SYMBIOSIS

The first time I ever saw hip hop music and fashion as one was earlier this year when I was writing an university essay on hip hop and garage. Quite honestly, I chose the subject just because I had missed the deadline to properly think about a theme for my end of the year essay and there was nothing much I could imagine researching for weeks. At that particular time I was really into this kind of music and let a book in the library find me so that I could accidentally start this adventure. 

After receiving a brilliant review on my essay, I decided that the subject was over and I quite happily just moved on to the next thing that interested me… Until one hot and sticky night in the Steel Yard Club in London.

Throughout the past months I had been following Notion magazine as one of the most inspiring sources of information regarding music, new characters on the scene, and, of course, my passion – sportswear which inevitably goes hand in hand with the hip hop culture.

This time lucky chance brought me to one of Notion’s events – the issue 80 launch party on a random Thursday night. It took place in one of the best clubs in town and was quite expectedly full of crazy young people, dressed in every possible way you can imagine – bold, reckless, drunk, and beautiful! All of that accompanied by some amazing live performances by Kida Kudz, Big Tobz, S Wavey, Coco, Dionne Bromfield, Father, Sneakbo and Lisa Mercedez, it just all turned into a crazy mixture of laughter, music, and soooooo much color.

This was also the first time I got my hands on a paper copy of issue 80, which was amazingly inspiring with its minimalistic approach to design layout when it comes to both photography and text alignment.

The spectacular imagery definitely gets you in the mood but what impressed me most was actually the quality of information delivered and the focus particularly on independent artists who use social media and publications like this one as a platform for their art. As a matter of fact, reading Notion I have come across interviews with so many of my favourite artists, such as Ibeyi, Pharrell, Ciara, and so on, nevertheless I still use it to keep track of the new independent artists out there that I still don’t know about (or know very little about).

Along with that I can’t get enough of the magical symbiosis between music, artists’ individuality and the amazing colorful garments the editors style so tastefully and with so much sense of proportion and texture on various locations everywhere around London on so many colorful personalities.

So having this amazing British summer of music, festivals, and fashion (BST, Lovebox, Kaleidpscope), I can’t wait to meet the new person I would have become by September when I’ll pour all that inspiration into my final collection.