MISHKA

Ooooooohhh, I 'member TOPY..! Here, take $50 for a shirt and a pin!

 

Mods plz merge last msg with "mountain troll" thread thx

 

Criticising nostalgia on a message board for grown adults that collect toys! Bravo!

 

Oh, Mountain Troll Thread! I 'member that!

I collect much more neo Kaiju than vintage. I care about the impact of nostalgia and using it to create new things, not rehashing the same stuff over and over with every collection

Spoiler

The brand has eaten shit hard, this new thing might be heading the same way. They have not adapted nor attempted to understand (or maybe did and it didn't pan out) the changing tastes of their consumers. The brand was one that relied on nostalgia and DIY as its driving force and they did it very well, even if it was formulaic and trite. It just so happens that the markets evolve and these brands haven't. They have become that which they mined the most: an old and by-gone way of fashion that is grounded on a sense of saudade. "Hey, this has a black bart wearing an eye-ball teeshirt with old-skool graffiti! So tight!" Now its just fashion for 30-something year olds with apple watches and expensive toy collections.

Thats what always baffled me about Mishka, they had some vision, but piss poor execution and no intention to adapt over the course of their career. Some of the riskier collections were quite nice and afforded a simpler, albeit not as elegant, competitor to brands like Supreme, and both in turn an entry way to things like Apliiq or HBA. They were doing something of value and they had poise, but boy is their shit boring. Are there interviews out there with their creative and art directors? Im sure they share the same 'twee' tattoo on their forearm in the sickest flash style.

 

Oooohhhhh, I 'member irony..! 'Member Wayne's World..??

 

And how much are those pieces of oddly-shaped plastic worth exactly? $50, give or take?

By "their consumers," do you mean yourself? The brand definitely adapted to a certain audience, which was not the one from the beginnings of the brand - this is the point Mikhail makes in the interview, and the reason why Psychick Hearts was created. But I remember quite well what I considered the best Mishka collections/items, which didn't sell; as opposed to those Mishka items I don't really care for, which sell.

i.e. 85% of consumers of "fashion"

heehee

Really cool of Mishka to provide an entry way for knockoff brands that came 5 years after them.

 

Just so its clear, I engage in threads like these a lot more because it provides a view of things that I might not have otherwise. I find it I learn more about this by engaging its community than say, going over the FU thread and moan about my menial existence.

you and I know $50 for a toy is cheap these days. I am not interested in a conversation around monetary value, but instead a cultural capital, its an important aspect of the culture, but not that much relevant to the point im trying to make. Mishka is stuck in a past, the same as this new other brand. What could have been done to avoid that? where did the go wrong? It was an exciting brand, like you said: way back when they started.

Mishka could have become HBA, they had it in them, but instead they became Spencer's in clothing form. They dropped collections that had great cuts and patterns, but the content was garbage.

I dont know any Mishka items (Hook it up, Greg!) nor does it match my personal aesthetic. My fault for not making my point clearer. If they did brand themselves they did it towards a venue that was not productive to the landscape they are in.

 

Do you understand the words you are using? Or have you read Bourdieu diagonally and figured he almost made sense? If you think t-shirts aren't worthy of objectified state, that's great, but realize also that some people think that toys are also useless. Unless of course your idea is that streetwear is too low-brow to claim capital status. Either way your vision of what counts is rather narrow: the world is bigger than you and me.

Wel that's great man but I can tell you pretty simply that HBA is garbage. First of all because HBA isn't doing anything that Alexander Wang, YSL and Margiela are already doing, that Karl Lagerfeld has been doing, that Rei Kawakubo has done. In terms of cuts, patterns, culture. marketing, everything. By that standard, SSUR, Stussy or even Black Scale had equal chances of being "that" brand. When HBA dropped, there were 12 other brands doing the same thing. They're a blip that sounds loud because loudmouths are echoing it. And I don't want to put words in anybody's mouth, but I am quite sure Greg and Mikhail had no interest in becoming HBA.

Mishka has collaborated with Dinosaur Jr., Action Bronson, Trouble & Bass, Trash Talk, Darq e Freaker, Death In June... With Casper the friendly ghost and Robocop. Trust that it was very productive to the landscape THEY are in.

 

I think I understand the words I am using. One of my super powers is reading my own mind.

I want to be critically aware. HBA might be garbage the same way Mishka is garbage, thats not relevant really. The trickle down effects of fashion of which Margiela, wang, mcqueen are causative of is only part of it. My vision of what counts is not what is at stake here, nor the object of my engagement. My interest is in how much this brand and many others go back rather than forward and make that move backwards seem like a lateral movement forward.

All of the collabs of mishka resulted in fun, interesting projects but ultimately did not go beyond the one time move and just advertising, which is smart and fine, I am talking through this as I attempt to understand how is it that I dont like it. Again, im trying to move away from the Mishka-bashing and more into the general impression I get that some americans are more in line with remembering some bygone era than engaging the contemporary state of affairs.

But you bring up valid points, Im gonna have to think them through.

 

Too many walls-of-words and meaningless millenial bullshit . . . please PM the highlights referencing anything that actually matters!

Thanks in advance and kindest regards, Andy xxxxxx

 

What an odd proposal. I can count maybe 4 designers who are anything close to forward-thinking today. Clearly, neither Mishka nor any kind of ready-to-wear fit that role: inasmuch as they are supposed to be practical, worn, displayed, now. Hence the name, "ready to wear." Streetwear, at its best, is figurative: eliciting some kind of feeling from something pre-existing, whether the shape of a tee shirt or a subject matter. So no, Mishka isn't inventing future subject matter in order to create its own derived products from it. But over a year in advance, in the creative design process, they have to forecast the type of thing that people will be interested in / wearing in the future - and they certainly use partly the same resources as others, which is why it looks lateral-forward.

Contemporary, as in "now"? As if a product could be created instantaneously? As if 90% of "now" weren't just fuzziness? That's not exclusive to America, this is how time works. Let me introduce you to the concept of emergence: things happen when they are made up of things that happen - you have no choice in the matter. Some of that is nostalgic, because obviously you need a cognitive basis (besides the cost aspect, making things that are completely new is nigh impossible), and some of it is the brand-new-as-of-now product of those cognitive bases. We can talk about other designers if you want, but since the subject of the thread is Mishka, the art from Lamour Supreme and JK5 and Ellen Stagg and Lee Trice and is as "now" as it gets. Yeah, some of it is 80s comics, some is scribbles, some is porn, some is collage... None of them actually invented their art. but they're doing it in a way no one else can.

 

I don't even know what that means. Are you saying they started slapping Spongebob graphics on shirts because it was cheaper than paying for original designs?

 

I'm going to respond to your trolling, just this once, because I need to make sure you understand: I will not respond to your further queries because your weird mix of ingenuity and tactlessness lets me know that you genuinely revel in your lack of understanding.

Mishka started slapping Spongebob graphics on t-shirts because Spongebob is popular/funny.
Probably also because they got the opportunity to do so.

More importantly, they started slapping Lamour's version of Spongebob on their clothes, as he appropriated a work derived from an existing property.

But in terms of cost, creating a character and a franchise with the type of exposure and following that Spongebob enjoys, is astronomical and far beyond the wildest dreams of most artistic folks out there. Maybe you and I don't find him funny, or maybe we don't understand, but 15 years worth of animation, plus movies, comic books, sound tracks, theme park rides, and memes are nothing to sneeze at.

 

So a clothes brand slaps popular characters on shirts to maximize profits and minimize actual creativity.
Yawn.

No wonder Greg ragequit SB, he wasn't getting the "love and appreciation" he deserved for doing... Well, not much at all. (Good riddance!)

 

Cool! Another fuckin' n00b that defaults to using the 'Trolling' card at any available opportunity.

Shoulda stuck to lurking!

 

It's interesting how the Spongebob collabs surfaced all at once at the end of 2013/start of 2014 - it wasn't just Lamour/Mishka, there were tons, including Moschino. It makes me think that Nickelodeon had to have reached out to these companies in some capacity, after seeing so much street art surface using their character. I kind of think those were the years when these big cartoon/fashion collabs really started flooding the market. Some were better executed than others though hah. Sorry, off subject >_>;;

 

Why did I come in here?

 

So this is your perception of what happened?
Greg took a random Spongebob jpg from the assets FTP, dragged and dropped it onto a t-shirt, pressed "print" and became a millionaire?

 

Nah, but he had the character already designed for him. And millionaire my ass, the dude flips toys to Mandarake.

 

See, but I wasn't asking about Spongebob - I was hoping that you might elaborate on the nonsense you posted, which unsurprisingly you didn't. So given your answer, either your statement was indeed referring specifically to the appropriation of Spongebob (carry on everybody) or you actually have no clue what you were saying yourself. Love the "weird mix of ingenuity and tactlessness" bit, though.

 

This thread lives!!

It's some real life pet cemetery shit.

The shit some people say on here is outta sight.

 

Psychic Hearts looks like every skateboard kid these days. I'm not sure what anyone can complain about though it's just on trend street fashion, it started in a more earnest way by kids and now brands are creating for it, as always happens.

But this message board came from brands like Secret Base, Bounty Hunter etc.. these brands always referenced nostalgic characters and were tied to streetwear that did the same. People referencing a cartoon to express their distaste with toys and clothing that reference nostalgia is really just a perfect circle irony overload.

 

Maybe people just like spongebob. The Simpsons get a lot of love in fashion too. Maybe artists seek licensing for the stuff they like. Maybe it's no deeper than that. I hate to be that guy but, if you don't like it, don't buy it. Problem solved.