Archive for February, 2008
By the way…forgot to mention. We frequent two locals at Aganovich HQ, The Samaritan (doctors, gleaming brass, immaculate bitters and not a fashionista or muso in sight) and The George Tavern (dodgy beer and pleasantly random staff but more atmosphere than a Peter Ackroyd novel and quite possibly one of the most legendary music destinations in the world where rockstars and models can nurse a pint in relative obscurity with equally legendary landlady Pauline and her 5 sons in charge).
While reading our tabloid of choice The East London Advertiser a few weeks ago we discovered that The George is in a spot o bother. Already having had to sell off an amazing backroom disco (think Saturday Night Fever with original flashing dancefloor still intact) due to constant complaints from neighbours making it costly and pointless to maintain the council is now threatening to build low rent housing on the space. Pauline & co are rightfully concerned future residents will put even more pressure on the limited music level they can still manage in the main pub room effectively extinguishing one of London’s greatest music venues.
This is nothing short of outrageous. Half the reason property developers are even interested in repopulating the East End is thanks to the work of people like Pauline who made the area so culturally rich. Pap-friendly figures like Amy Winehouse and Ms.Moss have stepped in to lend a hand and a t-shirt has been printed to support the cause. Please contact The George.
Well, it’s been a over a week since the Massacre&Masquerade at VFS and our brains are slowly retuning to the right channels having been on snow-screen for at least 3 days after. Choosing to do a party straight after the show was a little ambitious. We’d only given ourselves an hour and 15mins to do party set up in the event the show was running on time. But Issa (thanks for that..!) over ran by an hour. Not only did this crush our original time window between Issa and Vivienne Westwood but in an effort to accomodate journalists coming from Issa our PR delayed our show by 45 minutes.
Where exactly they intended to put them I don’t know as we had already packed out the VFS space to such an extent that I couldn’t even get in to our own show and was relegated to the lighting booth. Even though delays are meant to be part of the fashion game its not something we like doing. If people have made an effort to come to your show leaving them stuck in a stuffy room reading and re-reading your press release without any indication how long the wait will go on is not cool. So even though Issa had still not rolled we decided to go ahead for the sake of those already assembled.
The delay resulted in us having about half an hour to set up the party. Suddenly there were performers to accomodate, sound checks to do, bar staff to coordinate and bars to set up. The charming Rafael Jimenez showed up as scheduled with all the Iqons magazines to organise. Furthermore it was bitterly cold on that Thursday night so turfing people into the street while we did this didn’t seem fair. Fortunately the incredibly striking group of girls that make up Ipso Facto steamed through their sound check and kick started the party.
Soon the alcohol was flowing, the music was blaring and the rawkus be-glammed audience were taking over the catwalk for their myspace moment. Just as we were about to relax, sip a beer and take in the view, the party was over and Martyn Roberts appeared at my shoulder with a mop&bucket and an expression of ‘not-feeling-so-bloody-glamourous-now-are-we?’..! Quite.
And a final thanks to our brave intern Beth Sutherland and uber-Scout Dan Harrop-Griffiths who were both drunk or misguided enough to hang around and do all the hoovering and mopping with us.
The catwalk images have gone online and are downloadable at photographer Christopher Dadey’s host site:-
And one of our sponsors Rockstar Energy Drink posted some good photos of the party:-
As you may have noticed we have more than a couple sponsors for our aftershow party so we’d like to give a few plugs for the people that have helped it happen. It was all relatively last minute opportunites that presented themselves and it could not happen without a good bunch of people getting on side.
Firstly John Walford and Martyn Roberts of the Vauxhall Fashion Scout. There must be few designers in this town that are not familiar with the benign mien of producer John Walford who has helped countless fledgling skint designers on their road to fame and fortune often asking very little in return but decency and kindness. So when he joined forces with veteran PR man Martyn Roberts to solidify this experience in a single group venue that has come to be called the Vauxhall Fashion Scout it couldn’t help but become a great place to show. Their gentle, efficient, calm and straightforward approach is turning VFS into one of the most sought after off-schedule venues (for the simple reason that most designers are irrascible, inefficient and manic so the balance is crucial). The Vauxhall subsidy is an invaluable benefit to the price and their generous manner means a calm professional atmosphere and we are proud and grateful to be showing with them for the third time and furthermore to be hosting our party with them.
Secondly Amber and Nisha AKA The Broken Hearts AKA The Broken Hearts Band (their single Black Cat produced by Whitey is dangerously more-ish) AKA Beyond Retro team players AKA just about anything else that is going on in the East End. Amber and Nisha came on board as our co-hosts for the event and have assembled an incredible all girl line-up for the night to celebrate the Aganovich woman.
Next, Lucie Seffens and Efi Davies & Team at Toni&Guy. T&G have become an increasingly integral part of the VFS venue and contribute massively to the aforementioned calmness and efficiency of the venue. Furthermore they very kindly agreed to help us this time with the party offering 8 lucky winners at the Beyond Retro pre-party frock night a trim and style. The team will stay on after the show and style the winners in preparation for the party.
Next, Danielle Roussel of l’Artisan du Chocolat. L’Artisan are producers of lethally tasty and innovative chocolates. Award winners and celebrated by some of the countries top chefs such as Gordon Ramsey they have supported every one of our events and shows for the past year and a half and it is a privilege to work with makers of such a prestigious product. We hope we succeed in bringing the same level of craftsmanship and rigour to our own work to justify such generosity. (Just TRY not grabbing handfuls of this stuff at the party..impossible.)
Klug beer joined us for this event a couple weeks ago. The extremely charming Josie Jennigs oversaw the distribution of their product and we should all cast a merry thought to her as we go LARGE on that dancefloor!
The official tag we have been given for Fundacion Pampero goes: “With the support of Fundacion Pampero. Fundacion Pampero is dedicated to contributing to the cross-fermentation of diverse creative communities in London by supporting events that spread across music, performance, fashion and art.” First off this is ACTUALLY TRUE, secondly this rum kicks! First brought to our attention by Chloe Vaitsou for our SS08 show, Pampero is a rum that is drunk ‘al ritual’ meaning there is kind of a tequila shot ritual going on with this stuff but instead of salt you use coffee grains and the result bizarrely is an incredibly rich chocolaty flavour that frankly tastes so good it distorts any notion of good sense. We know this because at our SS08 show one of our good friends got so carried away with how good it tasted that he downed far more than advisable, disappeared for 8 hours and was returned to us in a police van. So, take heed. The Fundacion is something that Pampero set up to be more culturally involved off the back of their sponsorships rather than just flinging booze at events.
Rockstar energy drink has kindly come aboard to keep us all dancing like Summer of Love Veterans.
And last but not least thanks to Ylayn Ousley who brought Iqons too us as our media partner for the launch of their first hardcopy issue during all the world’s February 2008 Fashion Weeks.
Vauxhall Fashion Scout
The Broken Hearts
Beyond Retro
Artisan du Chocolat
Klug Beer
Fundacion Pampero
Rockstar
Iqons
Toni & Guy
