Merch table
The basement is the ballroom. The merch is the inheritance.
- Type
- Editorial concept
- Status
- Not yet shot
- Links to
- KiNi, TRAWA
- Colour
- Tar, oxblood, faded red, bleach
- Mood
- Sweaty basement, shot like a palace
A band T-shirt costs fifteen pounds and gets kept for twenty years: a first gig, a friendship, a whole version of yourself. This story gives that shirt the treatment of an heirloom.
It runs on from TRAWA, where the hand-painted set was the message. No real band logos: an invented band with its own gig dates, flyers turned into prints and sleeves customised by hand, as if the clothes were collected over years of shows.
Shot in a small basement venue after the show, but lit and posed like a formal portrait. The make-up and the pose are formal; the clothes refuse to be.
A band T-shirt costs £15 and gets kept for twenty years. Watanabe and Undercover already cut tour tees into new garments in 2006, so the twist here is different: one recognisable tee, built into a rigorous couture shape, as if it were an heirloom. The basement is the ballroom.
Tar
#241E1C
Oxblood leather
#6A4641
Faded red
#BD7062
Concrete
#7E8081
Nicotine
#B9AA9C
Bleach
#E8E2DE
Stage red
#B3261E
accent
Pulled from the pixels of the 20 references. The accent is chosen by hand.
Mock-ups made in ChatGPT to test each look before a shoot. They are not photographs.
- Casting
- Real musicians and gig-goers; ask KiNi's band and friends
- Location
- A small London basement venue after hours (Hackney or Camden)
- Light
- On-camera flash, plus the venue's own red light
- Hair, make-up
- Smudged eyeliner, greasy hair, one strong lip
- Props
- Merch table, setlist taped to the floor, mic stand
- Group shot behind the merch table
- Full-length on the empty stage
- Detail: cut and re-sewn tee
- Flash shot in the venue toilet
- Crowd-surf pose on friends' hands