If Aromat made them and got Kendall Jenner to wear one, they would make hundreds of billions of pounds, I’m sure. I remember thinking at the time that it was both a heart-warming wink to his love of MSG, and a T-shirt that I would genuinely wear. How have we got here? How have we got to a place where merch – that is to say, garments and accessories given out or sold by creative entities or companies by means of passive promotion – has merged with homeware, high fashion, hype, collaborations, vintage and basically all the machinations of modern commerce? Is everything ironic, now? Or is nothing ironic? For our office Secret Santa in 2019, I made my colleague a T-shirt with the Aromat logo on the chest, because he puts the flavour powder stuff on everything. Could it be a tonic to the stagnant live music scene? Probably (and fair enough), but there’s irreverent crockery and a dog jumper emblazoned with the phrase “suck my dick”, so who cares. As it transpires, Cave Things is a store dedicated to selling goods “conceived, sourced, shaped and designed” by the soigné songman and expert suit wearer. I got an email this week heralding Nick Cave’s new 'Suck My Dick' Collection’, and well-done, sender, because my attention was piqued right off the bat. Bookshops have merch (Daunt tote bags), restaurants have merch (T-shirts from Bao, St John), political campaigns have merch (Bernie beanies) and yes, musicians still have merch, but T-shirts are a bit passé. – or those weird autograph books from Disney World, but for almost all of human history, only dweebs wanted the former and only smōl dweebs wanted the latter.
#PURPLE MOOD BOARD FREE#
At a push you could include the stuff that came free with health insurance or agricultural feed or remote radio broadcasts – hats, keyrings, bum bags etc.
Merch has evolved, has it not? Merch used to be band T-shirts and Star Wars figurines, and that was pretty much it. (Just quickly, I want the record to show that I think Hereditary is one of the most excellent things ever made.) So, what is it, friendo? After browsing agog for half an hour, I went elsewhere and bought my giftee a wetsuit. They’ll ask if you play basketball with it and you’ll say no. People will ask you if it’s from the actual film and you’ll say no. But this goon didn’t know they had a store!Ī post shared by A24 it I found loads and loads of cool, weird, tastefully photographed shit that looks great on a laptop screen but might leave you feeling a bit sad if you actually bought it.
#PURPLE MOOD BOARD MOVIE#
Quick as a flash I asked if he was referring to the road from Clapham to Worthing (bloody good road) and through tears of LAUGHTER he said no, the movie studio responsible for Hereditary, Midsommar, and Uncut Gems and I said yeah, I know that, I’m a 32-year-old media goon that lives in Hackney.
I wanted to buy a cool Christmas present for a cool person and my flatmate recommended the A24 store. Haim have since released a very meh song with Taylor Swift and it wouldn’t have fit me anyway, because of all the Quorny bois.Īnother tale, if you’ll indulge me. So now I’m sweatshirt-less and £50-less, but maybe it was meant to be. The sweatshirt never turned up, and the receipt was deleted by an actually-quite-annoying email server before I realised. I was all like, “Haim are (is?) great and I love sweatshirts and acronyms and I have spare money because I don’t go anywhere or do anything and the only exciting thing I purchased recently is a pack of Quorn cocktail sausages, so yeah, I’ll buy it”. A tale of woe, dusted with chagrin: in the summer, when Lockdown: A New Hope meant we spent all our Chablis money on things we didn’t need and wouldn’t use again (kettle bells emotion journals, baker’s spectacles etc.), I spaffed £50 (I think) on a sweatshirt from Haim’s collection of WIMPIII ( Women In Music Pt.