It goes without saying the A+R team is among the best-looking and talented anywhere. Case in point is our warehouse assistant Itaru de la Vega. The towering brunette with two Spanish parents is half of the bluesy indie rock band Rumspringa. Itaru works over the drums, while Joe Stevens commands guitar and vocals.
Andy and I've seen a load of bands in our time, especially those filed under blues (from Screamin Jay Hawkins and Buddy Guy to Stevie Ray Vaughn and the White Stripes). We first checked out Rumspringa on the invitation of mutual friends. We were hooked. (It was only months later that we recruited Itaru).
With each new show from L.A. to the U.K., their legion of fans on the club circuit is blowing up. Among them is Shia Labeouf, a longtime friend who traded in his actor's cap for one of director last month. He lead the duo in a mobile home out on the road, shooting this video of the guys out in the freezing chill of Colorado and inside one of our favorite local live dives, The Echo.
If Rumspringa roll into your town, don't miss them. It would be a shame if you didn't get to witness them in the cozy venue of some dive. Those days are undoubtedly short-lived.

As life rushes forward, falconry seems all the more sublime, a pursuit rich of mores and requiring mettle. It's not for the faint of body or soul, making it no surprise that it so appeals to Nicki Griffith, Andy's younger sister. She forwarded these images to us today, snapped last Saturday in a field near St. Andrews, Fife, Scotland, and featuring Nicki and her lady hawk, Lara.
The bird is a Harris hawk, a breed found all over North America. Nicki wrote that Lara, who was born last June, will "change her plumage in the Spring and lose all those pretty bars, going darker, just keeping the flashes of red on her wings and the white on her rump. She has little hearts in dark brown on the small white feathers under her tail!! A real girlie bird."
By the way, the hawk is named after Lara Croft. Like the superhero, this is one hawk who is a "tomb raider, number one hunter and good looking bird."
The sight of Nicki and Lara on the wintry tundra is utterly fabulous.

Like the onslaught of cheap-n-chic retailers chasing after every luxe designer, museums continue the sprint toward showcasing fashion. Who can fault them? The lure of a wide swath of clotheshorses guaranteed to line up and, most certainly, buy the glossy catalog and anything else offered in the museum store is attractive enough. Throw in the inevitable press beyond the art section and the patina of glamour by association (especially on opening night), and the pairing is all too irresistible.
To those of us who also can’t help but submit, however, the high getting there can quickly go the way of those wicked stilettos snatched at an end-of-season sale. So fantastic at first sight. But walk a few steps in them and poor execution in design turns into the pain of possibility lost—including those vanished dollars. Last year’s “Superheroes” show at the Met in New York comes to mind. I was so disillusioned at what might've been that I couldn’t even bother to buy the souvenir book. A break in habit Andy found shocking.
A few weeks later in London, hope was restored and the bar lifted with the Viktor & Rolf retrospective at the Barbican Art Gallery. This wasn’t just a lot of breathtaking clothes on a legion of mannequins. There were multimedia elements and, most importantly, a context provided that underscored that the output by these designers is more than about dressing customers. Whether it was a fake perfume meticulously articulated down to the sumptuous ads, or protest complete with signs and graffiti scrawled across Paris, for the Dutch duo, creating involves every tool and medium at their disposal.

Hussein Chalayan by Andreas Kokkino

This week in London, we hit the Design Museum for the 15-year survey of Hussein Chalayan, which opened just a week and a bit ago and closes May 17. It’s an expanded incarnation of similar shows already staged in Berlin and Groningen, this time underwritten by Puma, where Chalayan was appointed creative director a year ago.
The British/Turkish Cypriot designer is a contemporary of a class at Central Saint Martins that included Katie Grand, Alexander McQueen and Giles Deacon. Yet the 38-year-old Chalayan manages to stand apart from even this revolutionary group with collection after collection of work that is as technically innovative as it is handcrafted, sensual as it is cerebral.
The show features only some three-dozen looks. But even where a mannequin stands alone in a blank room, the scene is rich with content because in Chalayan’s works there is always a story.
This is a man of many ideas and talents, and this retrospective allows the rest of us to peek into that genius. The exhibition differs from other museum showcases on fashion because it’s not so much a costume presentation as a survey of a creator’s explorations into culture, politics, technology, anthropology and the environment. Thankfully, this is not the place to see the more wearable, commercial pieces that can be found upstairs at Dover Street Market or elsewhere. They’re important, too. Fashion is a business. But this is a mad scientist/witty magician who conjures pieces that trigger shifts in perceptions. Like his classmates, the art of fashion is not a lot of lip service.
The presentation is broken down alphabetically, the story behind each vignette economically spelled out in a thick, palm-sized catalog filled with drawings, images and explanations for it all. The free, double-stapled booklet, simply rendered in black ink on white paper, resembles a fanzine. With no glossy hardback on sale in the store, it’s clear this low-tech giveaway, like every other detail in the show, is exactly as Chalayan conceived.
While manhandling the stuff is not an option, it is possible to get within sniffing distance of the fabrics and contemplate each outfit from every angle. This enhances the experience, which swings from a static grouping of mannequins to a runway video of his remote-controlled animatronic couture, to a multi-element installation involving a sculpture inside a sink and a short film featuring Tilda Swinton (that patron saint of provocateurs, including Viktor & Rolf).
What we failed to get to see was one of his over-cited works, a fashion moment if there ever was one, the fall 2000 collection called “Afterwords.” Among the most frequently referenced is the look in which a model steps into the center of a round coffeetable, only to pull up the center ring to her waist and let multiple bands of polished wood fall into place like so many tiers on a skirt. This was furniture morphing into fashion. Sadly, we missed examining it up close.
But there were plenty of other enthralling so-called moments to gape at: The dresses and airplane wing loaded with LED elements and Swarovski crystals; the Tyvek patterns folding into envelopes for posting; the black gossamer slip suspended by black helium balloons; or a dress embedded with 200-some shooting red lasers.
If it all left us craving for anything (besides the sartorial furnishings) it was more time to contemplate those mesmerizing images of Swinton. Or to backtrack for a third closer look at the morality play as pattern covering the walls and the mannequin’s dress. Or to simply dream of a day when our own clothes can convert into something else at the push of a button.
Top Photo by Chris Moore
Photo No. 4 by RA

Who ever believes sole searching is a women’s rite, has not met my Andy or his London friend Sam Anthony. Both men spent the better part of tea gabbing about the cuts of their favorite brogues and the varying undersurface treatments of desert and chukka boots (ie. spongy crepe versus hard leather). Why shouldn’t they, right? Still, observing it all gave me pause since, frankly, I don’t think I go on like this.
But there was good reason. Despite the snow the day before which shut down all of London, we’d finally made it to John Rushton. The old school shop is a secret gem among footwear-obsessed men. Sam introduced it to Andy on his last trip to London. And it was all Andy could talk about before and during our trip. He’d had his eye on a bespoke pair of the classics sold here as his birthday present.

John Rushton is an independent shop that has been specializing in better British-made footwear for three decades, 20 of them in its current spot at 93 Wimpole Street in the west end. It’s just off Oxford Street, on a less touristy traveled path towards Marylebone. There’s nothing at all glitzy about the place. The shoes are the main event here.
Well, count, too, the owner. Mr. John Rushton is a gregarious, sturdy figure, the kind of charming storyteller you could spend a late afternoon with, emptying a bottle of scotch and wanting more. He spent much of his life at the editing dock (not unlike Andy), mostly on film sets between England and Italy. And wherever his work took him, he cultivated a knack for the history, craft and customs of men’s wear--and style. That, and the ladies.
Andy ultimately strolled out with two pairs of lace-ups by Alfred Sargent, a company that goes back to 1899 and based, like all of the British lines sold here, in North Hamptonshire. In his bags were the chestnut burnished wing brogue oxfords he pined for since his first visit, and a tan suede set of chukka boots (hard sole) that we couldn’t resist. I tossed in three pairs of cashmere socks—in pink, wine and charcoal—for him. You just can’t score socks like that elsewhere. I’m a woman. I know.

We woke up in London today to a thick blanket of snow. And like L.A. when it rains, the city shut down. Ok, so maybe it was quite a bit more extreme. Schools were closed. Snowballs scattered. One in five Londoners didn't make it to work today, and the rest left work early afternoon in order not to get stuck somewhere cold and far from home once night fell. It was the heaviest snowfall here in 18 years.
There were no buses, no trains, and, sadly for Andy, no delicious dinner at Hix Oyster & Chop House where we were booked for dinner. But it was a priceless day spent playing in the snow with our pals. Admittedly, I was ill prepared. Left the rose-printed Wellies in Wales yesterday, so I found myself with boots not intended for the snow. Thankfully, our host came ot the rescue with a sturdy set of waterproof hiking boots. Brrrrrrrrrr.