I took a break a while back when my sister passed away. Since then I’ve been going back and forth about whether to write about it or not. On one side you always hear about how cathartic writing about this sort of thing is; Getting it off your chest is the correct phrase. But the usual things I have to get off my chest are generally  trivial. While I’m not comfortable writing my feelings about what happened, I will say this; It woke me up to the fact that nothing’s promised, so there’s no point caring about the trivial things while I’m still here. It’s something easier said than done, but I’m getting there.

One of the reasons I brought this up is because of this Quincy Jones book I purchased during my week off. You should already know about Quincy Jones by now: he’s soundtracked some of the coolest films, produced some of the best albums and was a mean player of some instruments himself. One thing I didn’t know about him was his fine eye for style when he was younger. I felt it selfish to keep these images to myself, so here some of them are:

It’s no secret that workwear is in right now. And with that, comes a certain degree of macho nonsense. Seeing as I’m quite the contrarian, I’ve decided to flag up the amazing style in Prince’s Purple Rain. It’s about as far from workwear as you can get, but it’s probably just as inspirational.

What may be surprising for some is that they do have some workwear staples in this – the white vest, for instance – but they’re worn in a subversive manner (as in teamed with studded trousers and high heeled boots). Classic menswear fanatics should enjoy the tie clips, pattern clashing and pocket squares worn by Morris Day and anyone looking for inspiration on how to rock a bow tie should look no further. I’m still not advocating ruffles though.

Style-wise, Motown is more relevant than ever these days. From double breasted suits to bowties to red chunky knitted hats, they’re what awful fashion magazines would call ‘bang on trend’. I’m sure some of these choices will have people scratching their heads, so I’ll do a little blurb to explain some of the more dubious choices.

The huge collars aren’t in right now, but the floral prints are.

I wouldn’t advise copying this look wholesale, but contrast lapels have been in for a while now and the guy on the far right has a great high top.

I’ll be giving the workwear look a miss. Not because I hate it, just because it’ll look too try hard on me. I already look younger than I am, I don’t need to look like I’m wearing my dad’s old clothes as well.

Instead, I’ll be taking my inspiration from Men’s Non-No, Burberry’s SS09 collection and Jazz musicians.

Lanvin’s Lucas Ossendrijver is probably top of my interview fantasy list. With interviews the problems usually boil down to, ‘what can I say to make them open up?’ or ‘What can I say that they haven’t already answered 20 times before?’ Mr. Ossendrijver definitely falls into the second category.

He did do an interview and photo shoot with my second favourite menswear magazine Men’s Non-No (Fantastic Man is my favourite, in case you were wondering). I can’t read a word of Japanese, so I couldn’t tell you what he was saying, but the photos seem to suggest that the magazine were following him as he visits restaurants.

Seeing as this year’s been an awful one for Indie music and an ok one for Hip-Hop, I’ve been going into the archives to get my musical fix. Having over listened to Marvin Gaye’s ‘I Want You’ (one of his most underrated albums), I started getting into Donny Hathaway.

I could state why I like Donny Hathaway in extended, convulted terms but I’ll just leave it at this – the man had a beatiful voice. I honestly believe covering his songs should be banned  (which would be mean, seeing as he covered others songs so well) as no one can do a Donny Hathaway song justice. I mean, how often have you heard ‘A Song For You’ oversung by some wannabe on American Idol?

So I’ll leave out the ranting and show a couple of videos.

George Lois will go down in history for making some of the most iconic magazine covers ever. As one of my personal heroes, he broke taboos and made covers that no one else could possibly have thought of. His website details his Esquire covers, providing commentary alongside each cover to explain the reaction to each cover at the time. While all the stories deserve a read, I think this Sonny Liston picture has a great story behind it, which I’ll leave George to tell:

Now go waste a couple of hours reading the rest of his Esquire cover stories over at his site.