B EAST Magazine website

April 11, 2010
By Vijai

It’s Malcolm Gladwellian tipping-point-time in Ukraine’s capital, Kiev, which is on the cusp of a street fashion revolution. The T-shirt & hoodie crowd, the emo & punk kids, the hip indie chicks and the stylish mods are gaining in numbers with each spring, and plotting to topple the Versace-wearing status quo. Hipsters are setting up their own T-shirt labels like Frequency, whose iconic T-shirts and sleeveless hoodies variously read ‘Jesus Also Loves Gangsters’ or ‘FFFFFUUU’; little clothing & record stores are popping up in obscure courtyards in the city’s historic center; while new bars like Korol I Kapusta (King & Cabbages), Palatka No. 6, Backstreet and others funnel the energies of this new generation.

I walked around Kiev’s center this Friday, facehunting for the Bread&Butter crowd. They’re here, they’re out in force, and, hey, you wanna invite them back to your flat, blast the Cure on the stereo, and stop the world and melt with them.

Bread&Butter, Barcelona’s tradeshow for selected brands, was steaming this year, not just because it attracted most of the koolest brands in Europe, and beyond. It was also just hot and humid in southern Spain, the sort of weather that drives most Indians or Texans to the comfort of their airconditioned offices and living rooms. Europeans like the heat though—which is still a relative novelty in these global warming times—and, so while some premises were airconditioned, especially those in the swankier Urban Superior and Denim Base areas, many had to deal with the heat. Especially those stuck in the concrete sweatbox of the gargantuan Sport & Street area. Our sympathies went out to Reebok, which had one of the coolest stands at the fair, but was stuck in Barcelona’s version of Dante’s Inferno—down, down in the basement.

The heat, though, meant that fans (the objects, not the star-fuckers*) were in high demand, and those brands savvy enough to hand out their own punkahs certainly got more bang for their buck than biz-as-usual stickers and fliers. We went around photographing fashionistas fanning themselves, and here you go.

And, finally, one of our favorite brand managers, Stephan Ploch from Reebok, Germany