Notting Hill: watching the young at play

In the bar

The ladies

The ladies, so young and spritely, springing and leaping into adulthood, like new brown gazelles.

They bathe in the surface reality of fashion magazines; heroine chique, American Apparel.

Tops hanging off one shoulder, hair continuously frizzed, fuzzed and realigned.

They sing, they preen and they dance.

Calipgyian brunettes dressed in leggins and black furry hats, playfully twist their hair.

A split second of abandonment causes them to butterfly away gayfully and nonchalantly; and into the eyes, arms and attentions of another.





The men

Like Thom Yorke.

Unkempt.

Casual.

Mild mannered

Ostentation is distasetful at this age and in this setting.



Notting Hill Concepts

Trustafarians - white kids - who speak lack black people - but whose daddies are very wich.

Envy - what those who don't have what the kids of Notting Hill do feel.

Notting Hill Carnival 2010

We Are London - the city as Adidas sees it

We are London

We are Black.

We are teenagers.

We hang out on the streets.

 

And we wear Adidas clothes?

 

 Really?

 

Yeh, we wear Adidas clothes because if we don't we die.

Pecked to death by our 'friends'.

And whilst we like to think of ourselves as men.

Inside we are shivering defenceless chicks.

Just like everyone else.

 

We are London.

Are You?

Photo: Loop Zilla

We are London.

We are groovy chicks.

 

We're probably around 30.

Could even be mums.

And we're strutting our stuff in London Town

In Adidas track suit tops?

Don't make me laugh!

No. Seriously. Adidas is not just for chavs.

Info

In late 2010 Adidas launched an advertising campaign 'We Are London'
depicting Londonders clad in Adidas. 

 

There was something refreshing about the brand's attempt to put a positive spin on groups of young black men hanging out on the street.

 

And yet something almost unbelievable about the idea that these guys would be dressed in Adidas. 

 

It seems as if someone realised that it was young black men who were the principal consumers of Adidas clothing in London - and that something needed to be done to acknowledge that.

 

What Adidas has to say...

Do young Black men really wear Adidas?

 

Or is this the impression Adidas wants to give to break into the 'urban' fashion market?