maison bertaux. soho.

the other evening i was doing a christmas shoot at a great place in soho.

as the shoot progressed i got more and more hungry... i was craving cake in fact.

i looked out of one of the windows and this is what i saw...

one of london's finest cakey shops... it was calling me.

if you're ever in town late at night and fancy a cake and a coffee,

why not try maison bertaux ? you might spot a couple of actors at the next table,

you might feel a little bit like you've gone back in time...

you'll certainly eat some nice cakes.

loopwheeler x harris tweed

you know i've got a bit of a thing for harris tweed right ?

and you also know that i like a lot of japanese brands ?

well one of my favourites, loopwheeler recently decided to incorporate

some harris tweed touches into their signature sweatshirts.

( i think i've mentioned loopwheeler previously on this blog. they

make the best quality sweatshirts ever, and they use an old loopwheel

machine which takes 1 hour to manufacture 1 metre of fabric )

of course, they are only available in japan and from what i can make

of the situation, they don't do mail order.

if anybody in tokyo is reading this and wants to do me a favour,

i'd prefer the grey sweatshirt but i'd take the blue... size large please.

send me a comment and we can sort out the money.

www.loopwheeler.co.jp

twentytwentyone

 my friends at twentytwentyone ( n1's finest ) recently took over the shop 

next door and have now expanded their empire.

it's not quite ready yet... some fine tuning with the interior has still to be sorted,

but wow ! it's looking good.

hopefully i'll bring you some images of the interior when it's finished

but in the meantime i would like to say:

1. for all your furniture, lighting and christmas gifts, go to twentytwentyone.

( they've got something for everybody there )

2. i miss that cafe. where on upper street am i going to get a coffee from now ?

www.twentytwentyone.com

car park shots

the car park at whitfield towers is a great location for photography.

i've photographed models, bands, actors, all sorts of people in the 

gloom and amongst the cars and concrete pillars.

after a strange shoot in w1 on tuesday... 

( strange because i did the whole 4 hour shoot without sneaking in one self-portrait )

i decided to do a team whitfield shot in the car park when we got home.

1.

i swear the bbc could make a cop series out of this

2.

imagine the scene, a suspect opens his front door to see the above image.

me: evening sir, i'd like to ask you a few questions if i may ?

stel: me too... have you got a spongebob tattoo on your back ?

to be honest you wouldn't even need a script.

every conversation with stel involved ends with a line that you could

print on a t-shirt.

n7's finest... coming soon to a tv screen near you

interiors part 3

more interiors.

1.

busaba eathai at bicester shopping village or whatever it's called.

this place won a design award earlier in the year. from what i could see it looked

pretty much like all the other branches but maybe a little better.

grrr ! i had an early start getting to this place but hey, the staff were very

friendly and yes they gave me a coffee.

2.

roganic.

a 2 year pop-up restaurant ?

3.

another view of roganic.

i do think it's a bit lippy calling a place a pop-up restaurant if it's intention is

to be there for 2 years though. don't you ?

4.

the mark addy.

this is in the centre of manchester... well, salford i guess.

it's about 100 yards from the hotel where i photographed pele 

earlier in the year.

the people working here were very nice... but it got slated in the magazine

i worked for. supposedly the food was terrible.

5.

the devonshire arms.

cracking pub in chiswick. this is where i had the best scotch egg in london...

remember ?

6.

the riding house cafe.

another early start, another nice coffee. this was the place with the squirrel 

lamps by the way.

7.

kumo.

a little bar in knightsbridge.

see this photo ?... well they say the camera never lies...

8.

kettners.

a room set up for a wedding.

do you know kettners ? it has an amazing history... fantastic stories.

9.

the rib room.

this is where i did my last self-portrait.

funnily enough i ate here years ago and guess who was sitting a few tables away from me ?

go on... have a guess.

nike n7 air force 1

you know i've been representing n7 for a long time now don't you ?

i love my postcode and i've been promoting it for ages.

well last month i noticed that nike were dropping a pair of air force 1's

called 'n7'

it was too good to be true for me.

of course they were a usa only release but i managed to find a pair on the bay

at an outrageously cheap price.

they arrived last week and here they are.

special n7 box 

inside the box has a nice n7 touch too

the name 'n7' is not in honour of my postcode by the way.

it's nike's range which is inspired by the native american concept of the seven generations, which holds that in every action a community undertakes, it must consider the consequences for the next seven generations.

let's take a look at the shoes

the tip and the foxing are constructed from a black and brown leather and suede mix.

the leather and suede mix together to form a native american pattern.

the toe box, the eye stay and the mid panel are in a soft dark brown leather.

an interesting feature on these bad boys is on the tongue

brown leather lace loops with 'n7' embroidered onto them. lace loops big enough

to take three laces though. the tongues themselves are in brown nylon with black trim and a brown leather tongue tab.

they have soft black sock liners 

and a black and blue native american pattern on the insoles.

the swoosh is in soft black suede with off white coloured stitching.

the laces are black waxed with blue tips.

here you can see the quality of the leather used on the tip and the toe box

and see that the shoe stands on a sail midsole with red stitching and a pale blue outsole.

the heel tabs are in brown leather with brown stitching

and the heel strips are in blue cotton with red stitching... a nice contast to the leather.

perhaps my favourite part of these are the leather dubres

with five triangles stitched onto them

the spare laces are sail coloured with blue tips

but they're not waxed and i think i'll stay with the black laces

also these bad boys come packaged with this very impressive bracelet

using the same dark brown / black leather as the shoes and featuring the same 

embroidered pattern as used on the dubres.

i think these cost me $85, which is an absolute steal.

they're far from being my favourite pair and yes i mainly bought them

because of the n7 thing. i will however be wearing these on a regular basis.

i don't think they're great but they're interesting and they're made from

premium materials... very comfortable too.

bringing heat to the streets of n7 with my nike n7 af-1's

not bad.

twinspanda

i bought a new camera the other day and also one of my main cameras

for some reason doesn't have a camera strap. also the strap on my quantum 

battery is just about to split in two.

so over the past few weeks i've been looking for interesting camera straps.

i bought a roberu strap from colette, which i'll reveal to you with my new camera

next week, but looking on ebay i found a great make of camera straps called

'twinspanda'

and after checking out their extensive range, i bought two straps.

english tartan and leopard ( yes, english tartan ! )

i'm going to use the leopard strap on my quantum battery

it looks interesting and it's a very well constructed bit of kit. 

i like to have things that are a bit different... you know, that not many people have.

i also like well designed and well made items that are from a one off designer or

a small start-up company rather than a big, well known and well established name.

if you fancy treating yourself to a new camera strap or just buying one as a present 

for somebody, i recommend you check out the website:

www.twinspanda.com

seriously i could have bought loads of them.

i think they were £10.30 each with free post and packaging and arrived in 7 days

( don't be put off by their website... their prices are in hong kong dollars )

oh, and when you're on the twinspanda website, be sure to read the 'about' section

it just makes you want to buy one or two of their straps.

good people making a great little product which does it's job and also stands out

as a well designed, stylish thing.

go on... they'll arrive in time for christmas !