Travel Etiquette is a travel focused initiative created to inspire conversation amongst people of all ages, ethnic backgrounds and genders to discuss travel and what you discover through your own personal lens. When we started Travel Etiquette, the idea was to open ourselves to the outside world and gain new experiences and inspiration that would hopefully inspire others to do the same. Brazil and Africa went well but this time  around we have a lot more insight and know how to make this feat that much greater. For this trip, the plan is to head out to one or possibly two of the places listed on a 2week trip,  have a ton of fun, eat plenty of food and meet some cool people, all while simeoustanelously staying in and out of trouble and grabbing as much footage as possible.

We chose these places for a number of reasons, they are on our combined bucket-list, they are for the most part economically friendly and they all seem like great places to capture wonderful, unique content.

So please help us out and give us your opinion on where we should continue  our Travel Etiquette series, it would be greatly appreciated.

Also, if you know of any good people in the places listed who would be willing to help us out as we navigate through unfamiliar lands, please let us know.  Shoot an email to info@streetetiquette, with Travel Etiquette as the subject.

-Thanks

This post is a collaboration with the Creative Council by UGG Australia.

More about the project here

It was a hectic week to say the least, between all the shows and the after hour festivities it’s all a blur. Fashion Week in New York this time of year is always brutal because of the cold weather. We pretty much saw and felt it all this year, even a snow storm didn’t stop the shows from happening. Some of this years’ highlights include Monclear, Billy Reid, Ian verladi and William Okpo.

This time around we have a short video above that captures the mood and feeling of the eventful week. We had a lot of fun running around and shooting and we hope you guys share some of that enjoyment. We hope to bring you guys some more unique Fashion Week content in the future, hopefully in other cities as well.

Joshua Kissi : Despite what can occur during fashion week, this New York Fashion Week experience was one of the more enjoyable ones for us, specifically partnering up with Nordstrom’s Men Shop –  a burgeoning digital space for men’s style online. We took to their Instagram account, while also documenting our daily run-ins on their blog. We also teamed up with photographer Joshua Woods , a fellow uptowner who assisted on lending his sharp visuals to bring this article to life. You can expect more collaborations between all of us releasing soon.

[During NYFW] – I’m going to be perfectly honest here and say it’s no easy feat to attend various shows, snap photos, meet/greet the usual crowd, have your occasional verbal dispute with PR, attend a few after parties all while still waking up the next morning to view a 9:00 am show. If anything else everyone is working off of the energy and excitement being displayed day by day, making up for all of the sleepless nights and any other casualties experienced.

I somehow managed to lug around my canon 7d  to capture video while we on the ground during the week. I thought it would be pretty cool to give a different perspective from being at the shows, in transit, eating at our favorite places, and just overall the city at its finest.

You have to love it though !

A special thanks to Josh Woods, the folks at Nordstrom and last but not least thank you guys for always supporting, while giving us the opportunity to display things from our perspective.

We thought it would be great to combine what we all do best with Armando providing the footwear, Travis and I on the style end, and Rog Walker heading photography – altogether producing some cool visuals. Lets face reality here, when it boils to features sit down interviews can be dreadful, so we took on the city, grabbed a bite to eat and let the visuals do the talking.

We discussed everything from life to the industry we all work in and the future progress of it. As your network begins to expand more it’s always great to find  genuine people in the same field of work as yourself. Armando pointed out while heading a successful modeling career and still doing so, he had the urge to create something tangible outside of it. He created his shoe line back in 2009 and hasn’t looked back from then with his shoes being stocked in 13 different countries across the world – major props. You can now purchase some of his spring / summer selects early over at MR PORTER

Photography – All of the visuals in the post are provided by Photographer Rog Walker, it was great to collaborate with him as he brought the city to life through his images. For the past few weeks we have been working with Rog on several exciting projects which should be coming to light very soon.

Music – nowlistening to Da Lata – “Places We Go”

This funky awesome number from the British band  ”Places We Go” starts off mellow then picks up into this splash of afro beat goodness. I’ll be honest I’m happy we’re posting again so I can flex some of the music I have found via digital crate digging on the web. (ha)

Locations : Lower East Side, TriBeca, Chinatown.

Thank you guys as always.

We have been working with our brothers over at The Brooklyn Circus to bring you guys some fun, memorable pieces. We have some surprises lined up. To start, are these simple, clean logo T-shirts of very limited run. They fit great and make for the perfect socking stuffer.

This also marks the debut of our online store! We have suffered at the receiving end with questions about when it will be open. Well, here it is. Stay tuned for more product releases in the near future!

Black Ivy logo T-shirts are available HERE and at The Brooklyn Circus’ new “POP SHOP” 258 Bergen St. Brooklyn, NY 11217

Much thanks to: Ouigi Theodore, Jokenneth Museau, Rinaldy Laguerre, Cleon Grey, Chris Buford, Jerry St. Aubin and Kadeem Johnson for bringing the shirts to life with their style shots.

Thank you guys for supporting us once again and our Travel Etiquette series which we are very passionate about because it’s more about the notion of collecting moments in life, rather than physical possessions.  Get those worn in chucks out, a small duffle bag, (oh yeah) your passport, go see the world, and here’s a bit why Luanda, Angola should be a first stop.

The video above is a teaser/preview of our time in Luanda, you can expect a number of video episodes from our experience in Angola accompanied with beautiful imagery VERY soon to be launched on our website.

Check out more at Os Kuduristas

And Imagery on our Inspiration page

Now fast forward many months later we have great product to show for it and the opportunity to grow a budding relationship. Each time we have the opportunity to work on product in collaboration with a company, we  do not only value the end result, but the process and preparation it takes to get to the final stage.

Inspiration : What’s a summer without espadrilles? We decided to take inspiration from West Indian/Caribbean culture for the material/fabric we used on the espadrilles. It was as simple as it appears we thought it would be great to see that type of texture on a shoe and fortunate for us they came out pretty good. Released in 3 different colors consisting of varsity red,  royal blue and olive green these shades seem like the perfect colors for footwear during the warmer months. If anything else here’s a dosage of our summer style while keeping cool in the city.

People : Featuring our good friend/colleague and fellow Bronxite stylist Keino Benjamin joining in on this one. You may have seen him around the ‘interwebs’  taken by many of our favorite street style photographers and has the job of styling a lot of industry clients. You can look out for Keino for his personal work and  as we prepare to work on future projects together.

As always we want to thank you guys, the readers who support us on each collaboration and endeavor we take on. Here’s our first installment/package with Soludos (Mesh Net) that we designed to purchase now for $45.00 in order to complete your summer.

BUY HERE

Location : Lower East Side, NYC

Images by Kadeem Johnson

On a peaceful afternoon Myself, Josh, Joekenneth and Andre headed for a stroll through the MET. If you’ve been there before you know that it is almost impossible to attentively walk every exhibit in one day. This place is huge, with every type of art you can imagine. Its like you step into a real life, materialized Tumblr.

The Egyptian art Exhibit is one of favorites. It also happens to be the first exhibit so we decided to take some quick photos and then quietly enjoyed a number of other exhibits. What I love most about Ancient Egyptian art is the precision, mystery and colors that make up the art. It certainly hard to believe that some pieces date back to 300,000 BC.

Listening to [Melo-X- Dirty Dishes]

Heres a nice instrumental number from Melo-X. A  friend of ours and overall talented being. His new instrumental mixtape, FEWTURE went available for download last-night. I love the soothing yet captivating feeling this song gives. Its funny, I had another song in mind for this post but as I was writingI kept replaying this track over and over until this song and this post became synonymous in my head. Love it!

Photos by Andre Wagner

Truthfully who wouldn’t want to sport a suit everyday outside of the conventional work requirements? I found myself looking for the best alternative to a great wool suit, preferably for the colder months. I traveled a rather unorthodox route, searching for an alternative to the usual gray, navy or black. I found the perfect flannel pattern in the fairly new men’s boutique SUIT SUPPLY.  By no means do I want to sound like an annoying advert, but the store provided in-store tailoring, great fabrics, different cuts, and last but not least a reasonable price. I happily walked out  of the boutique with a great 3 piece wool-flannel suit without breaking the bank for the product/tailoring (success!).

Featuring – A familiar face around these parts Black Ivy compadre James E.Jean of Modrockers, a great friend of ours from the start of this website and is also a budding stylist. We headed over to Cheeky’s Sandwiches for a bite to eat, good ol’ New Orleans style creole eatery between L.E.S/Chinatown, and some of the best biscuit sandwiches around town. A beautiful day in the city, conversation and some great eats at the end of the all ends up to be a perfect day in the Lower East Side.

Listening to [ Miles Davis - Blue in Green ]

The song itself is a auditory journey led by the great Miles Davis, accompanied by legends John Coltrane and Bill Evans. To say that we solely find the music inspiring would be an understatement,  it’s pretty obvious that Jazz musicians were  one of the first prototypes and examples of personifying the terms cool and hip.I ask myself what song could be more perfectly crafted without a word.  Speaking of hip it’s kind of interesting that the original diction of the term hipster was someone who took a great liking to Jazz music, and  aspired to live similar lifestyles of Jazz musicians in the 1940s.

Addresses :

Suit Supply NYC

• 453 Broome St
• (between Mercer St & Greene St)
• New York, NY 10013

Cheeky’s Sandwiches

• 35 Orchard St
• (between Canal St & Hester St)
• New York, NY 10002

While cleaning my room a couple weeks ago, I came across the bottle of unused, forgotten dye and felt an urge to use it. I took my white Tretorn Nylites that were beaten to a pulp and ran for the bathroom before I could change my mind. I Filled a plastic tub with warm water, added a generous amount of salt and poured in the dye. Then submerged the sneakers and laces in the concoction and let it sit for about 20-30mins. Honestly, I wasn’t expecting much promising results. Had I known what I know now I would have documented the whole thing, the transformation was nothing short of amazing. As you can see from the photos, the canvas turned a deep wine and the soles and accents morphed into a pinkish hue. It’s actually a great color-way. There’s no wonder why Tretorn fans I encounter think they missed the boat on these.

I wasn’t planning on doing a post on this. However, I’ve been getting countless questions about where I purchased the shoes. The most fascinating part is seeing people’s reactions when I reveal that I dyed them with a simple $4 bottle of liquid dye. So there you go. I know most of you have beat up canvas sneakers laying around. Get some dye and spice those badboys up. I’ll be doing this with a couple other things. I cant get enough. I’ll be sure to keep you guys posted.

Listening to [Jackie Mittoo- Ghetto Organ]

Here’s a nice little instrumental dub track by Jackie Mittoo. He was a popular pianist and songwriter out of Jamaica who started his career during the 60s. This track has the perfect ambience of reggae in an urban city.

Some people may ask what does this have to do with street style? Subway Etiquette? What? *I just want the fare to be lowered, Ha. * Well before the beautiful cobble stone streets and paved sidewalks there is a mutual commute for most.  Mine in particular is 45 minutes to an hour depending on the never ending construction of train tracks uptown. I feel the subway is a state of limbo, another world that is seperate from all the madness above ground. Essentially this is a daily piece of our lives captured in photographs.

Featuring - We teamed up with photographer Andre Wagner of abstractElements to provide the visuals for this post. We are huge fans of his photographic perspective on story telling as he captures the moment without saying much. Kadeem & Rinaldy ( who were featured in the Black Ivy editorial and Sartorial Sounds ) came along and lent their visuals for the ride.

Listening to [ Blackstar ft Common - Respiration ] produced by Hi-Tek

The perfect soundtrack for riding the subway, it just screams gritty. Although Jazz is not frequently listened to by younger generations its potent roots in Rock and Hip Hop are evident. Here Don Randi’s “The Fox” is sampled and looped through out the song. In hiphop beats especially in the 90s my favorite lame past time has to be identifying samples often times soulful jazz songs sped up with a vicious loop, dropped with a kick and snare.

Enjoy..