You might never have owned a pair of Buffalo London’s platform sneaker-boot hybrids. But if you picked up a music, fashion, or youth culture magazine in the 1990s you will remember the ads: monumental Buffalos front and center, black-lit club-kitted models crouched behind. The ads were channeling the scene where the boots first blew up – the rave and techno explosion in mid-1990s Frankfurt – but it was the Spice Girls that marched Buffalo’s platforms into the mainstream, towering 10cm off the ground. These were shoes that make the still-trending chunky “dad” sneakers of the last few seasons look svelte. Shitkickers as good for the club as for the Y2K apocalypse.
When Buffalo London relaunched a line of unaltered classics a couple years ago, a new generation embraced the rave-era treads. This time their popularity is about more than goths or girl bands: they represent the excitement of the underground and the creative potential of the hybrid. (One continuity: who doesn’t want to look taller?)
So how do you elevate the world’s loftiest sneaker? Buffalo London by 032c takes the material route, combining 6cm of Buffalo’s signature industrial-grade sole with luxury leather uppers that nod to the equestrian-inspired boots of Europe’s heritage brands. True to 032c Ready-to-Wear’s fusional ethos, where experimental clubwear meets high-end womenswear, Buffalo London by 032c’s Jodphurankleboots and Over The Knee thigh-highs look great at the rave – and at the end of the world – but also at the cocktail party, the conference, the studio. (You’ll certainly see them around the 032c Workshop, which combines most of the above.)
For the campaign, 032c fashion director Marc Goehring tapped our sales director Nunguja Kislaya and photographer Vitali Gelwich for a studio shoot in Berlin. The resulting visuals channel the up-close energy of the original Buffalo London print ads, and update the look with clothing from the latest 032c Ready-to-Wear collection.
Buffalo London by 032c styles were teased on the runway during the first 032c Ready-to-Wear fashion show, which took place at 180 The Strand in London in late 2018. Today, they launch globally, after an event in London last night at Brown’s East.
At their store on Alte Schönhauserstrasse in Berlin, Japanese footwear mainstays Onitsuka Tiger held a Japan-themed mini festival to herald the arrival of the OK Basketball MT and the OK Basketball Lo: two new shoes inspired by the groundbreaking design that ignited the Onitsuka Tiger brand almost 70 years ago.More
Omar Epps is a 21st century Renaissance Man. After an early life rapping as part of hip hop crew Wolfpack in Brooklyn, New York, the young Epps followed his talent into acting alongside Tupac Shakur in Harlem drama "Juice." Now a father of three who recently published his first book, "From Fatherless to Fatherhood," versatile Epps was tapped by basketball and streetwear retailer KICKZ, who have partnered with Champion for a limited capsule collection, Never Not Ballin', on the occasion of their 25th anniversary.More
Merging memoir, prose, and historical biography, MARIA TUMARKIN‘s Axiomatic has been called a study of trauma. But it’s also a book about time.
To those for whom the arrival of spring has plunged their thoughts back to the last one – to the same season one year ago, when everything changed and at the same time everything stopped moving – we offer this piece to accompany your chronological contemplations:
“So this is how it is, I think. Stars rain from the sky like shards of glass.
The past does not move through the present like a pointed finger or a shadowy confessor in a long cloak. The past is not told you so. Not this is how it all began. It is a knock on the door in the middle of the night. You open the door and no one is there. You cannot tell yourself it must be those feral boys from the corner house because it is too late even for them, and no you could not have heard the knock in your sleep because you’ve been wide awake all night like a hermit crab. So this is how it is. Stars fall from the sky like shot baby sparrows in Mao’s China. Books are imperishable only because turning them into ash takes so little (it’s not like blowing up buildings); they are imperishable only because they are so ready to survive, dispersed across the world, as trails of dust, memories, shreds. As to us, me and you, oh it’s simple. We are the broken vessels containing, spilling all over the place, those who came before us.”
Read “Societies that are beholden to chronological time are immoral,” Shane Anderson’s 2020 interview with the author, HERE.
Launched this week without text or title, HUGO COMTE’s new monograph captures the cinematic energy and precise technique that characterize our recent cover photographer’s sought-after approach to stars like Bella Hadid, Kendall Jenner, Dua Lipa, and Russian-Lithuanian beauty KRIS GRIKAITE, featured in Issue #38.
