Mo’ Future For You

by gustave pembleton

illustration by jiro bevis

Among London’s hip thinkers it is commonly known that the real weekend starts on Monday, after the shivering door whores, standing guard between two bouncers outside the latest superclubs, with their clipboards and dress codes, have seen off the last of the suburban clubbers for the week. In Bar Rumba on a Monday night there is a mini-revolution gathering, and its influence can already be seen on some of our hipper streets.

There’s no dress code at That’s How It Is, the weekly event hosted by Kiss FM veteran Gilles Peterson and boy wunderkind James “Holy Goof” Lavelle, but rather than making it a sight for sore eyes, this freedom to wear what you want has had an opposite effect.

Standing behind the decks, James surveys the mix of Japanese fashion victims, Saint Martins graphics students, bleached-cropped Mike D lookalikes, skaters, b-boys, graffiti writers, and Vivienne Westwood glamour-pusses tottering on rocking-horse heels. Dressed in a Bathing Ape t-shirt (started last year in Japan, the t-shirts are already on their way to being this year’s most coveted item among those in the know), original Jordan 1s (“They have to be originals, you know?”), and reproduction Big E Japanese Levi’s (“The indigo dye they use has a better fade—I prefer the cut and the way the bottoms settle on the tops of my sneakers”), James looks every inch the captain of this ship.

After working behind the counter of west London record emporium Honest Jon’s, James started his own record label, Mo’Wax, when he was just 18. Two years later, James is DJing and running the label full time. The label’s cocktail of influences range from the Star Wars films, which James is a big fan of (his collection of memorabilia, on display in his office, had this writer reliving his childhood as if he was in the presence of Freud), the neo-futurism of Japanese hip-hop, the timeless classicism of Blue Note jazz, the innocence of old-school New York (when downtown artists and freaks could be found in the clubs alongside b-boys and fly girls), and the stoned instrumental hip-hop b-sides so beloved of those nodding their heads in here tonight. Some are calling this new sound, which James is sculpting with every side he spins, “trip-hop”, but, as James is quick to remind me, good music is just good music. He names people he sees as his peers, citing the Beastie Boys and the Pharcyde across the Atlantic, Bathing Ape and Cornelius in Japan, DJ Fraser Cooke, whose day job is distributing the Pervert brand, Trevor Jackson’s Underdog production unit (who says white English guys can’t make hip-hop as good as the Americans?), the super-hip Gimme Five in Marylebone, and Slam City Skates’ cooler affiliate Holmes.

What is happening is that a whole generation who have spent their formative years skateboarding, watching

Star Wars

and

Planet of the Apes

, being involved in graffiti, and listening to hip-hop and American hardcore are reaching adulthood, but instead of giving up on these passions, they are now embracing them as a vital part of their life. Once upon a time, James’s vision of seeing skateboarders dancing side-by-side with Japanese club kids to Sun Ra would have remained a teenage dream waiting to end with maturity. But today, with Lavelle behind the decks, it has become London’s new reality.

Outside Acupuncture in Soho, a queue of hip misfits waits to eagerly inspect the latest haul of vintage Nike and Adidas that the shop’s owners have smuggled back from New York. Nestled among the peepshows, in what used to be the cloakroom of a dirty cinema, Acupuncture takes its cues from Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren’s 70s shop, Sex, on the Kings Road. The jumble of vintage clothes from this era is testimony to this legacy, and the colourful cocktail of people that can be found hanging around this shop, from moody Soho characters to teenage punk rockers, religious acid victims to the occasional supermodel, are fitting tribute to the eclecticism of McLaren and Westwood.

Inside the shop’s tiny space, people crane their necks for a glimpse of the new sneakers. Patrick, a self-confessed b-boy and punk, tells me that last week they had Nike Vandals. Today it’s Adidas shelltoes, and Patrick explains the difference between the originals and the reissues that can be bought on the high street.

“You can tell the originals by the thickness of the tongue. The reissues have a padded tongue. If you’re going to wear old-school it’s no good wearing reissues made today. You might as well buy a new pair of trainers.”

Taki, a 21-year-old fashion student, is admiring the Seditionaries bondage jacket. He tells me that it is like the one John Lydon wore on stage with the Sex Pistols. Hearing the pair of us in conversation, the shop’s proprietor, a charismatic character who goes by the name of Lord Barnsley, insists that it

is

the one John Lydon wore on stage with the Sex Pistols, before adding that [Pistols’ drummer] “Cookie is in here all the time”.

On the shop’s battered stereo the much-lauded

Ill Communication

, by returning hip-hop punks the Beastie Boys, provides the perfect soundtrack for this cool chaos. Barnsley excitedly shows me a sample of a sneaker that he has designed especially for the shop. It has the body of a shelltoe sneaker, but in place of where the stripes should be is a winged anarchist logo.

In 1994, this is the epitome of London’s hip underground street cultures coming together as one. Barnsley tells me he has a vision that, one day, these same trainers will be worn on every high street. While I have my reservations that such street cool could ever be spread so thinly, I can’t help but be carried away by his enthusiasm.