The Reference Council

(capsule) Berlin x The Acid Sweat Lodge

It really is a testament to the awesomeness ( and bravery ) of the BPMW team that they let me put together a little art thing during the Berlin leg of this seasons (capsule ).

I worked with the dudes from The Acid Sweat Lodge in Vancouver. Aside from the fact that they, like this house, are a lodge, they can probably claim the title for the most secretive dude lodge around, a title we at the Black Lodge always worked hard at maintaining, but fuck it, those guys win the beers and the girls. The Acid Sweat Lodge, should you not be aware of it, is a collective whose creative output is based on the exact, on-point, historical, graphical and musical reference points that play a continuous loop in my head and soul. Which is a round-about way of saying that they are fucking awesome and their daily blog is one that I check before every thing else. Please don’t make the mistake of reducing them to a bunch of well-archived tumblr nerds, far from it, but I will leave you to figure that much out.

So what was the point of this collection of images you ask? Hear this: Obviously, much of “menswear” is based on American Heritage- from a time when the American Empire was still manufacturing, rock n’toll had lost it’s soul but gained more fun, AIDS wasn’t around to ruin everyones party, and well, you were in fact that little more happier. What I never understood about the “trend” of “menswear” though is how it blatantly forgot to tap into this hugely rich history, its cultural movement, the politics, the GOD DAMN MUSIC PEOPLE, and so on. Rather, it focused on nothing but the clothes, which in my book, are always an end product to a cultural movement, never the starting point.

Furthermore, “modern menswear” mostly got it wrong, visually at least, as I understood it. Why did every look book feature a super skinny, want-to-be- Nietzche-esque- looking ecstasy  victim that got lost in Norway to recreate those happy times? Wouldn’t it have been more authentic to ask Billy Gibbons to model for you? Again, I’ve raised this point often enough and been ignored often enough. I asked the Acid Sweat Lodge to provide me several images out of their amazing archive to illustrate my point though, and they were happy to oblige. Additionally, they re-worked the imagery to look like old pulp-posters from the 70s. In case you were wondering.

Following, is a selection of the imagery I had printed up and hung on several walls during (capsule) Berlin- I hope you had a chance to see them and drink some beers under them, I know I did.

Thanks, and I mean, genuine heartfelt thanks go out to BPMW and The Acid Sweat Lodge for being awesome.

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