Day 6: Gold paint on silk patch

Day 5: Skittles wrapper lapel

In honour of the Skittles challenge gamely undertaken by Joseph Shrubb during which he attempted to devour 30 bags of Skittles in an hour, I have sewn one of the discarded wrappers to the lapel of the jacket. Whether he succeeded or not isn’t important (he didn’t). What is important is that we all enjoyed watch him try. And fail.

Day 4: Bronze ribbon patch detail and The MooN pin badges

Just as it decided to snow, and on the coat-tails of yet another hangover, I decided to embellish the denim patch with chocolate box ribbon as well as add some vintage pin badges declaring my allegiance to garage rock monsters, The MooN (http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/The-MooN/52038881047)

Man in the MooN, Joe MooN is probably one of the most exceptional people I know and always has a handful of exciting projects on the go, and I’ve been lucky enough to be involved in a few in recent years.

The MooN is an incendiary outfit, with clear influences drawn from Detroit garage rock glitterati The Stooges and MC5 as well as bands like The Dictators and the Dead Kennedys.

Joe MooN in Trash bleach-dyed suede Trash jacket

Day Three: Thief of Fire patch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLDHr5r0iIY

A small homage to the Pop Group and Mark Stewart.

The Pop Group is easily one of the most interesting bands to have come out of Bristol, incorporating raw jazz-funk bass-lines with tribal beats and the occasional casual reference to Nietzsche. A lot of what they produced for debut album Y feels pretty fractured and experimental, and there’s more than a hint of Beefheart & Zappa on tracks like Snowgirl and Thief of Fire.

The patch now on the jacket was originally produced for a music video for Trash favourite STASH, who are also huge fans of the Pop Group, Mark Stewart’s Maffia, as well his numerous other music and art projects. I once had the great pleasure of meeting Mark Stewart at the opening night of one of his exhibitions in east London, at which STASH was performing. He bought us all pints of lager and then I tried to teach him some kickboxing moves in a pub in Whitechapel. I can't remember why exactly. He was absolutely charming though.

Check out STASH’s music video for single ‘I Need A Sign’, all mostly filmed in a fantastic old pub in Balham, or as my friend Joe Moon calls it, ‘the arsehole of nowhere’: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLo-E-LHy0c

 

 Day One: 15/01/2013 (jacket unembellished)

 

“I like this new jacket,” said my work colleague, Liina. “It’s a lot more demure then the things you usually wear.”

“Don’t get too used to it.” I responded. “With any luck in a couple of weeks it will be totally unrecognisable.”

Day Two

Bass guitar head and 'Fidelio' embroidery.

‘Fidelio’ is the final track on The Palace of Justice's 2011 album Once and For All, available here: http://thepalaceofjustice.bandcamp.com/album/once-and-for-all

The project

The project

About a year ago this smart suede jacket came into my possession courtesy of a friend of mine, George Clarke, who gave me authorisation to do with it what I would, that is, give it a good trashing.

The jacket is actually quite nice if you like brown suede. Two buttons, pockets without holes in. NEXT quality, no less. Not too shabby. It undoubtedly looked the business on George before he decided to throw it my way but it’s been sadly neglected this past year. It is partly with this regret in mind, and with the genuine belief that something interesting could develop in the process, that I have decided to wear this garment every day for the next few weeks, whilst customizing its appearance with the same regularity.

Although it might sound like a project conceived in the offices of Vice magazine/somewhere selling overpriced pints of lager in Hoxton, this idea was actually put forward by another friend of mine, who proposed the notion in a noble attempt to rid me of my current creative inertia, for which I am hugely grateful.

Ultimately however, the process and outcomes are mine, though are undoubtedly, and exhilaratingly, straddled between grand conception and total chance. I want to create an evolving and constantly changing piece of clothing that grows, incorporating some of the same aesthetic motifs I often employ and juxtapose, as well as open the door for new ideas. In a way, it can take on a life of its own, both embracing and putting two fingers up to its presumed lifetime as premium-quality jacket, by both my embellishing it on Monday and tearing the shit out of it on Tuesday.

I vow to add something new to the jacket every day, whether that means pinning a button or crisp-packet badge, applying paint, embroidery or ring-pull armour, re-tailoring the innards, and maybe even tearing the sleeve off it in a heat of anger or frustration.

Pin badges pledging allegiance to bands, charities or Camden Market-approved ironic slogans always felt pretty ephemeral to me, and I’m happy for things to hang off the jacket, come and go, be misspelt, get torn or go totally AWOL lost to the pavement in the course of my daily walk into work down the Holloway Road.

I don’t have a time scale in mind - we’ll just keep it going for as long as the thing holds together, then maybe have a party/wake when it finally falls apart.

So, lend me your Trash if you see me about. I’ll take a snap every day and report or anything worth noting down. Any passable jacket-based puns that I can use for the title of the project will be warmly accepted. Some examples that have been contributed and instantly rejected include Jacket the Knife, Hit the Road, Jacket, Jesus Don’t Want Me For a Jacket and Gary Glitter Stole My Jacket.

CUT-UP BEFORE PAPER CUT

A cut-up poem to start the day, offset with pictures of things that, should we have the power, would be brought back from the dead, as contributed by Anna Kirk, Ed Sibley and Laurie Young.

I told Kate:

New Buterflies Blitz

night is calm

Idylls

Malcolm McClaren

The first thing you would see was

Real street protests

Polititcs [of] distraction

England

'In her art she was fearless. In life she was tormented.'

It was dark.

Innocent but wise at the same time.

The fallen leader's finest hour

he was in their midst

circus

glitter and bright lights didn't work

see if we took that to heart less.

**Things to be brought back from the dead: Ricicles; Archaeopteryx; Joe Strummer; the widespread use of valve amplification. If you would like to contribute to the next cut-up collage, please email me what you would bring back from the dead if given the chance at trashofcamden@hotmail.co.uk. **