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With a mixture of models, artists and actors hopping, twisting and blind-mans-bluffing away in front of the camera, Charlotte and Norbert put some of SS12′s finest fashions through their paces in the editorial. We left the hurdling and high-jumping to the professionals and started celebrating London’s Olympic year with a spot of sack-racing in Stella McCartney, tugging in Moncler and much, much more besides. And as sweat beads tumbled, adrenaline pumped and competitive streaks came out in all, i-D Fashion Contributor, Katie Lyall was on hand to lend i-D a sneak peek behind-the-scenes as the shoot unfolded in Tokyo.

On your marks. Get set. Go!

Photography: Katie Lyall

Take a glimpse at Charlotte and Norbert’s Non-Olympic Sports shoot here and pick-up a copy of The Lights, Camera, Action Issue right here to see tonnes more from the shoot.

Signed to Radio 1 after submitting a pre-recorded, raw pilot to the station, hardcore, rave devotee Mr Suckley’s on-air etiquette is all about the music. Letting the decent tunes play out and keeping his chat to a minimum, every track Jordan is sent, he allows time for. Rarely out of the studio, kept busy behind booths and playing international parties, he is an intelligent electronic talent who understands the importance of timing and technical prowess when laying down a set. Currently grafting on a top secret project whilst simultaneously working on new releases via Spinnin’ & Armin van Buuren’s Armada label, Jordan’s not wasting any time seizing the limelight.

i-D online caught up with the elusive lad off the airwaves to chat about his  equipment.

What processes did you go through to be selected as the official talent for Radio 1′s ‘In New DJ’s We Trust’ initiative? Radio 1 emailed my management in July 2011 asking for a Pilot show, so I got one sent over and within a few weeks they replied saying they really liked the music and how I came across. They were in touch for a few months, but I only found out I had the show two weeks before they announced it.

How do you go about planning and scheduling content for each programme? Is your show heavily scripted? I get loads of promos sent to me every week now, so I go through all of those and sort them into ‘Yes’ and ‘Maybe’ folders. Also I ask my DJ friends for any exclusives. We have a feature that seems to be quite popular, “The most emotional Record”, where I try and find a really emotional Trance Record that makes the hair stand up on the back of your neck. For each show like on BBC TV, we have to cross-sell other people’s shows (e.g. Tune in to Annie Mac tomorrow etc..), so they supply me with links to read out whenever I can throughout the show. Aside from cross selling other shows, I have to explain where to listen again, find tracklists and also info about any tracks I play or any funny stories from my travels as a DJ.

What is the difference between being a DJ and a radio presenter? When I am doing my Radio 1 show it feels like a gig to me, it’s such a great buzz! The only difference is that I will never get on the mic in a club, however, the music I play on the Radio is the music I play in the clubs!

Who do you think are the up and coming DJ talents to look out for in 2012? Sneijder, Heatbeat and Chris Schweizer.

What pirate/viral radio stations do you regularly tune into? Armin van Buuren’s ASOT for Trance and I am subscribed to a lot of Podcasts as well for Techno and House etc!

After winning a DJ talent competition at the age of 18, you had the opportunity to play with some of the world’s greatest DJ’s, for you, who was the most inspirational to work with and why? I am inspired by many DJs such as The Scratch Perverts, James Zabiela, Kutski & Eddie Halliwell for the Technical side of things. For the music side of things, Simon Patterson, John O’Callaghan, Sander van Doorn and many others.

Where is the best place to party on earth? Argentina 100%!

What tunes never fail to get you on the dance floor? Old one- Simon Patterson- Us (orig mix). New one- Evol Waves- Nobody knows (orig mix).

Who is the best DJ you have ever watched play live? James Zabiela or the Scratch Perverts, they take the art of DJing to a new level!

What tracks have you produced recently? Jordan Suckley- Sunkissed (orig mix Tydi ft Audrey Gallagher) – Walk away (Jordan Suckley remix).

What equipment do you work with when producing? 27inch iMac, Logic 8, Sylenth, Massive, ES2, Saffire Pro 24 Soundcard, Midi Keyboard, Mackie Speakers & Coffee.

What do you always carry around with you in your bag? Ear Plugs, Passport, Headphones, CD’s, spare socks and my dignity.

Essential summer anthems?
1. R3hab- The Bottle Song (Darth Vader remix)
2. Swanky Tunes- The Legend (orig mix)
3. James Dymond- Overthrow (Protoculture remix)
4. Andy Tau & Sean Truby- Rapture (orig mix)

jordansuckley.co.uk

Text: Milly McMahon

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One of the few Canadian designers still firmly planted in the city, he manages to reach an international audience mixing structure and movement whilst maintaining an underlying sensuality that has become the DNA of his design aesthetic. Educated in fashion design both in Toronto and at Westminster in London and also completing an apprenticeship at Alexander McQueen, his completely made-in-Canada collection takes quality construction and use of innovative fabrics to another dimension, using stretchy velvet, mouton knits and mohair coatings. This season Jeremy showed his FW12 collection on his turf for the very first time as part of off-site Toronto Fashion Week, where he chatted with i-D online about his city, the Dries Van Noten lifestyle and RuPaul’s Drag Race…

Why did you decide to start showing outside of Canada at the beginning of your career? Pragmatically, the space was there. But in terms of the bigger picture, I’ve always been inspired by that kind of Antwerp model of life where where you enjoy your rose garden and ride your bike to work and then take the train with your collection to Paris Fashion Week. It made sense in terms of attracting an international market. How many dresses am I going to sell as an unknown kid in Canada versus you know, maybe I can get some buyers from around the world to pay attention and so in terms of building a business, export from the start was what made sense. I like dropping in and then peace-ing out.

Describe your city in 5 words… On the verge either way.

Toronto could either go way up from here or collapse under condos. It’s definitely at the point where there’s something happening but it could go either way, partly because people keep leaving and there’s never that critical mass. People always leave because there isn’t the money here for new ideas, or the infrastructure to support young talent. But for things like art and music, there are all kinds of people who are still firmly planted here, whose work is reaching critical and important audiences around the world. If enough of them stay, who knows?

What has been your proudest moment so far as a designer? I don’t really allow myself any. I mean, every season has been the best, which feels like I’m going in the right direction. There’s nothing to be proud of really. You just keep on going because you’re eternally dissatisfied.

Who or what inspires you the most? In terms of my business, definitely that Belgian thing is what I would aspire to. If I could be Dries Van Noten in 20 years I would be pretty happy. I hope he’s happy because from the outside it looks like that’s a business and a world that makes a lot of sense. There’s a lot of integrity there, a lot of self-determination, a strong point of view. All those things are important to me as a creator.

What you do you hope to achieve in the next five years? I’d love to do some menswear. I’m getting bored of my wardrobe.

Who do you like to wear personally? Well I’m wearing vintage Margiela and Attachment, which is a Japanese menswear line, and some Ann D boots. I wear a lot of those Alternative Apparel linen t-shirts under everything and a lot of Raf Simons. I have a thing for the coats he does.

What are you most thankful for? My husband. He keeps me in line.

What’s the best thing you’ve seen recently? I really loved Latrice Royale on RuPaul’s Drag Race. She’s everything.

jeremylaing.com

Text and Styling: Hazel Ong
Photography: Karen Roze
Hair and Make-up: Vittorio
Models: Penelope and Bryce at Elite and Sydney at Elmer Olsen

All clothing Jeremy Laing. Shoes Celine and Givenchy at Holt Renfrew

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First stepping into the cyber-space spotlight as the founder of fashion and culture hypemachine slamxhype.com, Adam has since added many a virtual string to his bow. Broadening his online portfolio and consulting with clients including Nike and Levi’s, he’s one of those future engineering folk.

Launching the latest addition to his bookmark-bar-busting set of sites earlier this year, he placed a firm foot on cyber-soil with POST NEW. A reaction against the fast news culture running rife through the internet landscape, Adam set his sights on combining the strict discipline and standards of traditional journalism with the scope and modernity offered on the webwaves. The considered content POST presents offers discerning folk a remedy to the enlightening but often bedazzlingly, visceral world of internet reportage.

After a successful first few months speeding through cyberspace, this week POST NEW shifts into hyperdrive as it launches The Breaks. A subset of the site, The Breaks is a content accumulator driven by a team of taste-making trailblazers from across fashion, music, film and culture. The star-studded roster -including OHWOW co-founder, Aaron Bondaroff, i-D Music and Features Editor Hanna Hanra, and publicity extraordinaire Mandi Lennard- update the world wide wonderful with their multimedia musings. Here, i-D online chats with the pioneering Prince of HTML about what’s now and next in the world of POST NEW.

Can you describe yourself in 140 characters? Obsessive compulsive with an attention span of about 30 seconds. Constantly moving #nevernotworking

Whatʼs the first website you look at in the morning? Embarassingly Facebook, then slamxhype.com. For some reason checking Facebook makes me feel like I’ve caught up on what my world has been up to while I’ve been asleep. Everything you read on the internet is true right?!

Whatʼs your guilty pleasure? M&M’s. Is that what you meant? Even if you meant something else, that’s about as bad as I get these days.

What one track opens your SS12 soundtrack? Beastie Boys ”Make Some Noise”. I really think we need something bigger. We’re due for someone to ”Make Some Noise” in my opinion. When I go to shows and look through collections, I’m always impressed with the standard, there are great collections from SS12, Alexander Wang, Givenchy, Adam Kimmel, Proenza Schouler, Celine – they are all great collections of clothes. But! I think we need some real noise again - we need someone to step up and set a tone.

Which three YouTube video do you think no-one should live without?
1) I love Ricky Gervais… and love this.
2) Found this on richardsonmag.com the other day, it’s brilliant.
3) Fashion hip-hop is the best new genre of music. This is an example.

Youʼre having three people for dinner…
- Living or dead, who do you invite? Joseph Beuys, Matthew Barney and Andrew Richardson. It sounds a little like a working man’s club doesn’t it?
- What do you serve? I think we would have some sort of ‘everyone makes their own pizza’ – an interactive dinner!
- What party game do you play when youʼre done? That game when you put a celebrity’s name on each other’s forehead and try to guess who you are.

Whatʼs the past for POST NEW? POST NEW came from my desire to create something genuine online. Something that didn’t exist in order to fill a gap, feed a demographic or house advertising, but something that came from my own little mission to curate a world where the streets meet the commercial. The first few months of the site were about setting a tone, building a team, looking at the way people use the site. I wanted to create something that was a real online magazine. Look at the way printed magazines did things properly and see how we could use the positives of the web to do this better.

Whatʼs the present for POST NEW? It’s all about The Breaks right now. Mandi and I have pulled together a truly amazing group of people all motivated to have their say. Blog networks have been done before, I’ve personally run numerous and been a part of many others, but The Breaks are different. The timing is right, the people we have chosen are genuinley making changes in their field, they have #trill voices and understand how the web and the platform or POST NEW can make a difference. Mandi Lennard is driving The Breaks and doing an amazing job at bringing it all together. The present is about gathering all these voices and setting a new tone as ’our’ voice.

Whatʼs the future for POST NEW? I want the world to know about POST NEW. I want the world to know of the creatives we feature and the places and people. I want this to create a new way of thinking and above everything I want people to look at digital publishing in a new way. I need to push things to the next level to achieve this. We need to create bigger content, we need to create more video. We need to make everyone aware of what we are doing and to understand why they should get behind this. Whether it be as creatives wanting to contribute or the community wanting to share and learn. The future is about developing off the base we have set and reach.

post-new.com
breaks.post-new.com

Text: Sean Baker
Images collected from The Breaks, POST-NEW.

In recent times it seems most modern documentaries given a theatrical release are either harrowing accounts of tragedies or trials over adversity. In the past year we have seen a convict’s final ten days on death row (Into the Abyss), a young girl’s struggle with an exploitative modelling agency (Girl Model) and a Tyneside record store’s battle in a digital age (Sound It Out). While these are compelling, justified accounts, they are not often pleasurable viewing experiences. Not that the main point of a documentary is to entertain, but with Belic’s Happy, it is refreshing to see an uplifting concept, posing a simple question: what is it that makes us smile?

Happy doesn’t take a deluded or air-headed stance suggesting that everything is going to be alright if you simply think positively. It undertakes detailed examinations looking into what it is that makes us happy from psychological, medical and individual perspectives, differentiating between momentary happiness felt by eating a cookie, drinking a coke or getting a promotion, to the more comforting, sustainable factors in our lives that form the basis of who we are and our relationships with family and friends.

The film starts in the slums of India, where a struggling rickshaw driver is ‘proven’ to be happier than most Americans in high profile jobs. The camera then travels the world cascading through the lives of several weird and wonderful characters, all with tall tales and enlightening insights into the human condition which, en masse, amount to a wonderful, educational and heart rendering viewing experience.

Academy award nominated director Roko Belic conducts interviews with Professors of “positive psychology” (Dr Ed Diener and Dr Tim Kaiser) and shows footage from medical experiments on Buddhist monks proving that, after detecting raised dopamine levels, the feeling of happiness can be achieved and sustained by meditating on a regular basis. When asking the member of a Namibian tribe what it is that makes him happy, the man says “family, friends and home”. And a local who runs around pretending to be a buffalo always helps. Another man interviewed had given up his career and spent the last seventeen years of his life volunteering in a hospice in Calcutta. He said he had never felt so happy simply by helping others in need, and that by caring about things bigger than himself, he found an overpowering feeling that transcended life and death.

During a Q&A after the screening earlier this week, Belic revealed that making the film was more revelatory to him on a personal level than he expected, and that to be happy, or to smile, means different things in different places. “In Japan if you are happy it means you are selfish and in Russia if you smile for no reason it is considered to either bring bad luck – or they think you are an idiot. Elsewhere it is considered that happiness should be a by-product of doing everything correctly in relation to buying a house, getting married, having children etc.” Belic went on to state that the process of making the film had showed him that “food, shelter and a community are our basic needs and what ultimately makes us happy as individuals. It doesn’t come down to politics as people who live in communist countries are generally no less happy than those living under capitalist regimes. There is a happy medium between economic prosperity and our relationships with others. I like to think of it as compassionate capitalism.”

Presented in conjunction with “My” (an organisation promoting happiness and helping people to find balance), Happy asks and attempts to answer many questions such as: are our values the key components of happiness? It establishes that personal growth, our relationships with others and community are the three main commodities to a happy life. The film also moves, compels and unlike most documentaries, is totally delightful. You can’t help but feel a bit better about the universe after watching it.

Happy is screening at the Bush Theatre, London on the 16th May and at various locations throughout the country on 18th May. Find out more at thehappymovie.com

Text: Daniel Goodwin

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Atmospheric and harmonious, d’Eon’s music sounds like the inner-workings of a peaceful and spiritual soul. Signed to LA label Hippos in Tanks and great mates with fellow Canadian, alt-pop mega-star Grimes, this one man symphony will soon be announcing the release of his debut album entitled LP. Chris took time out from tinkling his fake, plastic ivories to record a session for i-D online and tell us about his former life, living under cloaks in caves as a Tibetan monk.

“Tse Chok Ling tantric monastery is on the side of a mountain in the foothills of the Himalayas in Northern India, a few hours east of Kashmir and Pakistan, south of the Chinese border. I lived there for a brief time to escape my anxiety in the electronic world. To live there was almost free, and I moved in there because I didn’t have enough money to stay at a guesthouse. The monastery is situated down four hundred stone stairs leading down a rhododendron forest on the side of a mountain, and houses about one hundred monks, mostly young refugees from Tibet. The balcony outside my small room in the monastery overlooked the Kangra valley, and every morning I would watch the sun rise over the mountains and the valley become illuminated. At 5 or 6am every morning, the younger monks would practice reciting verses, and the older monks would perform pujas in the main meditation hall. I would wake up to the sound of the horns, gongs and bells. There was a cow that lived right outside my room, and each day two of the monks would milk it and bring me tea made with the cow’s milk. I ate mostly barley paste, Tibetan flat noodles in soup and thick bread.

During the day I would walk up the stairs into town and take music lessons with Dorjee Tsering, who taught me to play the Dranyen, a six-stringed lute instrument. The Dalai Lama’s monastery and home are in the nearest town, and I would go to there a few times a week and eat pizza in a tiny cafe within the monastery complex. The Dalai Lama himself would sometimes be walking around in the monastery courtyard and in the main meditation hall.

At Tse Chok Ling I was the only person not from Tibet or Nepal, but the monks and I got along well despite an almost impenetrable language barrier. When I walked up the four hundred stairs into the town one morning and passed by a group of monks going down the stairs, I asked them how they were, and they said “better than you right now.” Of all the monks my two closest friends were Lobsang and Drakpa. Lobsang is quiet and reserved but was extremely outgoing and generous once I got to know him. Drakpa loves ‘Rambo’ and zombie movies from the USA, and was constantly making jokes about being a monk and not being able to have any sex or watch TV.

Living in a tantric monastery is just about the opposite of living on the internet in the west. It takes so much time to adjust from being constantly stimulated with media, to being relatively cut off from the rest of the world, surrounded by rhododendrons on the side of a mountain. If your life ever irreparably falls apart, I highly recommend running away to a Himalayan monastery.”

myspace.com/chrispdeon

Introduction: Milly McMahon

Wile away the hours with our entire i-N Session archive here.

Text: Sarah Raphael

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There’s no substitute for experience, ask Mr Miyagi. Despite an inferior size and being outnumbered by a group of weapon-wielding youths, this little old man was able to competently dispense of his assailants; a mob of skeleton costume clad chaps who were expertly trained in the same martial art as Miyagi, perhaps even boasting a more modern take on the discipline. But Miyagi was old school, his experience more than made up for strength, youth and numbers. He had a far greater intimacy with his medium.

Now you’re probably thinking, what has this Hollywood analogy got to do with a graphic design legend like Richard Hollis? It’s tenuous, but Richard Hollis is a man whose career has already spanned six decades and helped define modern British graphic design as we know it, and who still continues to produce work to this day amongst a sea of young upstarts. Simply put, he’s mastered a visual language with such authority and amassed so much experience, not even the digital age could stop him. And, whilst he may not be forcing young apprentices to wax his collection of vintage cars, he does still like them to master the wax tablet!

Coinciding with the launch of his new book About Graphic Design, published by Occasional Papers, and an exhibition (now closed) at Gallery Libby Sellers, the Whitechapel Gallery hosted a talk between Hollis and Sir Nicholas Serota, where we couldn’t pass up the opportunity to meet the black belt in design himself…

I am really interested in how much graphic design has changed throughout your career, and how you’ve been active for over half a century… Well, I think the main change is the computer. It’s made it possible for the designer to control everything. When I was working in the 50s, 60s, 70s and so on, you actually spent a lot of time giving instructions to others… as apposed to giving instructions to your computer. You’d have to give instructions to the typesetter and wait for them to get back to you. You had to send all images to be photo-engraved and wait for them too. You had to have a lot of technical knowledge. I once had a job as a messenger for a block maker, so I knew a great deal about those technical processes, which was a great advantage!

So a computer hides all these individual processes… the logistics of the coming together of all these components? Well, there was always a great coming and going of deliveries, then you’d have to go to the printers, having got the proofs of the blocks back… and it was a case of giving more instructions to the printer on how to assemble the type and the images. Then you’d have to choose paper. I remember this paper merchant down in Covent Garden with actual stocks of paper. We’d actually go down there and see what they had. The relationship with the final printed job was much closer, and you’d see it in these various, physical stages. Now it just goes from your computer to the printer. Many people don’t go anymore. But you are more likely to get a decent result if you’re there as you form a relationship with the printer. Of course, with multiple pages or with books for example, the binding could go wrong, but that’s as true now as it was then. The standards of the British printing industry are so lamentably low these days that, in a way, it is more necessary to be there.

Has anything been lost in not having such a level of intimacy with the final design? It’s much less fun! You were getting out and about, going to see these people and having a different relationship with the job. When the job was then delivered to the client, they realised that your role was important. Now, of course, the client has got a computer too, and has a vague idea of what it is you’re doing, despite not actually being able to do detailed typography.

Do you still keenly follow any changes in the industry? Yes, yes… you have to! You don’t want a printer knowing very much more than you.

The printer’s agenda isn’t something I had ever considered worrying about before?! Well, you have to… otherwise they will blind you with science.

In your talk, you mentioned something along the lines of experiencing a culture now where the designer is bullied by the client? That’s right, yes. Well, one of the young people who worked with me once had a client lean over them and ask to change a section of the design to the colour blue. Well, it’s nothing to bloody do with them! But, I do give in sometimes too… when a client is sat with me at my computer, I will just agree with them. It is only after they have gone that you realise you’ve agreed to something that is absolutely stupid.

Have you ever lost your temper with a client? No… no… but I have got irritated before. It’s very rare. (Sir) Nicholas Serota asked me the same thing before the talk the other night. There were only two I could think of… and, actually, I have forgotten those now. Past work isn’t really very interesting. The interesting thing is what you are working on now. That’s why exhibitions of your work are very difficult. It’s hard to get across exactly what happened with each job and what the relationship was with the client, whether the cost of producing it was a factor… the story isn’t there when an image is simply displayed.

Is there one job in particular, one story we could end on? Well, there’s Patrick Heron. The catalogues that I would do for him, the covers and the inside covers, were made to match the colour of the clothes he was wearing. He tended to wear purple, emerald green and orange. These were the same as the colours that he used in his paintings. I guess he was a kind of a walking painting and so was the catalogue. So, anyway, the design was meeting halfway with the client, who, in this case, was an artist. In fact, He lived in Cornwall, and when he used to come up to London he used to change his socks on the train because the colour of his socks he wore in Cornwall wouldn’t be suitable for the light conditions in London.

Have you been tempted to pursue a fine art practice? Yes, I did as a matter of fact. I was trained partly in fine art. On my website, there are two paintings that are mathematical, but very simple.

Richard, thank you very much for your time. Have a lovely day. Thank you.

richardhollis.com

Text: Rhys Coren
Images from top: Ameublement du Monde entier, La Parisienne for Galeries Lafayette, 1967 / Radio Ballads for Topic Records, 1999 / Southwark Street Signage for Muf Architects, 1999 / Steve McQueen: For Queen and Country, for Imperial War Museum and Thomas Dane Gallery, 2006-2007 / Pannekoek and Gorter’s Marxism, Althusser’s Marxism, Gramsci’s Marxism, Sartre’s Marxism for Pluto Press, 1976