I met Stephen Graham through Andrea, the ultimate connector of people. He’s been in movies like Gangs of New York and shows like Band of Brothers but I’m really stoked to see him in his next HBO show called Boardwalk Empire, where he plays Al Capone. Directed by Martin Scorcese! We were talking about his role and it’s a credit to the power of the writers, directors and actors that craft characters like Henry the VIII, Dexter and Tony Soprano in such a way that you feel a connection to them and root for them even though they may be outright dogs, murderers and criminals. Stephen tried on the Vanquish and was sold right away. He said he doesn’t usually wear high tops and opts for his Adidas low tops but once he put on the Vanquish in Grey Nappa, he was converted. He also remarked that he’d worn Travel Fox back in the UK. Very cool guy.
It’s so dope that all these singers are getting into JUMP. As someone who was weened on old school karaoke from the days when my dad had to turn off the sound on one of the speakers on the tape deck to get rid of the lyrics, it feels great to be supporting, in a small way, the music community. It looks like Justin Guarini just got his hands on a pair of the Vanquish Black Silver Kid Crystal.
The world just gets smaller every day. I was just speaking to the Peas’ stylist Lor-E yesterday and today I’m at Bloomingdale’s SoHo delivering the Vanquish Green Purple Reflex when I saw Taboo and his crew looking at the shoes. I took them to our store and chilled out for a bit. They all flipped when they saw the shoes.
Those are the Vanquish Green/Purple Reflex Patent.
There’s the Vigor in Burgundy.
Really cool guy! That’s the fun part of the business. He invited me to kick it with them at Kiss & Fly that night where I got to meet Will.I.Am, Apl and DJ Poet. They all love the shoes and told me they had already worn it in Entertainment Weekly. It was a good time. Check out the video for their new track Boom Boom Pow.
I had the chance to hang out with Andrea Chung and Richie Rich last night at Safran. We got to talking and decided we have to do a dope ass collaboration together! If it’s anything like the things he’s done before I think it’s going to be one hell of a project. I’d always thought he brought a different sort of fun and crazy inventiveness to the scene back in the Heatherette days and now with his own line it’s at another level throwing in the likes of Jenna Jameson and Aubrey O’Day. Check out this clip from his last show in Miami with Pam Anderson.
Andrea is currently putting together a reality series about Richie and you’ll get to have a glimpse of some of our collaboration. Watch out for it!
I had the unique opportunity to stop by The Center (otherwise the residence and creative compound of Ed Bennett) and enjoy a live performance as part of Culture Catch by The Takeover UK, a young band out of Pittsburgh. It’s always cool to see performances at Ed’s place because he’s got a variety of “venues” even in his own home. This time, the guys performed in his living room and it was totally dope. It was all acoustic and I was struck by the unique way in which they were able to harmonize three singers in all their songs. Beyond their harmonic abilities, they and their music had all the trappings of an “it” pop/rock band. In other words, they’re really fucking good. It was live streamed on ustream and was also filmed and recorded for Quicktime on the Apple website. I’ll post it up when it becomes available. And of course they had to be wearing JUMP.
There’s Dusty and the band.
Derek’s wearing the Vanquish Grey Ivis Patent and Josh is wearing the Vague Taupe Patent.
Nick on piano.
Josh enjoying a book on Kitchens.
They stopped by the SoHo store to hang out for a bit before heading out to a photo shoot. Got themselves some shoes! Here’s Nick, Mark, Derek and Josh. They left a bunch of their EPsat the store so stop by and nick one for your listening pleasure.
I liked these guys so much that we’re talking about doing an in-store acoustic performance the next time they’re in town. Sometime in July. Keep you guys posted. They have a pretty funny blog too. Here’s one of their videos.
Their song was also used for the Castle promo.
It’s actually quite interesting to meet these different types of artists and see how they can make JUMP their own. It’s a testament to the diversity of the brand that Busta Rhymes can look sick wearing them and a drummer from a band like The Takeover UK can look just as good in them.
Adam actually did a really sick performance last night on AI with Born to be Wild, which has made its appearance in my own karaoke repertoire from time to time. He really made the Vague in Graphite Patent look vicious. GET IT HERE.
We’ve been getting considerable love from Hollywood and the media these days. Here’s Apl from the Black Eyed Peas wearing the Volume in Taupe Patent. I like how he wears it unzipped.
On Sunday, I was invited to my friend, John’s mom Shirley’s birthday party at Trump Tower on the West Side. Shirley herself is a fun lady and she had quite a few interesting guests at her party, one of whom was a gentleman named Ed Bennett. After speaking to him for a bit, I learned he was one of the founders of VH1. He invited me over to his house in the West Village to check out a live feed recording he would be doing with Glenn Tilbrook from the 80s Brit band, Squeeze. They had hits like Tempted and Pulling Mussels from a Shell. This is from one of his concerts.
So I went to check it out and sweet baby Jesus, Ed’s place was by far the sickest pad I’d ever seen in Manhattan. When he bought the place 9 years ago, it was a little two car auto repair garage and he basically took it apart, kept the facade and rebuilt it into a 5 story house. It’s there where he runs Bennett Media Studio where he records artists, has performances and even hosts art exhibitions. We met Glenn and introduced him to JUMP and he loved it. He makes it work with a suit eh? He’s wearing the Vaine in Graphite Patent.
Check out Ed’s pad.
Glenn’s an excellent and rather funny performer. The whole thing was orchestrated by Culture Catch who did a quick interview/Q&A with him and will be posting it on their site.
After the performance he came to the store to buy another pair of Monderer for Jump for himself and a pair for his wife.
The minute you get off the plane in Taiwan, you’re barraged with a battery of sensory stimuli. The type of heat is immediately unfamiliar – a sort of acrid humidity. You begin to eat and it’s Chinese, but there’s something very different about it, something more visceral, more vigorous about it. I’d traveled to Taiwan on numerous occasions so these things were nothing new but this trip was, by far, the most productive and rewarding trip I’d ever taken there.
As I’d mentioned in a prior post, we’d traveled half way around the world for the purpose of creating an ad campaign but I wanted to make sure Sung and Julie, my assistant/part time model got a taste of Taiwan. We booked a tour of Yang Ming mountain famous for it’s natural production of sulphur.
Our tour guide was quite an interesting character. He introduced himself with 4 names. He said, “In Taiwanese, my name is Mr. Ni. So you may call me that. However, in Cantonese, where I come from, it is Mr. Nguy. In another area, people call me Mr. Li. And then, there’s my least favorite name; in Fukanese, my name is Mr. Gay. Please don’t call me Mr. Gay.” That cracked us up. He certainly was the highlight of the tour, chock full of completely useless and sometimes plain odd information.
I tried to turn Sung onto one of my favorite snacks, High Class Dried Bean Curd. He didn’t like it.
There’s Mr. Gay leading us to the temple that wasn’t actually a temple. Here’s a joke of his, “What am I when I am in the middle of the water? No the answer is not crazy. Heh Heh Heh Heh Heh Heh Heh Heh Heh Heh Heh.”
We noticed an abundance of stray dogs in Taiwan. Even the dogs with collars roamed the streets. We were told it was common practice for owners to let their dogs run wild during the day while they worked and have them return in the evenings after they’d found all their girlfriends. Sung and I noted that it was nice to be a dog in Taiwan.
Here’s the hot spring reservoir. It gets pumped into this facility.
Here, Sung, Julie and I purified our bodies in the waters of the sulphuric hot springs. I figured it would be good to make their skins look good for the shoot the next day.
They had both private baths and public baths. I dare not take pictures of the public ones and the one I went into (it’s split between men and women), I’m sure you wouldn’t want to see it anyway.
That evening we met up with my long time friend Alex at a restaurant we had just eaten at at 5 am that morning. Neither of us remembered it. We introduced Sung to Alex’s mom, Yang Yen, a famous Taiwanese singer.
It was quite an explosive celebrity moment. There was one table who couldn’t take their eyes off of our table. First they were checking out Julie, because she’s blond and blue eyed (rare in Taiwan). Then they saw Yang Yen and were like “huh”? Then they saw Sung and were like “HUH”? Like this scene from the MadTV spoofs.
That was funny.
We also got to meet Louisa, a radio personality for Taiwan’s international radio station ICRT. She would interview Sung later. Will post the clip when available.
After dinner, we went to Shih Ling Night Market – the biggest of it’s kind in Taiwan.
Sung was pretty daring in trying the various kinds of strange Taiwanese eateries.
Julie got some good footage of our travels.
We had fun playing with glasses.
Stay tuned for the next chapter of our Taiwan experience: the photo shoot.
In October of 2007, we opened our first US flagship store. The opportunity had come to take over a space in SoHo on Spring St. between Broadway and Mercer. If you’re at all familiar with New York, you’ll know that this address is a prime locale. So we knew we had to do it. The question then was how to make it happen? How do you properly design this conduit to the inner sanctum of the Jump brand? We knew we wanted to position ourselves as an entry level luxury brand and that we’d want it to be like a living showroom. We wanted it to be an experimental store where we’d test the brand’s most directional product.The wheels were set in motion and we decided on our colors: gold and black.
The rest was quite organic, actually. The space has one of those ornate tin ceilings that was white and kind of dusty and lackluster but when painted gold, it revealed a latent charm that gave me the inspiration to decorate the rest of the store. I trounced around Brooklyn and Manhattan perusing each and every antique and vintage shop to find the right items to dress the space. I wanted it to feel regal and grand but with a sophisticated vintage twist. Bit by bit the pieces began to fit together until finally we had a store.
We found that the store was a great spot to hold events. We always had great turnouts.
Taiwanese TV network, ETTV, covered our opening party.
Our CEO, Harry, always knows how to make a big splash. Check out this pimped out vintage limo.
Even LXTV took notice of us and aired us on their show First Look NY. It ran on NBC and in taxi cabs all over New York.
Then one day two artists named David and Jessica Foox stopped into the store. They fell in love with the brand and wanted to get involved. It began with some hand painted shoes and evolved into a full out mural painting.
Here’s the finished work.
It incorporates the likeness of our Hollywood Brand Ambassador, Sung Kang, famous for his role as Han in Fast and Furious Tokyo Drift. We flew him in to film a series of video shorts playing on various characters that identify our brand. The films came out phenomenally as both he and the indie filmmaker, Arowana Films, are both quite talented. Watch out for the short films to be released beginning in July. More on our collaboration in the next post.
At the mural’s completion, we threw a huge bash, our biggest ever which drew a crowd of over 250 people, filling the entire store and a party bus. P.I.N.K. Vodka supplied the booze.
When the festivities concluded at the store, we were shuttled to the exclusive SoHo House for the after party.
It’s not all just fun and games though. As a participant in the SoHo Stroll on June 7th, we decided we would donate $8 from each pair of shoes sold that day to China’s Earthquake Relief Fund. When Harry learned of the event, he decided we should extend the drive to last for 8 days and that he would personally match all the funds raised. The drive is still on! Please stop by the store and make a difference! Our staff is extremely kind and will help you to some coffee or ice water for this hot weather!
