May 06, 2010
Mercedes-Benz Helicopter Unveiled in Geneva
A special edition EC145 Mercedes-Benz Style helicopter designed by Mercedes and Eurocopter wasjust unveiled at the European Business Aviation Convention & Exhibition 2010 in Geneva. The luxurious EC145 is equipped with comfortable seats made of exclusive materials coupled with sumptuous wood fittings for the floors and ceiling. The project, conceived by the Mercedes-Benz Advanced Design Studio in Como, Italy, is the only helicopter in its class that can seat up to eight passengers. For the cabin layout, Mercedes-Benz opted for a modular approach inspired by its newR-Class crossover. All seats are mounted on rails and can be quickly and easily reconfigured or removed to make room for luggage including golf bags and bicycles (also designed by Mercedes, of course). There are also three multi-function boxes with features such as a cooler, cup holder, table, 15-inch monitor and DVD player.
May 05, 2010
May 04, 2010
Audi R8 GT
Lighter, faster, and stronger, the new R8 GT gets a race-inspired power boost from the car’s 5.2 liter V10 that now produces 560 horsepower. That kind of power will take you from 0-62 in 3.4 seconds and right into a top speed of 198 miles per hour. The R8 GT will be limited to 333 units and will be available with exclusive feature options such as alternative wheel options, carbon trim, and a body-color front splitter.
Metropolis Concept by Citroën
The Metropolis is the first car to be styled and developed by the PSA Group’s Shanghai design studio. Both Peugeot and Citroën build Platform 3 cars in China in a joint venture with local manufacturer Dongfeng Auto. The Metropolis uses a hybrid drive train, combining a 2.0-liter V6 petrol engine with an electric motor that can increase its output from 55bhp to 95bhp when needed.
PRO-KEDS 2010 Spring/Summer Collection Royal CVO
Originally released back in the mid-60s as the Royal Edge, this season PRO-KEDS re-introduce their vintage basketball profile, the Royal CVO. A minimalistic upper among both the Royal CVO and Royal CVO Mid include a soft linen upper in some simple tonal colorways. Available now at select PRO-KEDS dealers.
HUF x Adidas Consortium Rod Laver
From retailer to brand, HUF has had the good fortune of making their mark on the sneaker world with numerous collaborations over the years. Their latest touches are presented on this adidas Consortium Rod Laver for the 2010 spring/summer season. The shoe features a simple gray perforated upper in suede as well as a subtle snakeskin touch on the heel
May 03, 2010
Quoddy Navy Suede Bluchers
Founded in 1909 Quoddy celebrate their 101st anniversary this year. Their latest drop is this traditional looking moccasin which features a navy suede upper, red Amazonas camp sole and leather insole. The hand-sewn shoe is entirely re-solable/re-buildable if required.
May 02, 2010
BMW Concept Gran Coupé
Unveiled at the 2010 Beijing Auto Show, the BMW Concept Gran Coupé is a four-door coupé that incorporates the classic design features of all BMW coupes: the long wheelbase, the vaulted hood with forward-pointing lines, the set-back greenhouse, the flat silhouette, the coupe-style roof line and the short front overhang reflect the dynamic potential of the vehicle.
The BMW Concept Gran Coupé up to 100 millimeters flatter than the BMW 5 Series or the BMW 7 Series Sedan. The roof line tapers off gently into the rear, thereby elongating the vehicle’s proportions. The clarity of the LED front lights highlights the vehicle’s precision and premium aspirations. The powerfully flared wheel arches above the rear axle highlight the particularly sporty character of the BMW Concept Gran Coupé. The sculptural shaping style characteristic of the entire body design of the BMW Concept Gran Coupé permits a unique interaction between concave and convex surfaces.
May 01, 2010
Terry Kennedy x Supra “The Stacks”
Supra drop this first look into Terry Kennedy’s follow-up signature to his high-top model, the Society. “The Stacks” features a clean toebox with two colors on the horizon, a black leather canvas version seen here as well as a grey suede canvas version. A release date is slated for the month of May at select Supra dealers.
April 30, 2010
April 29, 2010
Levi’s Lefty Jean 2010 Spring/Summer Collection
The debut of the Levi’s Lefty Jean by Takahiro Kuraishi officially took place today with a full release of jeans and jackets for the 2010 spring/summer collection. The jean cuts include the 502, 503 and 505 in three different colors, while rigid and gray versions are available for the jacket’s which include the 1st Jacket Round Neck, 2nd Jacket Round Top Collar and the 3rd Jacket Stand Collar styles. Available now at e-levi.jp.
Vans Syndicate 2010 Spring/Summer “Ballistic” Collection TNT II Mid Cup
Vans Syndicate incorporate some well-known brand name fabrics in a small capsule of TNT II Mid Cup styles this season. Dubbed the “Ballistics” pack, it includes two versions seen here, a Cordura model as well as a Crye Precision “Multicam” model. Both versions include an Outlast liner for comfort and breathability as well as branded tags representing the respective materials.
April 28, 2010
First Armani Hotel in Dubai
Italian designer Giorgio Armani opened his first hotel at the world's tallest tower in Dubai on Tuesday, giving a boost to the Gulf Arab emirate's bid to recover from a debt crisis.
The designer brought his trademark minimalist style to a city famous for excess, with the Armani Hotel Dubai designed with an understated palette of cream and earth colours.
Armani -- whose business is worth around $2.4 billion a year in sales -- partnered with Emaar Properties, the Arab world's largest listed developer, in 2005 to develop a series of hotels, resorts and residences in key cities around the world.
From man-made islands shaped like palm trees to an indoor ski slope in the desert, Dubai has marketed itself as the city of bling, putting itself on the map with a bigger is better policy.
Armani said Emaar Chairman Mohamed Alabbar described the city as "Las Vegas in the desert".
"I am a minimalist, less is more... and when I looked at what was happening here it was the opposite," he said at the hotel launch. "But he wanted me and I wanted him."
Emaar and Armani plan to open the next hotel, Armani Hotel Milano, in the Italian city in 2011.
Other projects include Armani's first resort, to be located in Marrakech, and Armani residences villas in Marassi, Egypt.
A standard room in the hotel, which does not have a single picture on its walls, will cost 4,000 dirhams ($1,089) a night, while the best suite has a price tag of 40,000 dirhams.
A table at the Prive lounge, which is home to the world's largest LCD screen, will cost at least 3,000 dirhams a visit, as guests can feast their eyes on Armani shows and videos.
The 160-room Armani hotel occupies six floors in the Burj Khalifa tower, which opened on Jan. 4, in addition to eight floors dedicated to 144 Armani luxurious residences.
The two parties declined to reveal the cost of the hotel.
Dubai, one of seven members comprising the United Arab Emirates and the Arab world's trade and tourism hub, saw the sharpest drop in hotel revenues in the Middle East for 2009, hit by the global financial crisis. [ID:nLDE60R1Q7]
The heavily indebted emirate generates around 19 percent of its gross domestic product from tourism and its economy has suffered as people tightened budgets after the crisis.
Dubai's construction boom started when it first allowed foreigners to buy into its property market in 2002. Luxury resorts, hotels, serviced apartments and holiday villas mushroomed, drawing nearly 7 million tourists in 2007.
The Middle East, despite being hit by the global downturn, has shown some resilience over the past year with revenue dropping less than other regions, industry figures showed.
Dubai's hotel market is closest to the bottom of the cycle and is showing signs of recovery with beach hotels leading the way and showing positive growth, a recent report by real estate service company Jones Lang LaSalle said.
Mercedes-Benz SL65 AMG Black Series by Renntech
Enticed by the Brabus Vanish, one-of-a-kind, Renntech is glad to help out. The Florida-based Mercedes tuner par excellence has taken on the SL65 AMG Black Series, and the results are even more impressive than those garnered by rival tuning house Brabus. Five horses more, but more nonetheless.
With a simple tweak to the engine’s computer, intercooler and exhaust system, Renntech has squeezed out an extra 135 horsepower and 263 lb-ft of torque from the twin-turbo V12 for a grand total of 865 hp and 1,000 pounds of twist. The upgrade costs $16,390, which may seem like a big chunk of change, but it’s a drop in the bucket against the car’s quarter-million-dollar stock list price. The highly recommended upgrades to the transmission and differential will set you back a little extra, though.
April 27, 2010
Damon Dash's YRB Magazine Article/ Interview
Business dealings have always come as second nature to Damon Dash,and in his newest endeavor as the modern day Andy Warhol
he shows us again what it means to demand respect.
by Steven J. Horowitz
Photography by Jason Goodrich
It’s roughly 2 P.M. on a blistery New York City winter day, but the chill doesn’t seem to faze Damon Dash, who rolls up to his gallery, DD172, on a cruiser bicycle. Dash dismounts, carries his metropolitan vehicle through the iron gates and tilts it against a floor-to-ceiling window, removing his black fur ushanka and hanging his gray wool coat in silence before making his way through the cavernous first floor art space and climbing a suspended staircase to his office.
Inside, two model-esque women – who he refers to as his “executives” – diligently patter away at their computers. “Yo, look at this!” Dash suddenly exclaims, his eye turning to a mysterious brown sludge tucked between the cushions of his cream-colored fur couch. “What is that? What the hell?” he asks his right-hand woman, McKenzie Eddy. Dash lifts one of the pillows, brings it to his nose and takes a deep whiff. “Smells like some kind of liquor.” He pats it. It’s wet. He quickly realizes that his nephew Stevie, who had stayed in the office the night before, had thrown up in his sleep. “Fucking Stevie! I’m fucking Stevie up!” he yells.
Stevie soon scurries in and puts the slipcovers into a garbage bag, sticking out his fist to Dash for a dap. “Give me a pound when you finish!” Dash roars. Before Stevie even walks out the door, Dash has already set his sights on his weed grinder, licking his lips as he crushes some potent Purple Urkle.
It’s this inherent contrast – the bad (Stevie’s nocturnal purge) with the good (gifts of greenery) – that underscores Dash’s post as ringleader of the circus that inhabits DD172. Located at 172 Duane Street in a posh pocket of Tribeca, the four-floored gallery has become a refuge for musicians, painters and filmmakers looking to freely create art without any of the corporate constraints or pressures that exist in the outside world. A year and a half prior, Dash had first moved into a corner office in the building to observe its previous tenant Malcolm Bricklin, an automobile tradesman who expressed interest in having Dash run his company. But after Bricklin’s operation fell victim to the failing economy, Dash moved his artistic compound from his apartment to the space, arranging what he calls a “creative deal” with the building’s landlord – a smart move for Dash, whose financial woes have been documented in the tabloids for the past few years.
“I started to go through a lot of bad press all of a sudden,” he explains of the period following the sale of his shares in Roc-A-Fella Records and Rocawear Clothing. “Like, the recession hit everybody, but me being a businessman and motherfuckers getting caught up in the storm, all my issues were completely public. And completely exaggerated. So the recession shit happens, I don’t give a fuck.”
Left with a bad taste in his mouth from his days as a record label kingpin, Dash swore off working in the music industry after moving on from Roc-A-Fella and witnessing firsthand how corporate bigwigs could manipulate artists to the point of killing their indie spirit (he credits his time working with singer-songwriter Alice Smith as a wakeup call). But after linking up with Eddy and her associates (his “muses”), Dash was soon acclimated to a musical terrain that he hadn’t yet navigated: indie rock. When Eddy opted to go to a sold-out Black Keys concert instead of celebrating her birthday with Dash, he decided to see what the fuss was all about.
Soon, Dash had begun to set the framework for a new business model. Introduced to the relatively unknown duo MGMT, Dash took a chance and threw rapper Jim Jones onto a remix of their sleeper hit “Electric Feel,” allowing Columbia Records to steer the promotional ship – and watching it subsequently crash and burn. “Because Columbia’s major retarded, they didn’t know how to exploit that correctly,” he says. “But again, we were so far ahead of the curve. Like, [MGMT] hadn’t even sold any records yet.”
Dash realized that his disgust with label business practices had nothing to do with his love of the music and decided to reach out to the Black Keys for collaboration. Only, instead of looking to develop the project under the financial thumb of a major label, Dash decided to do as the indies do and record an album on his own. Funneling his last dollars into the project, he paired the blues rockers with rappers like Ludacris, RZA and Mos Def for 2009’s BlakRoc, an album that’s gone on to sell nearly 50,000 copies based off of word-of-mouth and viral marketing.
“There is no business model for this. I don’t have no business plan. For once, I’m really going by what I really love,” he says. “Like, I did all of that shit, and it doesn’t work out to being happy. It works out to making money, but not as much money as I could [have made], and then being so disgusted with something I created. Like, I’m looking at Rocawear right now, and it’s not something I know that I could ever wear. I had to go from Roc-A-Fella to BlakRoc. So the only thing that I’m happy about in that respect is that there was an evolution.”
Whether or not progression equates to monetary compensation is of little concern to Dash. At one time an indisputable business mogul, he has set up shop in DD172 to solely focus on the creation of art, whether it comes in the form of a musical or visual medium. Anything outside of the compound is what Dash has nicknamed “wack world,” an umbrella term applied to P.O.W.s (prisoners of wack world) who are only concerned with conforming to the institutions that run any given industry.
“They have no other choice, there’s no other option,” he explains of P.O.W.s. “So people have to fit in where they can and just be mad, and that’s why people don’t work as hard, because they don’t enjoy what they do. They live for Fridays. You know what I’m saying? I hate Fridays. Sunday in here is just as packed as any day. Because, this shit, you enjoy it. You wouldn’t compromise it for the world.”
Dash’s Warholian approach has attracted a group of likeminded individuals whose sole purpose is to create (living comfortably is a priority, but fame whores need not apply). Not only is DD172 a breeding ground for new music, but it also serves as an art gallery where the works of Isaac Fortoul primarily cover the walls. At any given time, there’s at least one artist in DD172 working on a project, whether it involves designing a poster for an upcoming show, recording vocals or editing footage for Creative Control, a video channel that Dash uses to promote upcoming projects (there are cameras always capturing the magic). And while not much music has actually come out of Dash’s creative factory, there are more than a dozen projects awaiting the green light. As of now, Dash is sitting on full-lengths from producer Ski Beatz (24 Hour Karate School), rapper Curren$y (Pilot Talk and Muscle Car Chronicles with The Mars Volta’s Thomas Pridgen and Sean O’Connell), The Black Keys (BlakRoc 2), The London Souls, rapper Stalley, The Disco Biscuits, rapper Tabi Bonney, Voodoo Farm (Eddy’s group) and a handful of others.
“That’s all over a four month period of time,” he says as he shows a PowerPoint presentation of projects in the pipeline. “People don’t leave [DD172] not because I’m cracking the whip, but because they really love this environment. I don’t believe that business has to be ‘business is business.’ Business is a life choice because it takes so much of your time, so you should be comfortable. You should be happy. You know what I’m saying?”
And as far as fashion goes? Dash still owns a substantial percentage of his ex-wife Rachael Roy’s clothing company, but he’s not looking to jump into new ventures with the fashion world anytime soon. In fact, Dash’s tastes are surprisingly simple (if not unconventional) for an ex-hip-hop entrepreneur. Pacing about his office, Dash is decked out in an eggshell white long-sleeved tee, Steve Urkel glasses, dirty denim jeans, Timberland mocs and a GoodWood necklace draped about his neck. He’s come a long way since the golden days of Roc-A-Fella where he proudly wore designer clothing with a signature chain hanging down his shirt – but he hasn’t completely turned his back on the label.
“It’s a medal. It means everything to me, Roc-A-Fella,” he says, pulling out a Roc-A-Fella pendant necklace from a drawer filled with thousands of dollars in jewelry. “That’s what I’m saying. Roc-A-Fella wasn’t just business for me, that shit’s tattooed on my arm. I’ll never regret it. Roc-A-Fella’s the shit. It’s bittersweet it went down the way it did.”
But as a 38-year-old who admits that he’s almost entirely out of touch with a younger demographic and freely points out the flecks of gray in his beard, Dash has finally created a movement where, for once, he’s doing it for all the right reasons. “Don’t get it twisted, I had a ball. I was young, I was wild,” he says. “But I can’t be going out and doing that shit. That shit is corny. You’re allowed to make mistakes as a young’n. But I would probably get offended if I watched somebody pour champagne on a girl’s head right now, and I was the main motherfucker who was doing that. I know the disrespect that I was committing, the karmic repercussions of it, my God. But if you don’t remove yourself from that, how would you even objectively know? I feel sorry for people where that can become your life choice, where they’re just surrounded by wack world every day, all day. You can’t still be living by those ideals.”
via YRBMagazine
April 26, 2010
Push Connection ~ master-piece Rucksack
Emerging Japanese skate brand Push Connection links up with master-piece on this new clean-cut rucksack, which follows an overall classic design scheme. The pack features mesh backing for comfort with flap pockets on both sides, a large main compartment, and an interior decorative print. It will be available via unbar in July 2010.
April 25, 2010
Nike SB “White Perforated” Zoom Stefan Janoski
Continuing its impressive string of releases, Nike SB offers yet another Spring colorway in the brand’s popular Zoom Stefan Janoski. The deck-inspired shoes are featured in a white perforated leather motif, accented with black piping and trademark tongue branding.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)