On the 27th of June a beautiful new art project opened in the heart of Amsterdam. 'The Garden Which is the Nearest to God' is the first creation in the Netherlands by the renowned Japanese artist Taturo Atzu, who was invited to create a structure for the historic weather vane and the small roof turret of the Oude Kerk, located in the red light district of the capital. Atzu's project links the monumental 13th century church - the oldest building in the city - to its recent incarnation as Amsterdam's newest cultural institution. He gives the weather vane an update by re-imagining it in a fully furnished, modern living room. Interpreting contemporary Dutch interiors, the décor features a table, chairs, and above the sofa a classical print from the church collection. The Japanese artist brings the spectator closer to the experience of wonderment as we make our metaphoric journey on high – climbing the 156 steps to the 300 m² open space above – to a fictional living room and the built-in seating area around the clock tower. Make sure to visit the Oude Kerk and enjoy the extraordinary project before it is gone. [ Continue reading ]

Last November we wrote about the beautiful Art Print Project, which was presented to celebrate the first CITIx60 travel guides by inspirational Hong Kong-based publisher viction:ary and mentioned more guides coming up. Some months later the first new additions are here, with Los Angeles, Hong Kong and Amsterdam being added to the growing catalogue of guides. We were honored to be one of the people to share a favorite for the Amsterdam guide, next to the fact that Tenue de Nîmes has also been mentioned by 100% Halal filmproducer Gijs Determeijer. The aim viction:ary has with their CITIx60 guides is to present a list of handpicked hotspots that illustrate the spirit of the world’s most interesting design hubs. Built on a unique collaboration with local talents all known for their accomplishments from film making, food, advertising to design, the pocket-sized guides are packed with artistic twists and practical info essential for a satisfying trip - presented in playfully designed and illustrated guides. [ Continue reading ]

On the 30th of April, a very special new meeting place for lovers of art, design and food opened its doors in the city of Amsterdam. In a monumental building in between the streets Rokin and Nes, right in the heart of Amsterdam. The initiative of cultural entrepreneur Jessica Voorwinde combines an exhibition space for art and design and a spectacular barroom, which was designed by Lex Pott, resulting in an incredible hybrid for lovers of food and art under one roof. By collaborating with astonishing people of the creative industry Voorwinde created a playground for all art-lovers. A place where people can meet and enjoy various inspiring events and exhibitions, taste some amazing ’culture bites’, have a drink at the marmor bar or buy a design from exquisite designers. Whenever visiting Amsterdam make sure to stop by and be inspired. [ Continue reading ]

While putting the last hand on the design of the Mobile Cycle Club Europe we are doing for Rapha, they opened a new chapter of their famous Cycle Clubs, this time in our hometown Amsterdam. In the beautiful historical center of Amsterdam, on the 9 streets and around the corner of our new gallery/studio space of Our Current Obsessions (soon more on that...), Tenue de Nîmes and the Red Wing Shoes Store the Rapha Cycle Club Amsterdam welcomes road cyclists from every continent. Tales of glory, pain or suffering transcends their memory in this historical neighborhood.  Although a little challenging when tourist are flocking around, this will be the perfect place to start a ride, escaping the city for the windy northern water lands, making your round on the ‘Ronde Hoep’, or a longer ride towards Utrecht and the Amerongse Berg (Mountain of Amerongen with its 69,2 meter high, yes we have that). [ Continue reading ]

We are only in the second month of the new year and there is already an important new Tenue de Nîmes collaboration to be celebrated in 2015. It all started last October, when the legendary Tricker's shoe store in London at 67 Jeremy Street was visited for the very first time, to start the process of the creation of a series of Tricker's x Tenue de Nîmes shoes. Barely four months later, a first collection is ready, consisting of three genuine Tricker's classic pieces inspired by the rich history of the English shoe brand that was established in 1829. The classic models were given an elegant translation fitting in the Tenue universe, resulting in a collection to be proud of, created for everyone who's enjoying the good things in life. [ Continue reading ]

With the release of the imagery for the Ø L Å F cap one of the most promising names in Dutch fashion at this very moment, Olaf Hussein, presents the first sneak peek at the new upcoming Autumn/Winter 2015-2016 collection, which was shot on location in Los Angeles by photographer Violette Esmeralda. While at first the waterproof fabric creates a clean and technical aesthetic, the branded velcro strap shows another side to this headwear piece as a clear sign to become part of the street style in Amsterdam and beyond. With its nuanced bolder look, the Ø L Å F cap has set the tone for what’s to come, which seems to be another ambitious move forward for the Amsterdam-based label. As the cap is created from a waterproof rubber fabric, the Ø L Å F cap, at first sight, stands for the familiar clean aesthetic, but at the same time evokes curiosity how technical innovations continue to become part of the collection, which were first to be found within last year's first full range by the label. As for the cap, as stated by our friend Olaf himself: wear it as you please, as long as it’s on your head. We highly anticipate the actual collection by the hard working Olaf and his team. [ Continue reading ]

The Amsterdam-based fashion project Black Rabbit fascinates us profoundly. The story behind the project is both romantically intriguing and proof of a relentless love for collecting and exquisite eye for quality. The story starts with one of the founders, Leo Velimir Brancovich, visiting Mongolia about 20 years ago. There he met a teenage boy, who eventually agreed to trade his unusual earth colored trench-coat for the spotless NATO parka Brankovich was wearing. That mysterious coat remained with Leo for the next eighteen years. He was very intrigued by it, but a rectangular label on the inside pocket was the only thing to identify where it had come from. The label bore the initials “БЯ” in cyrillic script and between these two glyphs was placed the roman numeral “III” on a deep red-brown vertical band. In the following years Brancovich started searching for more garments and found six more of these exceptional and mysterious garments. In his quest he also met fellow-collectors, of whom Taro from Tokyo played an important role by introducing him to a lady living in Casablanca and her much larger Series III collection, stored in an 1970‘s brick villa near Avignon. These two collections, of Taro and the lady from Avignon, proved to be the foundations of the Black Rabbit project to reissue these captivating garments. The group’s name - Black Rabbit - is a homage to the mysterious “БЯ” initials - the only feature common to all of the original Series III source garments Brancovich and his partners have so far discovered. [ Continue reading ]

Last week marked the first great release of 2015: Journal de Nîmes Nº 11 was officially launched at Tenue de Nîmes, with many more releases and projects laying ahead in this exciting year. The all-yellow issue resolves around The Future and although this seems the case with every new Journal, feels like another step towards the next level. To tell the story on how we see the future, a narrative was created which examines both past and future, based on the idea that if you want to look ahead, you can not do so without finding the roots from where progression will grow. In Nº 11 the brands are presented, which capture everything that we feel is required to be successful in the 21st century. On the one hand this resulted in a story on one of the biggest brands of the last ten years, Acne, but also Porsche is featured through a story on Ron Dickinson, founder at Singer Vehicle Design shot by Thomas Tukker. Our favorite Hancock is to be found as a prime example of a brand translating traditional techniques to the 21st century and also the first introduction of the Tenue de Nîmes Private Label is here, searching for timeless appeal and quality in all its designs. Our upcoming adventure into the world of optics named Mottainai is also presented for the very first time ever, implementing elements from the past into a futuristic concept. We will dwell on those thrilling projects in the near future, when the time has come, until then enjoy Tenue's exclusive vision for the future. [ Continue reading ]

Last September the design studio of Jeroom Jansen and Bertel Grote; Grand & Johnson, celebrated the opening of their beautiful studio and a brand new accompanying store in the Amsterdam West-based new creative area named De Hallen. The area, a former tram depot, has been transformed into what is in the process of becoming the creative centre of that area of Amsterdam, housing a mix of cultural, culinary and creative initiatives like Filmhallen, Hallenstudio, House Of Denim and Foodcourt. Next to a great selection of Mendo books, the store offers Grand & Johnson's own designs, next to custom-made baths, cupboards and dressers. A beautiful selection of special and unique items which were hardly available in The Netherlands before, selected from around the world from places like Japan, Canada and Denmark. [ Continue reading ]

On the 20th of December, just before Christmas, Amsterdam-based The Playing Circle celebrated its second edition of their fascinating concept named The Loft. Where the first edition, last summer, was to be found on the the fifth floor of the Cristofori building located on the Prinsengracht, for their Winter edition they found a lovely location in the Vaudeville theater on the Singel in the heart of the Dutch capital. New within the whole concept is an online webstore where all of the products on display in the fully furnished apartment, which has the feel of somebody actually living there, are also for sale. It is The Playing Circle’s ambition to create a whole new home-retail experience in which one walks into an apartment which thoroughly will feel like someones home, but instead of just being able to marvel at it, now everything the eye meets is actually for sale. And we have to say; this second edition shows even more promise than last summer's debut, so make sure to see it in the coming days before it closes on the 4th of January, or when not in the position see the beautiful curation of products online. [ Continue reading ]

We are very grateful for everyone who had a share within the very first Our Current Obsession as without them we couldn't have realized it. Having introduced the main collaborator GERTRUD & GEORGE, some of the artists involved (with more to come), and ,The World of Black' in our space has been extended long and wide onto the online Our Current Obsessions environment, now it is time to give a proper insight into the other partners with which we’ve created the core of the extraordinary black selection of products for sale in our space on the Schippersgracht in Amsterdam. As these stores offer only the finest in their particular specialty we’ve named them Holland’s Finest, to which we owe a sincere debt of gratitude and feel honored to have collaborated with. [ Continue reading ]

On Thursday the 23rd of October a new bicycle racing specialist named Meesterknecht, opened its doors in the centre of Amsterdam. Meesterknecht is a bike shop with a cycling café focused on contemporary cycling. The shop caters to everything cycling enthousiasts dream of and on top of that one can enjoy the shop's exclusive espresso blend 'Gangmaker' (Pacer or Derny), while admiring Amsterdam's rich cycling history on the shop’s walls. The shop is proof that cycling is driven more and more by aesthetics and pleasure, instead of purely focused on performance. Due to the pervasive cycling culture in the Netherlands, cycling is not quickly perceived as being cool, even though cycling was the number one sport in the Netherlands until the late '60s. Every neighborhood in Amsterdam used to have its own criterium race and the cycling legends of the time raced its velodromes. Meesterknecht says it wants to bring back part of this lost culture and take the very best from the cycling community to Amsterdam. [ Continue reading ]

Last Friday was a very special day. After a lot of hard work over the course of the last couple of months we were finally able to open a next chapter in the AS&Co universe: a tactile space that will be open for the public named Our Current Obsessions. The new space, which also houses the studio, can in many ways be seen as a direct result of what has been created online since the eruption of Another Something in 2009, but with more focus in its purpose. Our Current Obsessions will hybridize the traditional concept of an art gallery with a retail-space, always based around one particular theme in which we will take a deep-dive both off- and online. Located right at the mouth of one of Amsterdam's main canals, it is a little dream come true that finally our love for the ‘beauty of cultures’ can be touched and shared in the analogue world. [ Continue reading ]

It is a really good year for one of Amsterdam's more visible entrepreneurs: Casper Reinders. After opening a beautiful new gallery earlier this year, this month he opened yet another restaurant, his tenth, named Nacional. The bistro style restaurant, which is a collaborative effort of Reinders and partners Dobson and Uzcudun, aims to give new élan to one of the more sleazy squares of Amsterdam's city center, the Leidseplein, offering French cuisine with a modern New York-twist. Nacional's spacious interior, somewhat in line with the new Libertine Gallery, shows an eclectic mix of vintage, art and design, among which is a tremendous huge specimen of Piet Parra's beautiful Cold figure, which was released by CASE STUDYO  in miniature size last month. The restaurant can handle as many as 140 guests with its surface of 460 m², making Nacional a little piece of New York right in the middle of Amsterdam. [ Continue reading ]

Last week the official release of the first collaboration between Tenue de Nîmes  and our friend Jason Denham was finally here. With combined forces a special Double Dutch limited edition varsity sweatshirt was created. Triggered by vintage Japanese denim and chambray monogram fabrics, the Tenue de Nîmes ‘cross’ log is represented on the sweater alongside Jason's 'scissors’ and Amsterdam’s triple X logo as a tribute to Japanese textile. The sweatshirt’s design features a subtle twist that employs unconventional single-jersey gussets beneath the arms to increase comfort, movement and breathability. Overall spoken a clean, with subtle repeated grid pattern sweater was created for both men and women celebrating excellence in denim from Amsterdam. [ Continue reading ]

Today the Amsterdam-based The Playing Circle will celebrate the official opening, or housewarming like they address it themselves, of its latest interesting project called The Loft. On the fifth floor of the beautiful Cristofori building located on the Prinsengracht a fully furnished apartment has elegantly been created in which everything one finds in it is for sale. From design furniture, the vintage accessories, the books on the shelves, to the plants one finds in The Loft: if you like it you'll take it home. The Playing Circle's ambition is to create a whole new home-retail experience in which one walks into an apartment which thoroughly will feel like someones home, but instead of just being able to marvel at it now for one whole month everything the eye meets is actually for sale. [ Continue reading ]

Since the 6th of June the beautiful exhibition 'Amsterdam! Ed van der Elsken, oude foto’s 1947-1970' is running in Het Stadsarchief Amsterdam, the museum attached to the Municipal Archive of Amsterdam. The exhibition coincides with the reprint of the book of the beautiful series which originally was published in 1979. At that time it was a powerful collaboration between the great and famous photographer and the just as great graphic designer Anthon Beeke, making it rather a classic made out of Dutch excellence, which over the last decades had been out of print and sought after. At the time of the original release, the two greats created a new kind of visual communication, which gained them a lot of praise, showing the city of Amsterdam in the course of those decades in all its diversity to a worldwide audience. [ Continue reading ]

Concrete Matter, the Man’s Gift Co. began as a collaborative effort between graphic designer Tim, former FOAM curator Jacob and entrepreneur Tomas; three young, creative guys from Amsterdam. Bound together by a passion for useful, durable and beautiful products, they set up a small but comprehensive online store called Concrete Matter in early 2012. Inspired by the admiration and applause the online store received, their confidence grew that they weren’t the only ones with a passion for beautiful and durable goods. This confidence led to a new idea: an actual store, tangible and visible, located somewhere in Amsterdam’s vibrant city centre. A place to showcase their products and ideas in optima forma. A location was found in a former video rental at the Haarlemmerdijk, a street which over the last few years is given a totally new face with a lot of interesting stores and initiatives opening among which is Tenue de Nîmes, making it a perfect location for Concrete Matter. [ Continue reading ]

Julien Rademaker is one of those people who has successfully translated his love for collecting into a personal blog project named Gevonden op Marktplaats, which gathered a large following rather quickly, making it the most-desirable location on the internet for every Dutch seller to be mentioned on. Julien uses his platform to showcase an ongoing curation of rare and stand-out furniture, objects, art, and other curiosities that he spots on Marktplaats, which is the Dutch equivalent of Ebay. As the digital world still quite lacks the aura of the materialized world, Julien has stretched the horizon of his project once again, after doing his first live event 'Spullen waar we niks vanaf weten' in December 2012, together with architect Samir Bantal he now presents: 'De Gevonden op Marktplaats-Salon' taking place the 5th until the 8th of June. Where in 2012 Julien and Samir only did a small exposition/sale of curated goods, the two friends now will fill up a large space on the Looigersgracht 60 in Amsterdam, which they arranged in different thematic areas or rooms; from baroque, Memphis Milano to Hollywood Regency. [ Continue reading ]

We are extremely proud to present the 10th issue of Journal de Nîmes, which was released at Tenue de Nîmes last Friday in the midst of the Amsterdam Denim Days. In honor of the denim event, this particular issue was drenched in indigo and might just be our most ambitious magazine till date. The Amsterdam Denim Days, which took place from Wednesday until Saturday, brought the national and international denim community to the city with the highest concentration of denim brands. The event was a collaborative effort of The House of Denim initiative, Modefabriek (Blueprint) and HTNK Fashion recruitment & consultancy and among other events featured the American Kingpins Show, which previously took place in New York, Los Angeles and Hong Kong. Journal de Nîmes Nº 10 features several in-depth stories on individuals and initiatives from the world of denim and some photographic editorials, among which is a shoot giving the spectator a peek into the ever-growing denim archive of Tenue de Nîmes. [ Continue reading ]

Today is the launch of the latest Amsterdam-based project of Dutch entrepreneur Casper Reinders named Libertine Gallery. The store and gallery is promising to be a large cabinet of curiosities, filled with neon art, Art Deco, stuffed birds and a robot. Libertine Gallery, which will open its doors at the Prinsengracht 715 for the public officially tomorrow, is the result of a collaboration between the passionate art dealer Fredien Morel from Antwerp (sometimes referred to as master of curiousa), interior fanatic Danielle Pakes, Mark Chalmers and Casper Reinders. The new interior design shop and art gallery stood on the wish list of Reinders for quite a while and with this set of collaborators it finally materialised. [ Continue reading ]

Last friday we celebrated the 5th anniversary of Tenue de Nîmes. When we started Tenue de Nîmes in 2008 we could not possibly have imagined where our lovely journey would take us in the following years. Our first Journal de Nîmes presented our Tenue de Nîmes philosophy to the world. And five years later here’s the 10th issue. The 5 Year Anniversary issue. [ Continue reading ]

Our friends at Gallery 33 opened a very interesting new exhibition named Feathers on the 25th of October. The multidisciplinary exhibition has dinosaurs as its main theme, resulting from the everlasting dinosaur phase which the Gallery 33 crew never outgrew. And with the popular opinion amongst palaeontologists nowadays that modern birds are considered to be the only surviving dinosaurs, as some of them had feathers in some way, shape or form; the exhibition was named Feathers. [ Continue reading ]

On the 7th of September Galerie Gabriel Rolt opened the exhibition of portraits by the very talented painter Dawn Mellor in which she depicts former members of now defunct not-for-profit collective The Austerians. This is the second solo exhibition at the gallery following "The Conspirators" in 2010. The Manchester-born Mellor is the oldest female artist never to have participated in a group exhibition, nationally or internationally at galleries, museums and public institutions in Europe and the USA or to have collaborated with curators or artists in various media. [ Continue reading ]