Berlin and Paris

Well, what a week. 

A busy three days in Berlin, followed by a busy four days in Paris. I got the chance to represent Norse Projects at the "(capsule)" shows in both cities - meeting lots of store buyers and taking orders for AW12. 

In between shows we ate some good food and saw some cool spots, alongside getting the chance to look at some exciting new product from some of my favourite brands. Best of all, I have met and thoroughly enjoyed hanging out with some great people.

Here are some of the photos I managed to take on my phone. Enjoy!

AW12 Vans delivery:

AW12 Insight Promo:

AW12 Insight Promo:

More Vans:

Bread and Butter, Berlin:

Giant denim:

The main hall:

The main hall:

(capsule), Berlin:

Mmm beer:

Norse Projects. (capsule), Berlin:

(capsule), Berlin:

An incredible three course meal, thanks Pointer.

Niki and Kenneth stoked on the champagne:

A new Norse look perhaps:

The bus to the plane:

The flight from Berlin to Paris:

Mr. McNairy just so happened to sit in front of us:

Norse Projects. (capsule), Paris:

(capsule), Paris:

(capsule), Paris:

(capsule), Paris:

(capsule), Paris:

(capsule), Paris:

Bleu de Paname showroom, Paris:

Pointer showroom, Paris:

(capsule) show:

The lovely Martin from Levi's Vintage hooked me up with some new jeans:

colette, Paris:

All in all it was an amazing trip. 

In terms of clothing, the collections that really caught my eye included Mark McNairy New Amsterdam, Warriors of Radness, Sidian, Ersatz and Vanes and Nigel Cabourn. Plus, I saw strong offerings from Folk, Oliver Spencer, Yuketen and Gitman Vintage. 

Now back to the daily grind at the office! Copenhagen Fashion Week is next week, so things are going to get crazy again. I will be doing more selling at Gallery, the show I did in August (back in my first week of living here). We are releasing a lot of new product and collaborations which is very exciting indeed.

Now I better catch up on some sleep.

Royalty

Yesterday, Denmark celebrated 40 years of their Queen on the throne. I went out to see what was going on and here are some sketchy pictures I took on my phone!

In the evening I had a crack at making a homemade curry. I was pleasantly surprised at my culinary abilities. (Please now refer to me as Ainsley).

Busy Busy Busy!

Busy busy busy! Where to start?

I left Copenhagen on 23rd December, after finishing off most of the odd jobs I needed to do before the Christmas break. The Spring 12 Pre-Collection was released (something I was responsible for) With a lot of help from my co-workers, the collection was launched and people were happy.

We had a few nice breakfasts in the office:

And we had a lovely visitor in the apartment just before I left:

Christmas was great. I was back home in Woking for a few days, with family friends in Newbury, and then in St. Alban's for the rest of my Christmas break. It was a well needed rest and I ended up going back to Copenhagen feeling much healthier than when I left 10 days beforehand!

We went to the theatre for Ellie's birthday:

My first week back was packed, as expected, with the January sale in full flow and lots of sales planning going on for AW12. Insight AW12 collection for Men and Women arrived in the apartment:

The buyers are currently at Pitti Uomo (Florence) to do the majority of the buying for Norse Store. As for Streetmachine, they will be doing a lot in Berlin from Wednesday next week. 

Some very exciting news... I will be representing Norse Projects at "Capsule" in Berlin and Paris! I will be selling to existing stores and showing the collection to potential buyers, alongside Kenneth, the commercial manager. So, I leave for Berlin on Wednesday 18th, fly to Paris on the 20th and come back to Copenhagen on the 24th. This will be my first time at the trade fairs so I am pretty pumped about meeting lots of new people.

Last Friday I got back to the apartment after a long day in the office, only to find Ellie there! Surprise was an understatement! We went to Malmö, Sweden, on Saturday, and had a really good weekend hanging out. We went to a museum / art gallery / aquarium which was super cool, and ate lots of nice food!

Check out the last photo - that painting was pretty creepy. Anyway... very good times indeed. 

My next post will be about my travels. I hope to take lots of photos, but I might not be able to take many because everyone is going to be very sensitive in regards to photography (seeing as the product I will be seeing isn't out in stores until August / September 2012). I'll see what I can do, just you can get the idea of where I went! :)

Champion Cook?

Hi all! As with every post on here, I will start by saying that work has been busy but enjoyable! My highlight has probably been seeing the success of the latest Norse Projects caps. Mikkel found some interesting fabrics on one of his trips to Japan, took it to the factory in America and made a few very special 5 panel caps. This is what they look like:

Crazy, right? Well, the top ones sold out in a few days - pretty impressive. Then we released the second batch on Wednesday and they sold out in under 6 hours. Insane! So... we're going to make more interesting exclusives like this because we know that they are incredibly popular! I will of course share them on here once they are released!

Last night we went down to Streetmachine for a few beers after work. I bumped into American rapper 'The Game' outside the store. Apparently he played a show in Copenhagen last night and fancied a bit of Pre-Christmas shopping before his flight in the evening. Obviously, a photo would have been dope, but he refused. Never mind.

Here's a blog post I wrote a few weeks ago about a very special brand called Mister Freedom. They make clothing with amazing attention to detail, some of the most well-made stuff I've seen this year.

Mister Freedom Blog Post

Today I went down to the skatepark for the annual Streetmachine x HUF skate comp. Me and Nick picked up 500 bottles off the lovely people at 'Vitamin Well' yesterday and delivered it to the park:

Photos from today:

Onto more important stuff... a collection of photos from the past few weeks. 

Tonight's dinner:

Followed by:

Last week I made Angel Delight for my housemates. They liked it! I haven't seen it in Denmark and they have never had it before. Thanks go to Ellie for sending it to me!

My second favourite dog in Denmark (my favourite is Gustav, the office dog!):

 Nice job:

Polaroid:

All taken on my £25 a month alarm clock (also called a BlackBerry).

Anyway, I'm going to go and wrap some presents. (Please note, at this point I would make a really funny joke about 'wrapping' and 'rapping', maybe with a comical reference to 'The Game', but I wouldn't want to disappoint my Father's gifted sense of humour). Hyggelig.

What did you say?

This week was an interesting one. We released the first drop of new caps, which are absolutely flying. I wrote a very short blog post about them here. Next week we're releasing the next batch... they're pretty loud!

Last night was the worldwide premiere of the new Nike SB Chronicles film. Streetmachine were one of two Danish stores taking part in the event - we all crammed into a room with a projector and some free beer, and waited until the release at 1am. The movie was INSANE! Here's the trailer:

The last part (Grant Taylor) was unreal. Definitely worth a watch if skateboarding is your thing. (Note: Skateboarding isn't really my thing, but the culture here revolves around skate lifestyle so I've pretty much been dragged straight into it!). 

Today was rather out of the ordinary. A few months ago someone phoned me asking whether I could do some voice recordings because I am English. Today, I went to a recording studio near Hellerup (north of Copenhagen) to find out what it was all about.

Turns out that the recording was for the English summer exams in Danish schools... nationwide! So, come May or June 2012, every student in the 9th Grade will hear my voice reading out various speaking / listening / comprehension exercises! I always used to hate it in German listening exams, not being able to understand what they were saying (because languages were never my strong point), so it was pretty funny to be on the "other side" today. I'm sure many Danish kids will walk out of their exam next year hating my voice because of it! Good stuff.

And finally... Christmas is coming. Norse Projects Holiday 2011 collection should be arriving any time this week, so things are going to get busy! Then again, they never really stopped getting busy. Fun fun fun!