nuzzaci - an online journal

Following up on my Social Suicide post, Tig, (Matthew Grey) had two fashion trade shows on the agenda — White Homme in Milan, and Tranoï in Paris — and his business partner and friend, Simon Waterfall, was tied up with presidential D&AD duties. So, having nothing better planned i decided to follow along and help Tig set up and host two trade shows.

The whole week ended up a bit mental.

We left London for Milan on Friday morning, 4am. On Saturday we set up the stand. On Sunday evening I left Tig and flew up to Stockholm to do 5 interviews over two days. Tuesday evening I flew back to Milan to drive up to Paris on Wednesday morning and set up the stand the same evening. On Thursday evening I took the Eurostar train back to London to enjoy a well deserved and relaxed Friday.

The photograph leading this post is of an umbrella that was part of the White Homme stand. Next year’s spring summer collection from Social Suicide is about the weather and the Beaufort scale — a scale to measure weather and wind based mainly on observation. So as an small installation piece for the stand we had an umbrella hanging from the ceiling with a looping video projected on it’s inside of white clouds moving across a beautiful blue (most probably non-english) summer sky. We also handed out free umbrellas to interested parties. These umbrellas started to play the sound of rain when they were opened (most probably english summer rain).

I’m a bit surprised over the fact that I have maintained this blog since May 2006 and have hardly mentioned the fashion brand Social Suicide. Guess it’s one of those constantly ongoing things that you just don’t think to talk about.

Social Suicide is a fashion brand founded by two very good friends — Simon Waterfall and Matthew Grey. They started up the brand about the same time that I joined POKE back in 2003.

My final project at Hyper Island was to develop the brand online, build a website and develop the graphic profile. It was a well-received project and was even recognised and featured in Creative Review.

Photograph of the Creative Review piece featuring my final project on Social Suicide.

Photograph of the book that was part of the documentation of the project.

Since then i’ve been helping the boys out with everything from business cards, websites, online shop, suits, delivery etc and so on.

The best way to get an idea of what the brand is about is to visit socialsucide.co.uk and have a look at this video presentation.

Thw below photograph is one of many great stories surrounding Social Suicide. Simon Waterfall was invited to meet the Queen. For the occasion we designed a special suite.

The Pearly Kings and Queens are an East London tradition as old as the bricks and mortar of Bow Bells. They are the aristocracy of the working classes.

We used the tailoring traditions of the working class to make a suit for the monarch. 400 hand sewn mother of pearl buttons form an image of HRH as seen on British coinage and postage stamps. Simon was invited to the Palace and he went in the suit: “We were very kind your Majesty - we used a postage stamp from the 1970s”.

Since 2003 the brand and it’s products have matured a lot. The bold statements have become more subtle and have been fine tuned with a more sophisticated edge. The cut of the suite and material have been refined. Matthew, who’s working on Social Suicide full time, has built contacts with sellers as well as manufactures and prepared the whole concept with great success.