KIT BUTLER & TON HEUKELS STAR IN ESQUIRE SINGAPORE SHOOT

"Top models Kit Butler and Ton Heukels come together for a new editorial. Justin Campbell photographs the models for the May 2019 issue of Esquire Singapore. The duo dons designer fashions as they pose for black and white images. Luca Falcioni outfits Kit and Ton in brands such as Givenchy, Prada, and Wooyoungmi. Their wardrobe includes everything from slim-fit tailoring and graphic print shirts to leather jackets." - TheFashionisto.com

Les Vivants

"Carlos Morales at Sight Management, Axel Gomez and Antonio Pazos, shot by Andrés Jiménez Guerrero and styled by Ismael Sanchez, in exclusive for Fucking Young! Online.

Hair & Make-up: Julia G
BRANDS: Gucci, Tolentino Hats, Adolfo Domínguez, Etro, Puro Ego." - Fuckingyoung.es

ItsNotYouItsMe Honors A Club That Was Truly Ahead Of It's Time! 'The Cavern Club: The Beat Goes On' Documentary

ItsNotYouItsMe honors a club that was truly ahead of its time! Below we feature everything you need to know about the upcoming documentary 'The Cavern Club'.

"The iconic Liverpool club where The Beatles rose to fame was host to some of rock’s greatest bands, and the film details this rich history.
Most rock fans associate Liverpool’s The Cavern Club with the rise of The Beatles and the musical movement they led from the English port town. Grainy videos — remastered from the original footage — can also be found of the Fab Four crammed into the brick archway that served as the club’s main stage, with a tightly packed throng of mop-haired teens and twentysomethings in the audience. It marked the beginning of a revolution.

But Cavern’s roots preceded John, Paul, George and Ringo by four years, and the venue has played an important role in music beyond the 292 shows that the group played in its sweaty basement confines. A new documentary makes a compelling argument for The Cavern Club’s place in history. Cavern Club: The Beat Goes On premiered on Wednesday at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Los Angeles as a kick-off to the 12th edition of BritWeek.

The film traces the club’s long and winding road from its roots in 1957 as a jazz and skiffle club to its more recent years at the heart of Liverpool’s vibrant Beatles tourism and as a venue to watch live music and new artists. Skiffle (a hybrid of jazz, blues and folk) was a popular genre in the 1950s and a huge influence on Paul McCartney and John Lennon, who performed skiffle as The Quarrymen before becoming The Beatles.

The Beatles
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"We always say that The Cavern sells the past, present and future of music," Jon Keats, a co-director of the film and director of a company that promotes Beatles tourism and the club, told The Hollywood Reporter. "We support a lot of up-and-coming groups. The Cavern has always been a huge tourist attraction, but also a relevant live music venue."

BritWeek founder and American Idol creator Nigel Lythgoe said that the British invasion of rock groups that launched from Liverpool was on his mind as he set this year’s BritWeek agenda. He also was looking to build on BritWeek’s partnership with the Annenberg Center, whose British-born artistic director Paul Crewes is co-hosting the film.

Courtesy of The Cavern Club
The Cavern Club in Liverpool, England.
In January, Crewes learned about the doc, which had already been scheduled to show at the Newport Film Festival in late April. Lythgoe had visited the club as a teen growing up in the Liverpool area, dancing the stomp and the shake with the rest of the crowds. "They say in the documentary that there was sweat on the walls — absolutely true," Lythgoe said. "You just stood on your feet and shook your head around."

Crewes contacted Keats, who jumped at the opportunity to debut his film in Los Angeles as he looked for a distribution deal. "For us to launch in Beverly Hills, we couldn’t have planned that. It was an honor," Keats told THR.

George Harrison poses for a portrait with an acoustic guitar in circa 1974.
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Keats and his group wanted to tell The Cavern Club’s full story — the film’s genesis dates to 2016 — which he felt had been overlooked amidst the focus on The Beatles. The club’s first owner, Allan Sytner, modeled it after Parisian cellar jazz clubs that were popular in the 1950s. The location on Mathew Street near Liverpool’s center was part of a warehouse and had served as a bomb shelter during World War II.

Skiffle music represented an increasingly large part of the entertainment until the 1960s, when The Cavern Club morphed into a rock 'n' roll venue with The Beatles as the signature act. The group played their last gig at the club in August 1963. But in subsequent years, it became an early stopping point for some of rock’s other big names, including The Kinks, The Who and The Rolling Stones. "After the Beatles, everyone played there," Keats said.

The club’s fortunes have mirrored those of Liverpool, where the economy struggled during the 1970s and 1980s. The Cavern Club has closed twice in its history and moved locations just down Mathew Street. The current ownership group bought the club in 1991 and is the longest-running proprietor. McCartney and Ringo Starr have returned to perform at the club, with Yoko Ono even visiting in 2013 to see where her late husband Lennon had started his career. Adele also gave a concert and took audience questions in 2011. The venue has also long been a fixture on Beatles tours, a driver of Liverpool tourism.

Courtesy of The Cavern Club
The Cavern Club in Liverpool, England.
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The doc weaves together this rich history with film footage from the early days, video and interviews with people who touched the club in some way, including McCartney. Lythgoe, who moved to the U.S. 17 years ago, said that showing the film resonated on a personal level: "I never dreamed when I started BritWeek that I would be bringing Liverpool over here — my hometown," he said.

BritWeek tickets range from a $25 student entry to $75, and proceeds go toward the event’s charities, The Miracle Project and CineMagic, which offer a range of film and performing arts programs focused largely on children and teens. Following the film's world premiere screening, the Cavern Club’s resident band (the Cavern Club Beatles) will play some of the group’s hits." - Billboard via Hollywood Reporter.com

The Number Ones: Elton John’s “Bennie And The Jets”

According to one of our musical sources:

Elton John – “Bennie And The Jets”

HIT #1: April 13, 1974

STAYED AT #1: 1 week

“What am I going to do on my next American tour? Play the Apollo for a week, open with ‘Bennie,’ and then say, ‘Thanks, you can all go home now.'”

That was Elton John (as quoted in Fred Bronson’s Billboard Book Of #1 Hits) talking to Rolling Stone in 1974. He went on: “I’m such a black record fanatic that to think I’m actually in the R&B chart means that even if it doesn’t get any higher than #34, I’m going to stick it up and frame it.”






“Bennie And The Jets” wasn’t a huge R&B hit; it peaked at #15 on Billboard’s R&B chart. But for Elton John, a #15 R&B record was probably a bigger deal than a Hot 100 #1. When Elton recorded “Bennie And The Jets,” MCA, his label, wanted to make the song a single. Elton disagreed vociferously. His pick was “Candle In The Wind,” the graceful and funereal ballad that, at some distant date, will appear in this column. And in the UK, Elton got his way; there, “Bennie And The Jets” was the B-side to “Candle In The Wind.”

But Elton was swayed when “Bennie And The Jets” started doing well on Detroit R&B radio. And Elton was so delighted by its R&B radio success that he became the first white superstar ever to perform on Soul Train. (Elton wasn’t the first white performer to have his music featured on Soul Train; he came after both Dennis Coffey and Gino Vanelli. But Elton was the first white performer to dress like a leprechaun on Soul Train, which is something, and he beat David Bowie onto the show.)




“To this day, I cannot see that song as a single,” Elton told Rolling Stone in 2014. I’m with him. “Bennie And The Jets” isn’t really a soul song; its beat is too clumsy and ungainly for that. And it’s not really a glam-rock song, either, even though it takes place in a strange and robotic alternate future. It’s too smooth to be rock ‘n’ roll and too discordant to be easy listening.

Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, the late-1973 double album that yielded “Bennie And The Jets,” was an absolute blockbuster — a #1 album for months, and the biggest-selling album of 1973. But within the context of that album, “Bennie And The Jets” is a bugged-out outlier. I’ve always had trouble connecting to the song, but it remains one of the most ubiquitous and widely beloved tracks in a ubiquitous and widely beloved catalog.

In its own way, “Bennie And The Jets” is just as sci-fi as Elton’s previous hit “Rocketman.” Bernie Taupin, Elton’s lyricist, wrote “Bennie And The Jets” about a future where robotic musicians become youth-culture messiahs. It’s possible to hear “Bennie And The Jets” as a satire of the pop-music industry. The song’s narrator is a fan of Bennie And The Jets, this Spiders Of Mars-style fictional band, but he never mentions their music, only Bennie’s electric boots and mohair suit. He knows the Jets are “weird and wonderful” and “so spaced out,” and he’s at a distance from them, only knowing about them because he “read it in a magazine.” It’s idolatry.

The Jets are mythic figures, objects of pure conjecture. And yet they inspire a whole younger generation to “fight our parents out in the streets to find out who’s right and who’s wrong.” So maybe it’s a case of Elton John, someone who was always happy to come off larger than life, imagining his own ideal. Or maybe it’s a note of caution, a warning not to put pop musicians on pedestals. Taupin keeps it ambiguous.

Elton wrote the music, as he always does, turning Taupin’s futuristic musings into a blocky trudge, a sort of inversion of his own graceful ballads. The part everyone remembers is the piano line, which John absolutely hammers out. By the time the song ends, that piano is dueling with volcanic synth-bursts, and Elton is squeak-stuttering in a frantic parody of Frankie Valli’s falsetto. Producer Gus Dudgeon adds in crowd noise recorded at an Elton John show, even though the song itself was recorded in the studio. The whole track is a strange mess. It’s memorable, I’ve always found it pretty unpleasant, too.

Over the ensuing decades of his career, Elton John would only land on the R&B charts twice more, and neither of those songs, one of which will appear in this column, got anywhere near the “Bennie And The Jets” peak. It didn’t much matter. Elton John was well on his way to pop-icon status, and “Bennie And The Jets” had a ton to do with that. It’s an effective and memorable hook-monster of a song, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it.



GRADE: 5/10

BONUS BEATS: Here’s Elton John verbally sparring with Kermit and performing “Bennie And The Jets” on a 1978 episode of The Muppet Show:



BONUS BONUS BEATS: Here’s the Beastie Boys and Biz Markie’s tone-deaf and near-unlistenable 1995 “Bennie And The Jets” cover, which the Beasties included as a flexidisc in the second issue of their Grand Royal magazine:



(The Beastie Boys’ highest-charting single is 1987’s “(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (To Party!),” which peaked at #7. It’s an 8. Meanwhile, Biz Markie’s highest-charting single is 1989’s “Just A Friend,” which peaked at #9. It’s a 10. Bonus beats bonus beat: On that Grand Royal flexi-disc, there’s a track after the “Bennie And The Jets” cover. It’s a couple of seconds of Biz beatboxing, and it’s called “Bonus Beats,” which is where I got the name of this section.)

BONUS BONUS BONUS BEATS: Mary J. Blige, who will eventually show up in this column, sang over a “Bennie And The Jets” sample on her 1999 single “Deep Inside,” and Elton himself played piano on the song. Here’s her video for the track, which peaked at #63:



BONUS BONUS BONUS BONUS BEATS: Here’s a Tribe Called Quest sampling “Bennie And The Jets” on the 2016 Busta Rhymes collab “Solid Walls Of Sound,” which features Jack White on guitar and Elton himself on piano:



(A Tribe Called Quest and Jack White have never had any top-10 singles, but Busta Rhymes has a bunch. As a lead artist, Busta Rhymes’ two highest-charting singles are the 1999 Janet Jackson collab “What’s It Gonna Be?!” and the 2003 Mariah Carey/Flipmode Squad collab “I Know What You Want.” Both of them peaked at #3. “What’s It Gonna Be?!” is a 6, and “I Know What You Want” is a 7. Busta also rapped on the Pussycat Doll’s “Don’t Cha,” which peaked at #2 in 2005. It’s a 4.)" - Stereogum.com

LOOKBOOK: Philipp Plein Pre-Fall 2019 Menswear Collection

"Fashion brand Philipp Plein enlisted models Dudley O’Shaughnessy and Felix Radford to star in their Pre-Fall 2019 menswear collection lookbook." - Malemodelscene.net

The Pursuit of Hope

"Viktoria J and Rodrigo captured by Vinci Ng and styled by Crystal Yung with SS19 collection by Hong Kong designers from FASHIONALLY such as Chan Chit Lo, S.F.Z & son, Sketcharound, Tak Lee and Harrison Wong.

Credits:
Art Direction & Photography: Vinci Ng
Styling: Crystal Yung
Makeup: Lauren Lee
Hair: Kennki Lau
Model: Viktoria J (Synergy) & Rodrigo C (CalCarries)

www.fashionally.com" - Fuckingyoung.es

The Existentialism aesthetics – A chat with Marko Feher

“The idea that others saw in me one that was not the I whom I knew, one whom they alone could know, as they looked at me from without, with eyes that were not my own, eyes that conferred upon me an aspect destined to remain always foreign to me, although it was one that was in me, one that was my own to them…” – Luigi Pirandello, One, no one and one hundred thousand

MARKO FEHER, the brand, was born from the intention of its creator Marko Feher (the designer) to explore the hidden self, his identity in the perception of others. Who am I? Who are we?

Between the second half of the XIX century and the first of the XX, Kierkegaard, Dostoevskij, Nietzsche, Sartre, Heidegger, Jaspers, Pirandello and many others tried to answer the long existential question. Artists, thinkers, writers: they did it to the extent and in the ways that were usual to them.

So, it is an unusual return to Existentialism that of our Bosnian boy, modern and nonconformist. He looks for replies through his collections, writes them among the textures of his garments fabrics.

MARKO FEHER is a pure research brand. It has no color, no gender, no season, no race.

We met the young graduate at Central Saint Martins of London some weeks ago and that’s what he told us…

Hello Marko! When and how did your interest in fashion start?

Hi F.Y! I don’t know how to explain but fashion has always been part of my being… From a young age to now. For me, fashion is a way to express my thoughts, ideas, nightmares… I was born this way! It is really hard to explain but it is how it is, I’ve always felt this is me…

Who is Marko and what is MARKO FEHER?

Marko was born in Bosnia and Herzegovina and he is trying all the time to discover his identity.

MARKO FEHER is the project of my thoughts. Marko studied fashion design at Central Saint Martins in London. I had always been searching for my identity, DNA, so my first collection was about “Virdžina”. I don’t know if you know about Virginas, but the last Virgina died a few years ago in the Balkans, Montenegro. It is a Balkan phenomenon involving families with no sons. In case the third born baby is female, she will be killed or forced to change gender and become a sworn virgin, which means that she needs to live and act like a man during her whole life. That is what moved me and gave me a direction for my future projects. I am confused about the fact that a society that does not accept the LGBT community at all has in the roots forcing people to become transgender while it cannot accept that they become transgender on their own. The collection is black and white because from my perspective the Balkans’ state of mind is somehow grayscale, dark, foggy, tough.

Why did you choose your own name?

Because the brand is not intended for anyone, I don’t try to fit in any type of industry, I just want to feel and be free to express myself. That means the brand is who I am at the moment.

The brand is not intended for anyone and at the same time is intended for everyone who feels it. How do you define your style? Who is your top customer?

I never want to define my customers. People usually says it is for strong men/women, brave enough, etc., I don’t want to define my customers, I want them to define themselves and to feel free to reborn in my designs. I never want to be a mass brand.

If I tell you “unisex”, what will you reply?

Yes, I do, yes I am… We all should be free to wear and behave however we want…

In your description, I can read the brand carries moral principles that you take on your own too, such as cruelty-free, vegan, non-toxic… Could you explain how you keep this kind of principles in your fashion?

As I said before, it is just me, my brand is who I am, so it’s not hard to be fair to yourself… I don’t want to cheat myself and not even my customers.



The inspiration for your last collections is the traditional heritage from your Country. The name is evocative: Kozara Ethno Fusion. Tell us something more.

I feel that people from the Balkan, Bosnia and Hercegovina feel ashamed of tradition and customs that we have, for no reason. We don’t learn in schools about tradition and customs, maybe that is the reason why people don’t see us in the right way. So far all my projects have been based mainly on art in fashion, or more precisely the avant-garde approach to design, this time it was the point to keep my expression, tradition and put them all together to enlighten the tradition of walking in our and other cities around the world.

The focus of this collection are the fabrics and the materials, made exclusively for the needs of this collection. All the fabrics include motifs from traditional clothing. We have transformed the motives into something contemporary and still retained the uniqueness of the original elements. The coloring process is biological and is not toxic to the environment, most of the materials are 100 % eco-cotton.

Its key piece?

Coats.

What is the future of fashion?

Slow fashion, sustainability, handmade…

As always, our last question… According to you, what is really FUCKING YOUNG!?

The night is young, fucking young.

Fashion: Marko Feher
Photo: Edvin Kalić
MakeUp: Adi Hasić
Hair: Ensar Dervisbegovic
Models: Armin Ćosić; Nebojša – Cyrus Models; Jan, Afan – ABC Models MNGMT." -Fuckingyoung.es