CHECK YR THREADS

BUCK IN FUDGY comes to you thankfully free of advertisements. So, where is it: the company profit push, the spiel, the beg and buy? CHECK YR THREADS, check yr heads. Check those logo'd T-shirts, that logo'd cap: the Stussy, the Mambo, the Hilfinger, The Gap. Check the identity stripes on your trainers: your Old Skools, your Nu-Cools. Nikes, Vans, Converse, Adidas. Why the Adidas? Did you buy them because they were COOL or because they were available? Who made them COOL, who put then into the shops? Why is it the same Adidas trainers were rarely touched between the late eighties and early nineties? Weren't they the same design, the exact same fit? What was so wrong with then and what magic makes them so damn right now? If the 80s revival is so hyped: 80s trainers, Keepin' it real Old School Hip Hop, Electro-Funk, Labels, Mobile Phones (on the Wall Street Tip), people saying 'Wicked!' - how long will it be before Spandau Ballet reform? Was I too hasty in discarding my Gallini Sweatshirt, Farahs, Rubik's Cube, ZX Spectrum, Crocodile skin slip-on shoes and Funky green sun visor?

The multi-national stalks the High Street. Forget the shops, the merchandise is the thing. And where is the merchandise? In the shop windows. Yes, but… where are the majority of the big logo'd garments? ON YOUR FUNKY ARSE. Yes, that's you with your HUGE Hilfinger Sweatshirt wrapped around yr hips, your GAP logo T-shirt offering FREE ADVERTISING SPACE to the Big boys; your Stussy cap simultaneously buying into a perceived COOL aesthetic - fabricated and promoted by companies who, by their nature, must have maximum £$PROFIT$£ as their goal. What makes them hip - a rented window place in yr local skate shop? Are you a hep cat, a boutique swinger or merely a poor, exploited lamb? Do you think that it is mere accident that Adidas, Nike, et al, fill up the windows of Olympus & Cobra? Have you considered that mutual profit could be at hand? Does Adidas' rebuke to ASDA in the UK for selling Adidas Campus & Gazelles at half-price, and their Sweats and Ts at knock down tell you anything?

Who would have thought, five years ago, that High Street sports shops owned by greying men in grey doublebreasts would be dictating fashions for 13-30s? Are your purchases those of a free person or are you just a follower? Are you just a manipulated little lamb encouraged into making a choice between back patting devils: our own High Street Illuminati.

Adidas, Reebok, Stussy, Nike - all massive companies pushing their own fabrications of COOL to get hold of your, very real, pennies and pounds. Where is the independence in the footwear industry? Where are the left-footed designers, retailers? Not in the High Street, not in the pitiful nu-skool followers. Look for independence, make yr look independent. Check yr threads.