjure up the 1920’s tradition of Russian constructivism, thus combining the lavish richness of fashion with the puritanical strictness of Modernism.”

Last week I saw the cover of latest issue of Form magazine with a photograph on the cover he did for KSwiss and guess what…our hoodie from our BigMouth Ontour collection is in it! We’re very proud to be a very small part of his work…

The 23th of may the Graphic Design Festival will start in Breda The Netherlands. It’s a new festival and for five weeks Breda will be the centre of attention for those interested in graphic design. It includes lectures, workshops and exhibitions. One of the exhibitions will be ‘Sweatshop’ where Ontour will be present. It’s gonna be a big expo about tshirts and tshirt culture and lots of designers are involved. Have a look at http://www.graphicdesignfestival.nl for more info.

We will present our largest tee ever, size XXXXXXXXXXXXXXL. Aiming for the Guiness Book we just started our first test models. It’s gonna be a patchwork overview of all our collections so far. This will be HUGE!

Hope to see you at the opening in Kop gallery, Speelhuislaan 171, Breda.

You won’t miss our tee I think.

As mentioned in previous post Menno and his team opened their second store in Eindhoven called ‘Dings’. It’s his surname, that’s why. He’s the guy behind sneakerstore T-Shu and has been selling so much Nike air max last year that he decided to open another streetwear store here in this town, focussing on clothing. He managed to transform this wrecked building into a shiny place within a couple of months, rescpect. Have a look at these picts I’ve stolen online from Michael (thanks):

The interior looks great and as Menno already promised it was ’stijve piemelwerk’. Go and have a look when you’re in the area:

Dings at Bergstraat 12. More picts on http://www.t-shu.com

And when you’re in that street anyway, also drop by Magda, Eindhovens best women store! http://www.magda-eindhoven.nl

Last week wednesday we celebrated Queensday here in Holland and the night before is also always a BIG one. This year we decided to taste a bit of Amsterdam, because the guys over there say they party hardest that night…well let’s see.

Full program that evening: first we headed to our Haarlem friends, cause shops AKA and Revert threw a party together with Obey in club Stalker.

First Hilde decided to do a bit of extreme make-over and tested her haircutting skills to a random stranger in the toilet:

Don’t cry..now it’s too late anyway…

Everybody’s happy with the result and finally ready to party

I did my best in imitating Sebas:

The King of this town, Mr. Jeroen Revert AKA Haarlem finest:

One of the reasons to show up here was this man behind the decks all the way from LA (well in fact he’s hardly ever there): Romeo from Obey and his lovely assistant Sebas the Other One:

Oh no, all the way from the East: Peter Frisco joining the gang…

At 2 we jumped into a taxi straight to Amsterdam to go to event number 2 in Bitterzoet, where Rockwell x Alife x Patta where hosting a party. For the RAP shoe you’ve probably heard about..

They already started at 8 drinking free booze so most of the people there where pretty wasted. It looked like this was gonna be a good one..

Parra Soundsystem playing, Aux Raus and ofcourse Beesmunt (every party I’ve visited in Amsterdam this year they were on the program so I’m starting to know their playlist):

Biffi’s Birthday:

Typically Bitterzoet…Vos and Aardvarck:

Typically Eindhoven in Bitterzoet:

Freshcotton Pelle…still standing up (when Biff walked away he fell down on the floor):

Time to go home…Peter imitating my move:

Enough of Amsterdam for us. So we headed back to Eindhoven after a couple of hours of sleep to celebrate Queensday over there. Too bad my batteries went out of juice…so some technical censorship on what happened over there. I did manage to take 2 blurry shots of Menno’s new store that opened that day:

This doesn’t do the store any justice so I’ll find some better images of this new store in Eindhoven that people have taken that didn’t party already the night before.