I interviewed my good friend Imogene 'Immy' Barron, publisher of cult style zine LoveWant, for The Vine. Read it here!
HENRY HOLLAND
www.thevine.com.au
Henry: Hi. How are you? Would you like some water?
London designer Henry Holland is as famous for his loud streetwear as he is for his friends in high places. In 2007, he shot to fame thanks to his “fashion groupie” printed tees, which bore slogans like “Get your freak on, Giles Deacon” and “I’ll show you who’s boss, Kate Moss".
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ll know that his bestie is Agyness ‘Agy’ Deyn, who caught the industry’s attention after chopping off her locks the day before starring in Holland’s first lookbook. What you might not know is that under Holland’s blonde quiff lives a shrewd business mind, which has seen the House of Holland collaborate with major brands like Levi’s, Debenhams and most recently Roxy.
The tanned man was in Sydney last week to work with eyewear brand Le Specs on a line due for release this time next year. When I caught up with him, we were supposed to discuss the shades, but spent the time chatting about dress-ups, sleep deprivation and why he wouldn’t date Mischa Barton.
The Vine: Hi Henry.
Henry: Hi. How are you? Would you like some water?
The Vine: No thanks; I‘m holding a bottle. How long have you been here [in Australia]?
Henry: Since Sunday actually. I’m here for five days.
The Vine: Are you jetlagged?
Henry: No, not at all. I’m always the smug one who tells people to get over it. It’s like when you have a big night, you just need to get on with it the next day. Take a Berocca and carry on.
The Vine: Is this a good time to tell you I didn’t sleep last night?
Henry: Why not?
The Vine: I’m not sure, but I had to drink four coffees to keep me awake today. You’ll have to forgive me if I’m not on the ball.
Henry: I’ll forgive you.
The Vine: My first question’s a dumb one.
Henry: Go on.
OLOF ARNALDS
www.oystermag.com
9 November 2010
I think I have an affinity with the Icelandic. I know that’s a strange thing to say, but I’ve only ever had great experiences with them. They exude innocence and sincerity, and can talk about ‘whatever’ endlessly. Ok, so I’ve only spoken to two of them. But if my theory was tried and tested on a more substantial test group, I could safely say that young songstress Ólöf Arnalds is a true Icelandic. She has a songbird-like voice, giggles like a schoolgirl and loves to talk about weird stuff like elves. She also believes she’s undergoing some sort of Benjamin Button-esque transformation. I caught up with her to discuss her new album, Innundir Skinni.
Zac: Hi Ólöf, how are you?
Ólöf: Good, how are you?
Zac: Hey — your English is really good!
Ólöf: Oh! Thank you! After one sentence, that’s a pretty good conclusion [both laugh]. A lot of my mother’s family is English speaking, so I was exposed to that language quite much when I was a child.
Zac: Have you ever noticed that when people sing, they lose their accents?
Ólöf: Well, my voice wouldn’t translate very well if I sang with an Icelandic accent. I don’t deliberately think about an accent, I just try to make my voice work for the song.
Zac: I just got the album [Innundir Skinni] and it’s beautiful.
Ólöf: Thank you.
Zac: Which is your favourite song?
Ólöf: What a difficult question!
Zac: This is the easy one.
Ólöf: Well, they are all such different emotional entities. The song that is closest to me at the moment though is ‘Surrender’, because I recently recorded the music video, and went to a tremendous amount of work training myself to dance.
Zac: Really?
Ólöf: It was a very hardcore thing. It was in the middle of the woods, and it was pouring rain. It was a quite a catharsis — I thought I was going to die.
Zac: How’d you go with dancing? I bet you’re a natural.
Ólöf: I don’t know. You’re just going to have to test it and see.
Zac: So the album’s title means ‘Within Skin’. Is it about tattoos?
Ólöf: [Laughs] It refers to being pregnant. Something is growing within your skin.
Zac: Cool. You’ve had one?
Ólöf: Yeah, I had a boy in January 2008.
Zac: Has that changed the way you-
Ólöf: It changes everything. When you’re a parent you can’t just do things whenever you want. It also makes you more serious… but in a good way. All of a sudden your time is more limited, but the thing is, before you have a child, you’re not necessarily using all the time that you have.
Zac: What did you name him?
Ólöf: Ari. It means ‘eagle’.
Zac: Beautiful. Did you grow up around music?
Ólöf: Yeah. My mother is very musical. She sings a lot.
Zac: What is the most beautiful lyric you’ve heard?
Ólöf: I’ve been reading a little bit of Hafiz lately, who’s from the 1200s, and there’s this very beautiful poem that goes something like: “God and I have become like two giant fat people in a tiny boat, constantly bumping into each other, laughing.” I think that’s a beautiful thought.
Zac: I heard about this Icelandic myth — tell me if I’m wrong, I’m really gullible — and it was that people in Iceland believe in elves. Is that true?
Ólöf: Yes and no. The thing with cultural beliefs like ‘ghosts’ and ‘owls’ and stuff like that, is that on one hand everyone believes it, and on the other hand no one does, but either way it’s completely accepted.
Zac: I think I saw an owl yesterday.
Ólöf: Oh… Anyway, for example, sometimes everything will be going wrong at constructions [construction sites], and all their machinery will be breaking down and other stuff, and then — just for the sake of it — they bring in a person that can speak with elves. And then the person that can speak with the elves, speaks with the elves, and makes peace, and…
Zac: Really?
Ólöf: Yeah! It’s really strange. It’s an accepted thing to do, but then people are like ‘but of course it’s bullshit’. So it’s like this complete duality. I think it’s quite a perfect system.
Zac: Hilarious! I imagine that the music scene in Iceland is quite tight-knit.
Ólöf: Yeah. It comes without saying that when you have maybe three other people who are active as professional musicians; it’s going to be a pretty tight, tight thing.
Zac: You even worked with Björk on the album, right?
Ólöf: Yeah, we are friends. I was playing her the album, and then she got an idea for some melodies, and said: “How about I just record it, and you can use it if you want, and if you don’t want to use it…” Well she just sent it through, and I ended up putting it into the mix. It came out beautifully.
Zac: Definitely. I was reading in your press release that she [Björk] said that your voice is “somewhere between a child and an old woman.” It made me think that you might be an old soul in a young body.
Ólöf: I’ve heard about that.
Zac: Do you think you are one?
Ólöf: Maybe. It’s strange, though. I feel like the older I get, the more playful and selfish I get. I was more serious when I was a child. I just keep going backwards, you know? I was raised by my grandparents, and that sort of affects the way you think and feel. I wasn’t exposed that much to popular culture either. I feel like I just kind of missed out, or something. But I’ll never catch that train; I’ve lost it forever. When people are talking about how ‘this band is so cool’, I’m always completely blank.
Zac: I’m the same.
Ólöf: I just make a fool out of myself. I’m basically Amish. But it’s fun to be doing what I’m doing when I don’t have a clue. I’m like an alien or something.
9 November 2010
I think I have an affinity with the Icelandic. I know that’s a strange thing to say, but I’ve only ever had great experiences with them. They exude innocence and sincerity, and can talk about ‘whatever’ endlessly. Ok, so I’ve only spoken to two of them. But if my theory was tried and tested on a more substantial test group, I could safely say that young songstress Ólöf Arnalds is a true Icelandic. She has a songbird-like voice, giggles like a schoolgirl and loves to talk about weird stuff like elves. She also believes she’s undergoing some sort of Benjamin Button-esque transformation. I caught up with her to discuss her new album, Innundir Skinni.
Zac: Hi Ólöf, how are you?
Ólöf: Good, how are you?
Zac: Hey — your English is really good!
Ólöf: Oh! Thank you! After one sentence, that’s a pretty good conclusion [both laugh]. A lot of my mother’s family is English speaking, so I was exposed to that language quite much when I was a child.
Zac: Have you ever noticed that when people sing, they lose their accents?
Ólöf: Well, my voice wouldn’t translate very well if I sang with an Icelandic accent. I don’t deliberately think about an accent, I just try to make my voice work for the song.
Zac: I just got the album [Innundir Skinni] and it’s beautiful.
Ólöf: Thank you.
Zac: Which is your favourite song?
Ólöf: What a difficult question!
Zac: This is the easy one.
Ólöf: Well, they are all such different emotional entities. The song that is closest to me at the moment though is ‘Surrender’, because I recently recorded the music video, and went to a tremendous amount of work training myself to dance.
Zac: Really?
Ólöf: It was a very hardcore thing. It was in the middle of the woods, and it was pouring rain. It was a quite a catharsis — I thought I was going to die.
Zac: How’d you go with dancing? I bet you’re a natural.
Ólöf: I don’t know. You’re just going to have to test it and see.
Zac: So the album’s title means ‘Within Skin’. Is it about tattoos?
Ólöf: [Laughs] It refers to being pregnant. Something is growing within your skin.
Zac: Cool. You’ve had one?
Ólöf: Yeah, I had a boy in January 2008.
Zac: Has that changed the way you-
Ólöf: It changes everything. When you’re a parent you can’t just do things whenever you want. It also makes you more serious… but in a good way. All of a sudden your time is more limited, but the thing is, before you have a child, you’re not necessarily using all the time that you have.
Zac: What did you name him?
Ólöf: Ari. It means ‘eagle’.
Zac: Beautiful. Did you grow up around music?
Ólöf: Yeah. My mother is very musical. She sings a lot.
Zac: What is the most beautiful lyric you’ve heard?
Ólöf: I’ve been reading a little bit of Hafiz lately, who’s from the 1200s, and there’s this very beautiful poem that goes something like: “God and I have become like two giant fat people in a tiny boat, constantly bumping into each other, laughing.” I think that’s a beautiful thought.
Zac: I heard about this Icelandic myth — tell me if I’m wrong, I’m really gullible — and it was that people in Iceland believe in elves. Is that true?
Ólöf: Yes and no. The thing with cultural beliefs like ‘ghosts’ and ‘owls’ and stuff like that, is that on one hand everyone believes it, and on the other hand no one does, but either way it’s completely accepted.
Zac: I think I saw an owl yesterday.
Ólöf: Oh… Anyway, for example, sometimes everything will be going wrong at constructions [construction sites], and all their machinery will be breaking down and other stuff, and then — just for the sake of it — they bring in a person that can speak with elves. And then the person that can speak with the elves, speaks with the elves, and makes peace, and…
Zac: Really?
Ólöf: Yeah! It’s really strange. It’s an accepted thing to do, but then people are like ‘but of course it’s bullshit’. So it’s like this complete duality. I think it’s quite a perfect system.
Zac: Hilarious! I imagine that the music scene in Iceland is quite tight-knit.
Ólöf: Yeah. It comes without saying that when you have maybe three other people who are active as professional musicians; it’s going to be a pretty tight, tight thing.
Zac: You even worked with Björk on the album, right?
Ólöf: Yeah, we are friends. I was playing her the album, and then she got an idea for some melodies, and said: “How about I just record it, and you can use it if you want, and if you don’t want to use it…” Well she just sent it through, and I ended up putting it into the mix. It came out beautifully.
Zac: Definitely. I was reading in your press release that she [Björk] said that your voice is “somewhere between a child and an old woman.” It made me think that you might be an old soul in a young body.
Ólöf: I’ve heard about that.
Zac: Do you think you are one?
Ólöf: Maybe. It’s strange, though. I feel like the older I get, the more playful and selfish I get. I was more serious when I was a child. I just keep going backwards, you know? I was raised by my grandparents, and that sort of affects the way you think and feel. I wasn’t exposed that much to popular culture either. I feel like I just kind of missed out, or something. But I’ll never catch that train; I’ve lost it forever. When people are talking about how ‘this band is so cool’, I’m always completely blank.
Zac: I’m the same.
Ólöf: I just make a fool out of myself. I’m basically Amish. But it’s fun to be doing what I’m doing when I don’t have a clue. I’m like an alien or something.
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