crooked tongues magazine News Features

The etnies Plus collection seems to be perennially overlooked, and it's a shame - the Oi Polloi pieces, particularly their Bossa, were strong, and beyond partner endorsements, the Garvey is fresh too. We first clocked this unlikely meeting-of-minds earlier in the year but couldn't show it off at the time. Rick Klotz is a legend. He's one of the pioneers behind the twisted, pretentious, misshapen monster 'streetwear' has become, but back in the day, the likes of Pervert, Stussy, Fuct and Freshjive indicated a strange kind of unity between wearers. Whereas now, head-to-toe, black-on-black hype simply siginifies too much cash and a deficiency in the clue department, someone rocking a shirt with Shawn's font felt like a likemind.

Admittedly, most of the time the likemindedness simply exposed your own foibles - they transpired to be a prick, and you realised that were simply projecting personality with a readily available screenprinted garment. Rick seems to be the sort of guy that really doesn't give too much of a rat's arse or flying fuck. It's part of the legend of Freshjive - from hard-to-find tees to an unfortunate ubiquity among rave kids and a ton available in stores like Cult Clothing (Stussy 'suffered' a similar profitable pitfall just after the mid '90s too). He was probably laughing all the way to the bank.

A site that overanalyses sneakers is probably as far from Freshjive as it gets, but we're kind of feeling his take on the Junior, which previously did little for us with it's extra panels - instead just letting the chukka cut be, merely because it's so staunchly anti-collaboration, and that Rick seems to have put it together with a scowl. Here's a spot of hypocrisy too, if it wasn't for the Freshjive association, we would barely have noticed it too. We think that was the intent. When we heard about this project verbally, we winced at the prospect of old gaudy homages rehashed. As ever, they threw a curveball, and given the choice of canvas or leather, we prefer the leather variation. Even stranger, given the brand's new logo-free direction, that lowkey tongue label on this project looks practically vulgar by comparison.

Plus it's worth remembering that Freshjive helped bring the world Kobe Tai via their ad campaigns. For that alone you should salute and support them to the death.