Arts & Culture

BLESSED TO BE BLESSED

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Clothing brand Supreme’s second full length video picks up where its predecessor cherry left off, capturing its star-studded roster at the height of the brand’s powers. Director Bill Strobeck turns his vision up a notch. He captures some of the most unique personalities in skateboarding while also taking viewers on an emotional rollercoaster before ultimately leading to Tyshawn Jones’s Skater of the Year sequence to cap off one of 2018’s best videos. BLESSED begins with a declaration of intent, beginning right where Strobeck left off with Supreme, opening with Na-kel Smith nollie hardflipping the same three block he infamously slammed in 2016’s short video, Pussy Gangster. The skating gets no less astronomical as the video progresses, from Ben Kadow taking some of the heaviest slams imaginable to Vincent Touzery and Kevin Rodrigues creating some of the most inventive combinations possible.

Arts & Culture

LING | Virgil Abloh and the Design of Everyday Things

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If you sit for long enough at the Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport you will see luggage carousels fill up with aluminum-ribbed suitcases, a parade of muted colors, subtly labeled Rimowa. There, the suitcase is so common it is easy to forget that it is a luxury brand, with prices starting at $495 for your basic starter luggage. Perhaps this speaks to the different definitions of luxury. In my mother’s country, using clothing for wealth signaling is less pervasive and luxury is harder to distinguish than in the Canada Goose-rife, Goyard bag-toting landscape that is Cornell. However, young or old, the obsession with the Rimowa luggage continues because of its practicality and quality.