Poker – It’s not a world we pretend to understand, but when you don’t want anyone to know what your holding, wear a hood, a cap, a pair of dark glasses, and a poker face…we can screen print all of those, except the face, and then you can toke your top pair with a heads up on your hole card, and remember, it’s all in the flop…told you we don’t understand…
Kamanchi Clothing is a Birmingham UK based online T-shirt and Apparel Company. We decided to form the company because we were fed up with being broke while working for other people and not progressing on the career ladder. It was a hard decision to leave full time work and the safety of a regular wage and to take a risk to have a go at something we really love and want to do. Opportunities are hard to find, sometimes you have to create them yourself.
We have tried to create an urban brand that is politically and socially aware. Our artwork has been influenced by our social environment, our political standings in the UK and what’s generally happing in the world. We are not against any individual or group; however we stand against political corruption, greed and world governments neglect for its people.
We pride ourselves on our guarantee to produce high quality garments featuring unique graphic art styles that are designed and printed in the UK.
kamanchi-clothing.co.uk
Paul Stevenson wonders if Britain’s textile industry will ever return… You may say he’s a dreamer, but surely he’s not the only one?
Brian Clough taught us how to play football, Paul Smith taught us what to wear, and a ratio of seven women to every man led us to believe there was no better Saturday night out this side of the Yum Yum Club, Amsterdam. I say led us to believe, as Nottingham was no different from anywhere else, and that male/female maths probably just meant you were more likely to wake up in a badly decorated room on the wrong side of town. It was never a problem on arrival, but in the morning, the flock wall paper, the crushed velour curtains, the nylon valance and the one bar fire… straight from the pages of reader’s wives — time for the walk of shame young man.
So this Saturday night/Sunday morning wasn’t all golden nostalgia, but we did get one thing right, amidst the nylon parkas (Do you want green or blue?) — we made some bloomin good clothes, we had a textile industry. And that’s why there were so many women, beautiful because they arrived from across Europe creating a diverse gene pool that gave rise to yet more beautiful women (and anyone looking at my picture and wondering what went wrong with the lost Mitchell brother, get stuffed).
When the factory bells rang and it was time to go home, the streets filled with hundreds of workers, and according to my great Aunty Daisy, in the main, they were happy enough. We know what happened next: the high street multiples drove the smaller manufacturers into the ground, while the larger ones went in search of foreign souls to buy and sell. Mike Baldwin put on his camel overcoat and said ‘Sorry girls, we can’t go on any longer, I’ll buy you all a goodbye Babysham in the Rovers’.
At one point I think the industry was losing 600 jobs a week, but while the bin men, the miners, the steel workers and Red Robbo all threatened civil war, Nora from MB Textiles had a good cry, a sweet cup of tea and a Number 6, and went to get a job at the local Spa. Because it was a largely female industry, no one really gave a damn. You’ve heard it all before, I know, so what? It’s all over right? India might be the new China, and so we’ll travel around the world until some bloke from Trusty International Traders arrives in Greenland. When that happens, it can’t look like the Eskimos are getting stitched up of course — we will produce our policies on equal rights for polar bears, insist that all igloos are well lit and warm, and then leg it back to Notting Hill as fast as, checking our carbon footprints as we go…..is that factory melting?
And that’s the right approach of course, we have to have all those policies in place — ask me about phthalates in inks, azo free dyes and the astrological positioning of Stonehenge, I know the answers, pretty much — if we are going to keep it all off shore we’ve got to have all the correct practices in place, even if global warming does turn out to be a myth cooked up by the nuclear industry.
But if you can buy a pair of jeans for a fiver, and a T-shirt for a quid, retail; if you can sort your kids’ school uniform for a tenner and have change for a Mocha on the way out, don’t tell me someone’s not getting had over somewhere.
So to make sure this isn’t happening you go on the factory visit, to see for your own eyes that no small children or animals are injured in the making of this sweatshirt. A decent motor, C class Merc maybe, will pick you up from the airport, and you’ll be driven to a bright clean factory full of people laughing and dancing. This may well be the place where your stuff’s made; you can see a box over there with your company name on, but then you’re not likely to get taken to some fly blown toilet round the corner are you? Too cynical…maybe. So I’d better tell you what brought all this on. We print sometimes for a well known brand whose clothes work beautifully — their jeans are the only option for a printer’s bent legs and sagging non smiling cheeks. Although they have some manufacturing in China, I’m as sure as sure can be that it’s all impeccably policed. I was shocked to hear then the REAL cost of a t-shirt to them out of Ping Pong Harbour, a white one with a single colour print, is £5.50!
But it can’t be you say, China and Cheap both begin with the same letters, surely it can’t be that expensive? But unless you’re a member of the Wal- Mart family that can be the real cost, with all the duties, the administrative time, the shipping, figuring out quotas, factory visits, and so on. They recently and unexpectedly sold 5,000 of a particular style in a week — what it doesn’t take into account is the 12 weeks it’ll take to get any more, unless you fly them in and drop another bear through the ice.
We can deal with the urgent requirements here though of course, and we did, but for those who understand the real financial and ecological cost of going off shore, dare I say, is Great Britain worth another look? That way you won’t be asking me if my T-s arrive by air or truck, because they’ll be made next door — and, unless I break wind getting out of my chair, no carbon footprint. And there’ll be no exploitation with a decent minimum wage, because Nora says she’s sick of selling sweets and papers and is willing to get back on a machine — even reckons she’ll smoke outside. If we can do itfor a similar real cost while saving the world,
what’s wrong with that?
You never know, we might then go balls out and stick a British Flag on whatever we produce, rather than some inspired in London by blaggers label. You may say I’m a dreamer — I’ll never again see John Robertson bamboozle a defender with his sheer lack of pace; I’ll never ask someone to marry me on top of a big wheel at Goose Fair, and I’ll almost certainly never again jump naked off Trent Bridge, but make and print some totally British T-s for pleasure and profit?
I’ll have a go if you will, for Cloughie, for Smithy, and my great Aunty Daisy….may she rest in peace.
PS. On re-reading my last article I was referring to a celtic tattoo as in one of those attractive circular designs that wrap around the arm — unfortunately it was spelt with a capital ‘C’ and could have been misinterpreted as Celtic the football team. God only knows I don’t want to be annoying those lads, so just to say it was a typing error rather than a suicide attempt… can I come out of hiding yet?
Cheers,
Paul
www.october.co.uk
I’ve got an XL Tom Tom, a five mega pixel camera and an iPod. I put a sleek black Samsung next to them on the desk and engage Bluetooth — that should impress them. The door opens and three young men who I suspect live with their mothers, read horror novels and have a shampoo allergy shuffle silently in; they are here to talk to me about spiders, of the Google variety. As they begin mumbling into their bum fluff about string queries while staring at their Clarks, I find that all I can hear is the server’s incessant dirge, punctuated by the occasional ping pong of an email as it falls onto my virtual doormat… and in my coat pocket I feel the presence, of a Blackberry.
It’s all progress of course, but when I’ve gone a bit heavy on the cré¨me de menthe I’m occasionally visited by my old friend Ben Kenobi who reminds me, ‘You’re more machine than man now’, and when I wake at 4am to see the kettle spinning around on the record deck I think, it’s inevitable isn’t it, you can’t hide from the future? Face Space, My Book and Grebo… complete strangers email me and ask if they can be my friend. I’m English and polite and so naturally I say ‘Yes of course old chap, I mean dude, lovely to hear from you’. They then reply asking who the hell I am and telling me to clear off their friends section. I want to write back and tell them I’d rather drop my undercarriage into a jar of African killer bees than be part of their social network but I can’t, because I’m English, and polite, and so I apologise.
I’m told it’s inevitable that I must blog every move of my fascinating life — I noticed some clown on a T-shirt site recently describing a particularly interesting cloud formation he’d just seen. In the same way is it inevitable I wonder, that we must turn to digital print?
The advantages are obvious I guess. No messy inks mean no plastisol on the mother in law’s new Axminster — no bad thing when your mother in law’s got a pierced nipple and has lost all her front teeth to pork scratchings (no offence Doreen). And as for digital print quality, you can pick out the hairs on a gnat’s todger in glorious Technicolor without a single screen, so no carry on with the old four colour process inks, no setup costs, BINGO! And onto black garments I’m told.
It’s also easy to operate — apparently even embroiderers can work the kit. This is a huge advantage in the modern labour market. As we all know the ability to read, write, spell and do basic maths are now optional extras for most school leavers… and yet strangely they all emerge with 50 GCSE’s and a bucket of A levels; presumably some of these are in knuckle scraping and gurning. Off the subject slightly — Me? Never! But if you’re ever feeling a touch under par just advertise for a fictional job vacancy — I had a candidate recently inform me that he was suitable for screen printing because in a previous job at the abattoir, he’d been in charge of burning off pig hair. Fairly sure if I‘d been doing that for seven years I’d keep it quiet.
So you don’t need to train a young Paduan screen printer for five years before they’re ready to take the trials… which not all will survive — you just put young Trevor in front of the digital printer and tell him to shout you if it catches fire. And the digi-bonuses continue — the equipment doesn’t take up much space; it doesn’t fill the room with smoke; I guess it’s eco friendly (?); you’re not standing up spinning a carousel all day until your feet look like a pair of Quavers; and the blow dried salesman in comedy socks informs me that production times are just getting faster and faster. It’s a ‘no brainer’ they say — put that squeegee down and call your first child Epson!
But you know what Mr Stephenson, head of the Luddite Print Company is going to say don’t you? And it’s predictable isn’t it, because I still listen to Muddy Waters, Sonny Terry and blokes whose first names are Blind or Howlin’ (what were their mothers thinking?) I’m going to take the stairs and not the elevator, use the map and not the sat nav, I might even write someone a letter one day soon, in ink, and I’m not going digital just yet. There’s a reason, maybe not a great reason, but here’s the thing.
Don’t digital prints pretty much all look the same? Now I know we go to some stupid lengths at our place to try and do different stuff. This culminated recently in a bunch of screen printers standing in a field shooting sweatshirts with 12 bore shotguns — well how else to you get an irregular distress in a thick fleece? For any loons interested enough to know we reckon the optimum distance is 12 feet — any closer looks like a post office raid gone wrong. Do not attempt without a licence and permission of the land owner though; although consenting, the farmer in our case viewed us with the kind of suspicion I imagine he usually reserves for gay communists.
This excursion was not helped a few days later by the lads at work catching me distressing individual water based prints with sand paper — but this plot loss aside, go digital and I’ve got no expanding bases, no discharge, no suede effect, no high builds, no sprinkled glitters, and what about pressure distressed water based? You know, where you just feel that wood in the palm of your hand, press a bit harder and then ooooh just ease off there a touch tiger and lift the screen and yes, oh yes indeed ladies and gentlemen, that print looks a hundred years old — in short when it comes to digital, it’s printing Jim, but not as we know it.
Cheers,
Paul
Nothing wrong with that, a perfectly decent pair of T-s lovingly wrapped in sparkly red paper, with all the care and attention only a dear old Mum can give. I’m sure as she was carefully applying the ribbon she felt she was doing her best for me, just as she did 30 years ago when she shot at me in the garden with my own air rifle for being cheeky. The fact of the matter is that giving a T-shirt printer the gift of T-shirts, is not dissimilar to proudly presenting a farmer with a bag of soil — and it go tme thinking… promotional gifts… what do you get that you actually want?
They may be about as interesting as the Boy’s Bumper Book of Knots, but they work, just as well as a sheepshank or an angler’s loop:
Clocks — the employers are looking at them, to see what time their new hairy fisted Neanderthal recruit has managed to drag himself in to work; the employees are looking at them, so that at one nano second to five they can explode from the running blocks and out of the door; and we’re all looking at them, over reps’ shoulders when they whip out the holiday snaps of the Mrs on a log flume in Fuengerola. They’re available for all promotional budgets, starting with a cardboard circle and a couple of drinking straws, through to those ones that also tell the time in New York and Beijing (in a sad attempt to convince people that you really have got an office outside Nuneaton) — so clocks are good.Rulers…dreary? Well yes but be honest, when you’re on your own in the office, admit to me you’ve never sat twanging one on the edge of the desk in an attempt to create some Aboriginal style sound track. No? Or screwed up some paper and used your ruler to flick it into a distant bin, punching the air just a little bit as it goes in and growling “Cash back”. Must be just me then, but they are useful for holding up to your left nipple when deciding on the length of a print or embroidery, 8 centimetres or 10, so rulers work and I’m happy to receive them. Mugs — safe as houses — garment printers and embroiderers drink more tea than chimps who wear their own clothes and play the piano. It may well be a thinly veiled attempt to spend two thirds of the day going to the toilet, but there’s no getting away from it, we need those mugs. What else are we going to bang down on the desk in front of our female business partners while shouting ‘Shut your mouth, put your knitting down and make us a nice cup of tea, there’s a love’ … I now of course have exactly one month to live before Jane reads this, and for what it’s worth I would like to be buried at sea in women’s underwear.
And the list goes on: Pens — mightier than the sword apparently, although I wouldn’t have fancied my chances at Bannockburn with a biro. Still, I suppose we all write, so okay. Desk pads — usually ending up as a mix of the Olympic coffee rings, a few phallic cartoons and a phone number for someone you can’t remember, but we use them, so I suppose so.
Mug Mats and mouse mats — same thing really, and handy when someone else is using the desk pad, so I’ll have some of those as well please. Diaries — never used one myself but apparently there are people who have a life and do find them handy — especially the ones with a world map only readable with an electron microscope, and the conversion page that tells you how many cubic centilitres there are in a fluid ounce — vital stuff. Chocolates — very nice, but I did know a promotional chocolate supplier once that had a set of choppers that made Albert Steptoe look like the fourth Bee Gee, so proceed with care.
Pen knives — always useful for opening those boxes, and much appreciated by my seven-year-old tree carving son — according to my better half a ‘Good toe-ending up the street’ is not an acceptable punishment these days, and I had to settle for removal of TV rights.
And so on and so on, but beyond a certain point I wonder if it all starts to go off at a gradual tangent. We then move into a mid range of products that we don’t really need, and aren’t remotely useful, but that we hope people will quite like to receive — the teddy bear, champagne, and die cast model of a 1930’s bread van market.
All we can do is try and introduce a few fashion values and make them so lovely that they won’t be used for lagging a pipe within two days of the event — but if the customer insists on having a six-foot phone number and a date on the back of the shirt, there’s not much we can do to make them a lasting thing of beauty. Just think of how many times you’ve seen someone following a T-shirt trying to write down a phone number by the way — it just doesn’t happen, and if it does, it’s stalking. But then we move into a final category, and it’s a very well intentioned one. It’s brought about by that most noble of human desires; to endlessly find new ways to communicate, a desire that has given us… the promotional fire extinguisher.
Now I don’t know about you, but when I’m dousing myself in water from the spray booth and running into the flames to save a fluffy kitten from certain death, I’m pretty sure I’m not going to be looking at my logo emblazoned fire tool and thinking: ‘That reminds me, I really must give Frank’s Cob Shop another go, I’ve been hearing great things about his pastrami on rye.’ This is the sector that brings us the key fob that can be used for levelling a wonky table — great idea presumably until you grab your car keys in a hurry and leave to the sound of smashing cups. But this stuff sells. It must do or it wouldn’t exist, so I must be wrong… again.
You’ll let me put one promotional item into room 101 though won’t you? I thought about those flat pack things that build into a desk tidy — the ones you have to be a Grand Master in Origami to construct, and then end up stamping on while repeatedly shouting ‘Die’ just to relieve yourself of the whole experience. But I’m not going for that, because the promotional tool that really makes me poorly, and this may surprise you, is the badly over printed calendar from Nobby’s Caravans — you know the one, with the oh so bloody cheery English country scenes. If I turn over January to see another squirrel, head at a cheeky angle, tail a quiver, I’m going to ask my Mum where she put that air rifle and teach little Fuzznuts a lesson.
Long before Captain Sparrow, pirates prospered in folklore, ostensibly the British version of that Western vision of cowboys taming the wild edges of the earth.
Standing unlikely among these masters of the high seas was William Kidd, born in 1654. He was captain of his vessel, a leader of men and the most endearingly blundering privateer to ever set sail. Tasked by a group of entrepreneurial British Lords to scour the ocean seeking both enemy and pirate ships to pillage, Kidd kick-started his own piracy career by accidentally raiding a British ship transporting a considerable bounty.
Kidd became a marked man, making a swift escape to the Caribbean islands, but in doing so he ignited the legend of pirates’ buried treasure. His journey eventually ended in 1701 when he was deported from America to a London court who proved less than sympathetic to his story. He was duly hung over the Thames as a warning; his body left to rot for three years.
An unlikely man, therefore, to adopt as the figurehead of a new brand, yet 301 years after Kidd’s gruesome death, the ragtag nature of his adventures and his willingness to take risks provided the spark of inspiration for clothing label Saint Kidd.
Just as pirates and privateers travelled as the masters of their own destiny, the legend of their travails living on long after their deaths, so the founders of Saint Kidd hope their unique vision endures.
Established in London in 2011, Saint Kidd is the brainchild of Dougie Poynter, keen to create a label which is, at its core, a platform for emerging British design talent.
Saint Kidd channels the creativity of like-minded artists interested in making their mark using high-quality, ecologically sound components. Meticulous attention to detail is paramount, from the packaging — every piece individually wrapped in cloth sacks as if delivered straight from the belly of Kidd’s vessel — to Kidd’s memorable quotations stitched inside each garment. As for the designs themselves you’ll find super soft T-shirts, vests emblazoned with original, modern reworking of traditional nautical motifs. There’s also a punk-rooted playfulness to their designs: a cutlass brandishing, stump-legged kitten with an eye-patch, a selection of winged sea creatures, a glimpse into the world of freakshow curios.
Saint Kidd springs from a desire to keep its fundamentals strong and the edges raw, behaving not as a company, but as an encompassing artistic collective.
For AW12 Natural Selection Denim looks at the natural evolution of design to release a minimalist collection. The simplicity of darker tones let the fabric and cuts do the talking.
In every field of design, from architecture to aeronautical, evolution comes through a “natural selection”: a process of repeated change, innovation, rejection or adaptation in an attempt to secure the next product.
In line with the philosophy that everything we produce is a prototype awaiting its next transition, Natural Selection Denim has added new subtle detailing to old styles and created new stories that will be drawn upon in future collections.
Black denim in Japanese selvedge and non-selvedge denim available in a number of washes have been introduced – as well as fresh uncluttered interpretations on tops, creating a denim shirt without pockets and a new take on the Oxford shirts with a clean seamless and stitch-less placket.
Other key pieces include the Mackinaw Jeep coat in English Melton, by heritage woollen mill Moons Brothers of Melton Mowbray, cut and sewn in England, only yards from Natural Selection Denim HQ.
Finally we introduce our Shooting Trousers, made from soft Italian tweed, side leather clinches and herringbone taped side seams – all inspired by our logo: the Yorkshire moors and the British sporting tradition of shooting.
N A T U R A L S E L E C T I O N
Natural Selection Denim was founded in 2009 with the aim to create a British denim brand dedicated to deliver authentic workmanship of the highest standard. Natural Selection Denim focuses on the evolution process of a raw jean as it ages, using the best selvedge and non-selvedge denim available.
A beautiful, hand drawn illustration upon the leather patch specially designed by the graphic artist Reilly – utilising a subtly British concept of an ornate floral design inspired by the decorative engravings on British shotguns – provides a background for the iconography of a pheasant riding a penny farthing, a dual reference to classic, British innovation.
For press enquiries please contact Gabrielle Stolojan on – telephone: 02070121560 – email: press@nsdenim.com
October screenprint again for Sunspel, by hand of course and with water based inks… proving here that even true gents have disastrous days like the rest of us; this simple, playful print is a welcome addition to their loopback sweater.
October print for LABSOLJA. Check out their garment collection.
October screenprint T-shirts for the Everest million Campaign — Daniel Hughes is on a journey to the top of the world, to raise funds for Comic Relief , and aims to raise £1 million, by putting the worlds first and highest Red Nose on top of Mt Everest in 2013.
Over the next year, he will be exposing himself to the worlds coldest and highest mountains, training constantly and also holding Everest Million events, where followers can join him. This is what the campaign is all about. A million people coming together to hopefully do something awesome for Comic Relief.
One Red Nose
One Million People
One Pound Each. The Everest Million
Current Supporters:
– HTC – One of the worlds biggest smartphone manufacturers and my lead sponsor. They’ve been very cool and they are really going to springboard the campaign into the publics eye.
– Coldplay – One of the worlds biggest bands. They are helping to support the campaign and have allowed him to use their music.
– Inmarsat – The worlds biggest satellite communications company. They are providing Daniel with unlimited satellite data, which will revolutionise the end user experience.
– Thrane & Thrane – A leading manufacturer of satellite communications equipment.
– NIKE- The worlds largest sports company. They will be his lead training partner.
– Specialized – One of the worlds biggest bike manufacturers. They are providing support and PR for the campaign and Welsh Etape event.
– i3.com- They provide all the satellite imagery for the US dept of Defence, Garmin and Tom-Tom. They are working together to build a magnificent 3D model, with live positioning and geotagging of images and videos.
– RAB – A great British Mountaineering clothing company. Quite simply the best in mountaineering equipment and a British company.
– Grivel – A leading mountaineering equipment hardware company.
– Deep – A branding, digital and creative design agency. They have created and designed everestmillion.com
– Peer1 Hosting – One of the worlds largest hosting companies and they are providing Daniel with a fully managed, “elastic” solution to cope with huge spikes in traffic.
– The Red Arrows – another Iconic British symbol. Daniel is currently working with them to deliver a really cool PR event.
Not forgetting – Stephen Fry, Richard Branson, Ellen McArthur and other iconic British people.
Stephen Fry in particular will be following and tweeting about the campaign. He has over 3.6 million followers, and within the first hour of his tweet, they anticipate that the campaign website, will have 500,000 hits !
Events – May / June: Denali, Alaska.
One of the coldest mountains on earth, the highest climb in terms of vertical meters and complete self sufficiency. Big packs and sleds just a few hundred miles from the arctic circle.
Even though he’ll be in one of the most and inhospitable places on earth, he’ll be fully connected and sharing his climb with everyone.
July: The British 10k (25,000 runners running through central London, just before the Olympics) — Daniel will be running in his Everest kit, along side Everest Million branded runners and championed by the event organizers. Its going to be really special, and undoubtedly will attract lots of attention.
August: Training ride for the Etape Cymru – An open event mimicking the Olympic cycle route.
September: Etape Cymru – The UK’s toughest cycling sportive. Again he’s aiming for lots of Everest Million riders to all be wearing Everest Million branded cycling kit. Its being promoted by Specialized and the race organisers.
September – March – PR events being pencilled in.
March 2013: Everest
Taken from the extensive Sunspel archive, October have produced this bizarre print, depicting a robot riding an octopus – it makes for an interesting twist on their classic loopback sweatshirt. Originating from a 1960 letter which states ‘we know something about the art of attracting attention’…which indeed they do…