Even cooler than Madvillianny

Do you remember when Madlib and MF DOOM collaborated and put out that crazy album? Yeah, me too. Everyone was a little shocked, like, "It happened. They really did it." I think it was a solid year before it left my heavy rotation.

I've commented on collaborations a bunch here recently. I'm usually kind of skeptical where the value add is. Sometimes the result is cool. Sometimes it's just really exciting and you can't wait to taste/listen to it. That's the case with this Sierra Nevada X Anchor Steam collaboration. These are my two favorite brands that have national distribution and I'm pretty excited about this (though I highly doubt this will be available in beer backwater Washington D.C.)

It appears that we are celebrating Sierra Nevada's 30th anniversary with Fritz and Ken's Ale which, I'm told, is a stout. An interesting choice as neither brewery is particularly known for stouts but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt.

Cheers.

vis Cool Hunting 

Collaborations gone too far?

One of the most popular ways to add an edge to your clothing line is introduce a limited run of product that was created in collaboration with another brand or an outside designer with some prestige. This can work really well and refresh the brand a bit and the results can be exciting.

Some examples that come to mind are Ransom x Adidas and Maiden Noir x Porter. Even Tim Burton x Moleskin was kind of cool. There are about a million others that have come out in the past couple of years alone.

But this trend may have gone to far with the announcement that Hanes collaborated with Stussy on some plain white t-shirts. I will tread lightly because I like that guys that run the Stussy store in DC and I have picked a couple of things there since they opened a couple of years ago. However, it's still a funny idea. Hanes makes cheap and plain t-shirts and doesn't charge much. Stussy makes cheap t-shirts with a little bit of print and charges a lot. Someone decided they were ripe for a collaboration. What is the value add? A small Stussy logo on the front and no tag on the neck. Awesome, no tag on the neck. We can only hope that these creative genius behind these brands will continue to bestow us with such innovative gems of design.

You can check for these in your local Stussy shop. Via Hypebeast.