This morning, VMAN headed to the Upper East Side, a favorite if unfrequented Manhattan territory. The reason: J.Crew opened their fourth Men’s Shop at Madison and 79th Street. The two-storied, 3,400-square-foot space houses designer Frank Muytjens’s tightly edited collection of outerwear, shirting, denim, and of course men’s grooming finishes. Using reclaimed wood from old barns, the interior feels (and sort of smells) as if you’re inside an Algonquin Park cabin – but there’s a catch: Mid way through the lower level, you eventually come face-to-face with “The Vault”. As intimidating as the word seems, “The Vault” (an ancient heavy metal bank vault) contains Men’s Shop carryalls, vintage collectables and a selection of shoes (to go perfectly with your tailored suiting needs). With walls full of neatly folded flannels and antique apothecary knickknacks, something tells us we’re going to be spending a lot more time uptown…

J.Crew Men’s Shop at 1040 Madison Avenue

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KEYWORDS: fashion, J.Crew, retail

Summertime….and the living is easy. With September just a few days away – we’ve finally accepted that summer is nearing an end. The outdoor patios. The lazy Saturdays at the beach. The beats that defined the hard-to-handle heatwaves of NYC summers. With iPod playlists in heavy rotation, we spoke to VMAN favorite Julia Restoin Roitfield and asked her to compile her “Summer Mix Tape”. She consulted with her main main, Robert Konjic (who she photographed for the upcoming issue of VMAN) and they put together their ultimate Summer playlist. Here, some tunes to help you prolong the last days of August.

Vanessa Paradis - “Joe Le Taxi”
Fleetwood Mac - “Everywhere”
Serge Gainsbourg - “Sea, Sex And Sun”
The Source - “You’ve got the Love”
Roxette - “It Must Have Been Love”
Cut Copy - “Hearts on Fire”
Hot Chip – “Transmission”
Musical Musique - “Warm in the Shadows”
Guns’n’Roses - “Sweet Child of Mine”
Blur - “Boys and Girls”
Iggy Pop - “The Passenger”
Talk Talk - “It’s my life (extended version)”
The Verve - “Bitter Sweet Symphony”
Toto Coelo - “Milk From Coconut”
Kate Bush - “Running Up That Hill”
Johnny Somerville - “Smalltown Boy
La Roux - “In For the Kill”

For the past 15 years, Scottish post-rock overlords Mogwai have been rupturing into ecstasy the eardrums of concertgoers with their insane god-volumes and destroying-the-very-idea-of-decibels decibels of drone and fuzz. A beautiful pain indeed, but let’s not overlook its creation: they are still rocking the fuck out on their instruments, and quantity of sound aside, its manufacturing is a magnificent sight as well. So it was only a matter of time before some geniuses came around and put it on film: enter Vincent Moon and Nathanael le Scouarnec (creators of La Blogotheque’s Take-Away Shows), who turned some April ‘09 concerts in Brooklyn into: Burning, a concert-film of perfect pitch. Along with the DVD comes a live-album, Special Moves, which is as good a live album as we’ve heard in ages. Burning has its New York premiere/screening tomorrow night at The Music Hall of Williamsburg, so we had a chat with director Scouarnec and Mogwai multi-instrumantalist Barry Burns to discuss the film. Q&A and screening dates after the jump.

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Matthew Costa, creator of New York sunglasses label Costalots, describes his designs as works of adaptation. He takes an item, currently disused, “undesigns” it and applies to it a new and refined usage.  His current collection of sunglass styles, the Diego and 83s, were initially safety eyewear that Costa, on a whim, purchased the entire supply. Adapting their role from function to fashion, Costa regenerated each pair with custom Carl Zeiss Italian shaded lenses. The Diego comes in six colors and is the more James Dean of the two, with a single bridge frame with more pronounced horns and angles. The 83s are little more Hunter S Thompson with a double bridge shaped frame in psychedelic colors and translucent frames. You can find both styles at Urban Outfitters, In God We Trust and Odin, and Costa’s online store.

Photography: Neal Franc
Models- Ram Boneh @ Re:quest
Fred Laatsch @ Major Models
Hair - Shawn Mount at ArtList New York
Thanks to - Alessio Boni and Pier 59 Studios.

With a global creative spotlight focused directly on the fashion of Stockholm, it’s no surprise some of the most progressive (and fashion-forward) designs are coming out Sweden. The designs showcased during the S/S 11 season covered the spectrum of innovation. From grunge references to tailored basics, Stockholm Fashion Week really portrayed a notion of “out-of-the-box” thinking. The VMAN team headed to one of our favorite (and often covered) cities to check out the unique and bold designs we have come to admire. Below, some of our favorite selections from Stockholm Fashion Week. 

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