Shots from the road by Joachim taken in Toronto and all the way up to the Bruce Peninsula National Park, while shooting our third Raze Sports collaboration (our first freelance project) with Mounir and Milan that was officially launched today. The series was something that had been on our mind since the beginning of our Atelier Munro endeavours in the context of the NHL in 2022 and after finally getting it done became our undisputed favourite campaign to date: presenting Mark Giordano, Andrew Mangiapane, Ty Dellandrea and Zach Hyman as 'The AM Team'. Taking the concept of the tunnel fit, that has been part of the NHL's culture for only a few years now (which we spoke about for the campaign with Sportsnet culture journalist/host Donnovan Bennett), and perfecting it to present the brand's three main made-to-measure fabric categories: the (seasonal) Fall/Winter 2024 Signature Collection, the (permanent) 365 Essential fabrics collection and finally a special AM Team capsule collection with perennial styles for classic and casual items out of the offering. [ Continue reading ]

Shots from the road by Joachim taken in the Swiss ski resort of Zermatt and up the Alps towards the Matterhorn, while shooting the Atelier Munro Fall/Winter 2024 Signature Collection. Like the former Signature Collection, we collaborated with Wendy on photography and Milan returned doing the film. Having officially launched last month, the series marks our changed roles in relationship to the brand as it is the final project while operating in-house. The campaign is shot in a wonderful chalet overlooking the iconic village in the south of Switserland. From outside, architect (amongst other things) Heinz Julen’s creation very much appears to be another traditional wooden cabin, but once inside, the 300 sqaure feet loft shows an elegant clash of concrete, steel and glass. The loft also formed the perfect base to move up the mountains, first overlooking Zermatt and finally all the way towards the Matterhorn where we set up for a full day of shooting in the sun. [ Continue reading ]

Shots from the road by Joachim taken in the Greater Los Angeles area while shooting the Atelier Munro Spring/Summer 2024 Signature Collection with Wendy and Lenny in January of 2024, which officially launched last week. The location for the shoot was a most elegant work by American architect Michael Sant, sitting atop the Santa Monica Mountains. The glass-box building is a short 45-minute drive from Venice that can host up to 8 people, 4 in the main house and 4 in the annex beside it. We made this same drive daily out to the canyonside in Topanga, California for our 2-day shoot, photographing around every corner in and outside of the impressive property for the campaign, and everything else while being on the road. [ Continue reading ]

When we travelled to Pitti Uomo 105, in January of 2024, we once again asked photographer Keng Perreira to capture the style on the street. See here our personal favorites, which were partly published by the Dutch magazine ModMod in their issue #5. [ Continue reading ]

In Wim Wenders’ extraordinary 2023 film Perfect Days the viewer witnesses the life of a Tokio public toilet cleaner portrayed by an excellent Kōji Yakusho. In the entire film the character is questioned only once about his job by his estranged sister. Not with disrespect for the profession, but rather suggesting that in another life his interests were completely elsewhere. But what at that point the viewer knows, but she doesn't, is that his heavily routined life interweaves those interests with doing his job. Everything the character does is done with the same dedication and respect. His routines offer a pretty effective guideline through the chaos, while in the dedication behind his actions lays the purpose to give it all some meaning. A centered life, clearly rooted in the Japanese tradition. Giving us some new perspectives on what knew all along. [ Continue reading ]

Shots from the road by Joachim taken in the summer months of 2023, shooting Atelier Munro campaigns with Mounir, Milan, Paul and Colin featuring NHL players Andrew Mangiapane and Mark Giordano, the Fall/Winter 2023 Signature Collection, art historian Paul Rem, the Wedding 2024 collection and finally a story with artist Mike Dings to present our collaboration with Calgary institution Smithbilt Hats. Moving all over the globe from Calgary, to Toronto and Niagara-on-the-Lake, to Hilversum, Haarlem and Amsterdam, the island of Terschelling and finally back to the capital of Alberta, where we also celebrated the opening of a new Atelier Munro flagship store - all campaigns are now live. [ Continue reading ]

Shots from the road by Joachim taken in the first half of 2023, shooting Atelier Munro campaigns with Mounir, Milan and Keng featuring actor Nasrdin Dchar, music director Gustavo Gimeno and CEO Mark Williams of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and menswear writer Mitchell Moss. Moving across the globe from Rotterdam, Toronto, to Cincinatti, Nashville and finally to Florence (during Pitti Uomo 104) where we also hosted our dinner with Mitchell and Clayton's Sprezza platform  - all campaigns are now live. [ Continue reading ]

During Pitti Uomo 104, we collaborated with Clayton Chambers' weekly newsletter Sprezza and Mitchell Moss' blog Menswear Musings to host an intimate Atelier Munro dinner at Trattoria Coco Lezzone with some of our favorite people from the fashion industry. What a night it was, we loved every second of it! [ Continue reading ]

When we travelled to Pitti Uomo 104, in June of this year, we asked photographer Keng Pereira to capture the style on the street. See here our personal favorites, which were partly published by the Dutch JFK Magazine in their issue 102. [ Continue reading ]

When looking back at 2022, it is safe to say that reading David W. Marx’s excellent 'Status and Culture’ was among the most cathartic experiences. Marx’s elaborate observations on how culture moves through society is both enlightening and confronting. Reading his immaculately formed thoughts about the world we live in, granted us new perspectives on our own behaviour. Both as a consumer and an active participant and observer of culture as as whole. It has a been a rather strange year of (post-)pandemic life, the third half following those two earlier exceptionally strange years. Marx’s book offered some fundamental clarity about the times we live in. And what we strive for in the coming year(s) of the Another Something macrocosm. [ Continue reading ]

Greek photographer Yiannis Hadjiaslanis shared his latest project ‘Ascension’ with us. Shot on two visits to Mt. Bromo, in 2017, and 2020. Hadjiaslanis work explores narratives of places, documenting locations in Greece, across the Mediterranean and the African continent, he engages with questions of historical memory, the present conditions and speculated futures of lived environments, and their significance for those who live, create, interact and evolve with them. Whit his latest project Hadjiaslanis explores the Indonesian Mount Bromo, an open and bare landscape covered with ash in million shades of grey. A ‘Sea of Sand’. [ Continue reading ]

The brutal aesthetics hidden within the familiar of everyday life, the globalized sameness of todays metropolises, and the way these megacities are meticulously planned are central themes in Wolfgang Lehrner's work. As great fans of his immaculate eye, we have shared his beautiful Athens-shot series 'Metro-Polis' here before. Lehrner’s latest ambitious project named 'City Without Name' is another incredible addition to his body of work. Capturing different aspects of everyday life in Mexico City in his unique manner, he takes the spectator from the heart of the city all the way to the periphery and back again; always finding an extraordinary level of abstraction, straight lines, anonymous people on the move through the constructions erupted out of a seemingly infinite mix of glass, steel and concrete. Lehrner captures moments in Mexico City that are so familiar, yet feel as if taking place on a different planet. Evermore questioning the utopian concept of modernity, he portrays a city without distinct limits, always finding a way to mould these uniform and monotone moments into intrinsically captivating images. [ Continue reading ]

What is it, that attracts us so much in raw and unpolished images like these, that capture the world of young adults? Despite that the genre appears in numerous forms, transcending different continents and contrasting cultures, there is always a similar open-mindedness balanced with a certain fragility that comes with youthfulness to be observed. Whether it is to be found in the colorful images of Gilleam Trapenberg or Katja Kremenić, the 78’s captured by Gil Rigoulet, the kids along the 8,000 Miles on a Motorcycle by Robin de Puy or the dark Dystopian Sequences by Alexis Vasilikos. All of these representations are related through a similar energy, inspired by the lack of a strictly demanding moral imperative — they all caption life's randomness in full effect that hits one first as an adolescent…

We just discovered a worthy addition to this list of favorites in the genre, created by the young Kiev-based photographer Nazar Furyk’s, whose ongoing series capturing the hedonistic youth of Ukraine’s provinces is uncompromising raw and beautifully vibrant, sucking one directly into the palpable world he has captured in still frames. [ Continue reading ]

Last weekend, the extraordinary Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (MOCAA) in Cape Town, South Africa opened its doors for the public. The museum is set to become the world's most important exhibition space for African art, and with its iconic building by Heatherwick Studio it already draws the needed attention. The London-based firm transformed the building, both on the outside and inside, from a dead industrial structure into a mind-bending icon, instantly joining the Pantheon of some of the most beautiful museum buildings to be found all over the globe. [ Continue reading ]

Last Saturday, Kennedy Magazine hosted the release of a self-published Travel Diary by Arturo Bamboo. Arthur and Bamboo, living in Berlin and originally from the Netherlands, traveled the Mediterranean capturing intimate snapshots, portraits, legendary places and landscapes shot around various places. [ Continue reading ]

We have encountered their inspirational work repeatedly throughout the last few years, but only recently became aware of the extraordinary Copenhagen-based headquarter and Studio Store of Danish multidisciplinary design firm Frama. A little under four years ago, the firm traded their industrial space for the former home of the St. Pauls Apotek (pharmacy) which was established in 1878, respecting all of the building's original woodwork and architectural elements, using it as a canvas to create something radically new. The synergy between the past and present elements of the space is a direct manifestation of how Frama defines their main interest within the creative field as a dialogue between two opposite poles; classical and contemporary approach – between digital and analogue production. In addition to their earliest interest of producing beautiful understated products — designed in-house, next to commissions to other Nordic creatives — in recent years a new focus on interior design was added to their activities, showing that remarkable signature of blending old and new materials, contexts, and influences within every project. The inspirational level of multidisciplinarity in the complete output of the firm today, makes the Studio Store more than just a 'showroom' for their product, but forms an incredible Gesamtvision for Frama's aesthetic design discourse and ideology. And it is exactly this, beyond that we really appreciate their design vision, what makes Frama one of the firms we feel is spearheading creation with a contemporary mindset. When in Copenhagen, make sure to directly step into their universe located at Fredericiagade 57. [ Continue reading ]

Exactly two months ago we travelled to Milan (unexpectedly as a road trip, due to a storm in Amsterdam) to visit our friend Roel. Looking back at that weekend in February once more; it is safe to conclude that it turned out to be a greatly inspirational (Jos Brink-themed) couple of days, in which we were able to see some of nature's most beautiful hidden treasures in the marble quarries of Carrara ánd some of humankind's more interesting creations when we visited the sweaty Pinacoteca di Brera; the Pirelli HangarBicocca to, for the first time, see Anselm Kiefer's mysterious towers up close; and (finally!) Rem Koolhaas' Fondazione Prada Foundation, where we had the chance to experience the deeply haunting and still extremely relevant 'Kienholz:Five Car Stud' exhibition and sat down with Boglioli's former Creative Director Davide Marello for an enlightening conversation on the state of Italian tailored menswear fashion. The low, late winter sun was out, the sky was blue and the air was cool: this is that rather perfect Saturday at the incredible Fondazione Prada Foundation in captures by Joachim. [ Continue reading ]

At the end of last year, the highly remarkable series named 'Bomba', shot by the very talented American photographer Thomas Prior, has been presented as a beautiful book by Dashwood Books, which turned out into one of the more interesting releases we have seen recently. 'Bomba' takes the viewer to the Mexican town of San Juan de la Vega, where every February its people gather together to commemorate a four-century-old battle that occurred between the town’s namesake and the area’s landowners. The story goes that Juan de la Vega, a wealthy miner and rancher, was aided by the saint in recovering gold stolen by bandits. Residents took up exploding sledgehammers to commemorate the victory over the thieves. And so, on so-called 'Fat Tuesday', in the middle of a football pitch in the town, packets of fertilizer and sulfur explode into clouds of dust and shrapnel. Today the tools are reinforced with rebar, and the celebration features blasts but now more flying hammer heads. Hundreds of local men strap homemade potassium chlorate fertilizer-based explosives to the heads of sledgehammers and slam them against the lengths of steel rail.

The isolation Thomas has achieved in the imagery, emphasizes the danger and violence of the peculiar tradition. With the clouds of phosphorus smog surrounding each of the men, the subjects are erupting out the cloud, with the rest of the background misted out erasing all kind of context. This could be a scene out of a war if one wouldn't know better. The result is an ambiguous surreality within the series -and the festival as a whole- as it’s still not totally clear where this salute to Juan de la Vega originally derived from, which makes it a series we can't take our eyes from. [ Continue reading ]

The tremendously talented photographer Constantine "Costa" Manos, who joined the roster of the legendary Magnum agency in 1965, first began taking photographs while in high school when he joined his school's camera club. Within a few years after discovering the art form, he actually becomes a professional photographer and at 19 he gets hired as the official photographer for the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Tanglewood, published into his very first book 'Portrait of a Symphony' in 1961. From 1961 until 1964, Manos lives in Greece, the country of birth of both his parents, photographing the people and landscape. Subsequently he returns to the USA, living in Boston. Where for instance in 1974, Manos was hired by the city to create the photographs for the prestigious 'Where's Boston?' exhibition: a large production in honor of Boston's 200th anniversary.

Decades later, in 1995, after having worked relentlessly for all those years, Manos' work finds a totally new audience when his iconic series focussing on the American people named 'American Color' is released. In 2010 he presents his second series of the same kind: 'American Color 2', which once more shows the extraordinary talent of Manos and has been a favorite of ours for years. As the name suggests, the photographer succeeds marvelously in creating incredible colorful images, portraying as much what is actually touched by the sun as what isn't, with most people in the frames hidden in stretches of shade to a slight surreal effect. Every one of the highly captivating images, succeeding to show one highly coherent signature, portray a America in all its richness, represented from a truly unique perspective of a great American photographer that still needs to be discovered by many. [ Continue reading ]

We are back in the new year and start it off with a name we have been closely following for years: Australian photographer Paul Barbera. At the end of last year, the talented imagemaker presented a new volume in his acclaimed Where They Create series — this time by exploring the theme of his series through geographical locales. Reinvigorated by his first visit to Japan in five years, Barbera made this country the focus point of the all new volume.  Published by Frame Publishers, Barbera, accompanied by Japanese writer Kanae Hasegawa, explores the workspaces of 32 leading creatives in Japan. With this considered curation of subjects and Paul's extraordinary eye for iconic details, the new book unveils the sometimes surreptitious nature of contemporary Japanese design culture.

The country is well known for its incredible food, beautiful landscapes, innovative technology and its attitude around perfectionism, that has been been setting a new worldwide bar of excellence from the moment it became known. Most importantly for Barbera in his personal journey is the sense of discovery, of both the creatives and their process, which he has been portraying for years know and is exemplified in his imagery, being able to portray more with composition than words could ever offer (especially considering the reserved Japanese culture) — resulting in quite possibly his most inspirational installment of his by now often copied, but still very relevant Where They Create project. [ Continue reading ]

We've been appreciating the work and creative vision of Berlin-based duo Jacob Klein and Nathan Cowen, better known as Haw-Lin Services, for many years and last month they returned —after last Summer's exhibition 'Shows You' at the HVW8 Gallery— with another inspirational project. Created in collaboration with a second duo we hold in high regard; Geckeler Michels and Schroeder Rauch, the Haw-Lin guys were responsible for the complete redesign of Berlin's reopened No74 store, which became adidas’ first select store worldwide when it opened its doors in 2008, followed by Parisian No48 in 2013. The new vision for the Berlin store brings a fresh elan, combining clean displays in sharp lines in a toned down color palette, complemented with floating linear lighting that both represents Haw-Lin and adidas perfectly — resulting in a rich minimalist space with beautiful silent details, which above all puts focus on what's on display: the broad variety of different lines being designed under the adidas umbrella.  [ Continue reading ]

Three weeks ago it was that time of the year again for a beautiful new issue by our friends of The Travel Almanac from Berlin, who presented already their 11th issue, for the first time featuring an all-female cast. The new issue’s cover stars are Isabelle Huppert, shot at the legendary Les Bains in Paris by Heji Shin, and Kacy Hill, shot in Los Angeles by Jenny Hueston. The actrice extraordinaire recounts French radicalism in the 60s and explains Continental approaches to acting. While the American songwriter and model describes the travel mindset of Middle Americans. In their own words: "in a time when interconnectedness is being disavowed and borders feel more pressing, travel is emerging as an ever more crucial and powerful subject matter. In the last five years The Travel Almanac has explored perspectives, places, and objects that evoke telling atmospheres and feelings" — with its latest issue it continues to do exactly this, forming an elegant and important voice in todays world, which we feel (and hope) will continue to be relevant long after the just presented new issue. [ Continue reading ]

Although Saint Laurent’s visionary creative director Hedi Slimane left his position six months ago, the design of  the just opened second Miami store, immaculately clad in white marble, located within the Miami Design District, seems to indicate that his artistic ghost still lives throughout the brand as it did for many years (until this day?) after he left Dior Homme. And why not, as it brought a distinct new elan to the (Yves) Saint Laurent label, which translated into record sales, a widely recognized brand and some highly inspirational elegant design explorations, particularly in the stores that were opened under the creative directing of Slimane. With Belgian creative director Anthony Vaccarello now responsible, new accents have been formulated in the visual language, steering away from the Slimane signature grunge influences which he mixed with modern rock and roll decadence, but in the design of this new Miami store, the Slimane touch, as seen for instance in the last year's opened new Parisian Saint Laurent store, feels as strong as six months ago. [ Continue reading ]

It's been a while (a year maybe) since we first encountered the ongoing photographic essay named 'The Western Lands' by American photographer Justin Clifford Rhody, but it never really left us since that moment. The Michigan-born, Oakland-based artist, who predominantly shoots on film, started the series in 2012 and one of the reasons for moving to the West Coast was to continue exploring the Southwest of America from his new home, being within a day’s drive of Southern California, Arizona, Nevada and parts of New Mexico. Through a friend, the photographer was even offered to built a cabin in Northern New Mexico, which he has been using as the pivot point to keep expanding his photographic study, while immersing himself both physically and mentally in the desert. In his own words; it was the staggering quality of light and the physical expansiveness of the American West —"brutally unforgiving and indifferent to one’s needs, yet this seems to only inflame our desire to go further and deeper within the interior"— that inspired him to start and grasp intrinsic elements of it in his captions. And that intrinsic passion seems to burn in him today as it did in 2012.

It is extraordinary how Rhody finds frames that are nothing short of iconic —reminding of his idol William Eggleston, although being more fixed— in an utmost beautiful sun-kissed color palette, succeeding marvelously in communicating (his?) deep romantic feelings for this unique area combined with the melancholia that belongs to finding oneself at a dead end. Beauty and sadness in one. The photographer is clearly at awe, but can't help himself, to see that this magical place named the American West has entered a chapter with the times of glory laying behind us.

We can only hope for more observations by Justin Clifford Rhody of the American West, as through his lens it is a place that continues to deeply move us like no other... [ Continue reading ]