Monday, September 28, 2009

daily inspiration #10























i love this piece by zevs, who is currently $850,000 in the hole to armani in china for adding one of these to their storefront! graffiti has always been a big love of mine, from the days of haze, futura, quik and lady pink to todays stars...watch this space for more!

Sunday, September 27, 2009

daily inspiration #9














































i have to admit to always having wanted to to be a surf bum, inspired by people like rick griffin, the man responsible for the art above, but probably more famous for his concert posters for the likes of the grateful dead...

Friday, September 25, 2009

daily inspiration #8























michael caine by david bailey. 2 icons. 1 image. timeless

Thursday, September 24, 2009

daily inspiration #7























wong kar wai's "in the mood for love". stunningly beautiful in every way. made me want to pick up a super 8!




daily inspiration #6




















richard neutra's kauffmann house...an architectural masterpiece!

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

daily inspiration #5

















la dolce vita by fellini..amazingly stylish!

Monday, September 21, 2009

el sid

the sex pistols continued to, and still do, have a huge influence on me. no matter what youth culure/ music i was into going through my teens and beyond, they were a constant. and one person in particular was my hero....sid vicious- cliché i know, but to an 11 year old boy, seeing this guy with hair spiked by sugar and water, with a leopard print tee and that oh-so-cool lived in leather biker jacket with the "i'm a mess" badge..just brilliant.
obviously he was no poster child for clean living, but he was someone living life to the excesses and i could watch from afar. but it was the clothes he wore, and of course the padlock around his neck, ( to this day i wear a chain with my wife and kids initials, and a small padlock for sid). teamed with a pair of skinny black jeans, studded belt, biker boots and a white tux jacket, to me he was the epitomy of cool. i wanted to be him , dress like him, and sing like him. it's just a shame the music gave way to the sensationalism of his life. but he could sure bring in those column inches.
coming from an irish catholic background my parents weren't that keen on my love of the pistols, so anything i did was done undercover...from a girl at school and i piercing our lips and ears with safety pins and walking around the playground for 10 minutes til we were caught (!), to hiding my never mind the bollocks album under my bed, carefully taking it out when i went to sleep!
it's odd, but where i came from, and i think in most areas, you were either pistols or the clash. i now love the clash, and think they were far more stylish than the pistols, but back then they just didn't make the cut for me. now i look at pictures of joe strummer and paul simenon ( in particular) and see just how great they really were..they had the attitude and the intellect...
the other thing i loved about these bands was that they were really into reggae. not something you'd expect from a man who spends his life on stage screaming and swearing at people, but thats england for you. working class communities were very often very mixed ethnically and people got on. they had to in order to survive, and the enemy wasn't skin colour, it was government and fight them to survive.





daily inspiration #4



probably my biggest influence, mentor and the first man to give me a job when i was 18. sir paul smith, my personal hero and a constant inspiration. i will always carry his " classic with a twist" philosophy with me.

Sunday, September 20, 2009

daily inspiration #3



the most influential designers in history?

Saturday, September 19, 2009

daily inspiration #2


the ultimate stylist, still to this day, ray petri.
this pic is of my mate felix

Thursday, September 17, 2009

daily inspiration #1


steve mcqueen by russell young. steve mcqueen = a god

early days

i distinctly remember buying my first record. i was 7 years old, and it was a gary glitter album, gatefold sleeve, with the gazzer lying a la playmate, leaning on his elbow in a silver glitter suit. michael jackson used the same pose for his thriller album, but he had his hand down his pants (no lie, check t out!). it was from a record stall in cookstown, northern ireland where my mum is from. how i loved that suit! it was at the time of bowie, mud, t-rex, and roxy music. out of those, mud were the only other band i knew.
and from then until i was 11, that was it, those glam rockers, along with a bit of my dad's rock 'n' roll- chuck berry, bill hayley and the like. in fact my parents took me to my first gig- dolly parton and neil diamond ( maybe charlie pride/ rich too?) when i was 7... i hated it! now i think neil diamond is very cool. funny how perceptions change over time.
as i was saying, until i was 11.

that was when my world exploded. again i remember exactly when and where. it was a village party for the queens silver jubilee in 1977. one of the older boys in the village drove by with his stereo blasting, in defiance of the happy mood.
he was playing "god save the queen" by the sex pistols. my head just about exploded! i'd never heard anything like it, and had to find out what it was. the next day at school one of my best friends, pete neil, brought that same record to school ( his mum was very liberal!). the newspapers that day were full of the sex pistols, as they'd played "god save the queen" on a boat on the thames the day before. they'd been arrested, and the press loathed them, but still loved to write about them!
i just saw this mad group of youths wearing clothes that were ripped, put back together with safety pins, leather jackets, (only bikers wore leathers as far as i knew then) and great printed shirts and tops. they were the coolest thing i'd ever seen. i wanted to be them.
from that day forward i was obsessed with image. for me music and style have always gone hand in hand, with music being the one thats pulling the other along the pavement. i was like a sponge for the pistols back then, soaking up every bit of info i could. to this day, they are still my major source of inspiration, as punk was not really about image, but a way of being individual, and daring to be so proudly. i still try and get a safety pin in every shoot i do. you may not see it, but it's there!

heres the sex pistols video:

intro


firstly, welcome to my new blog...for years i've been inspired by so many different things and i just wanted to get them down on paper. luckily blogs were invented, because my handwriting sucks!
so over the next however long, i'm going to write and post pictures about the things that inspire me in my daily life. i'll start in the beginning and bring it to present day...
if you've looked at my profile, you'll see that i'm a stylist. which bascally means i dress peoplke and shop with other peoples money for a living. so style, (NOT fashion) is very important to me, in fact its a core part of my being.
so here goes nothing!...