Samizdat: Yang Li’s New Band?
Preceded by Vetements ’Staff’ t-shirts, mastermind Japan’s Metallica inspired logo t-shirts and Kanye West’s famous Life of Pablo t-shirts, new high fashion merch is in: Samizdat by Yang Li. Now we can really start to form fashion gangs based on our taste in music. Samizdat, which translates to underground distribution of state banned literature in communist eastern Europe countries including Soviet Russia, is for industrial music like Ramleh, Maurizio Bianchi and Controlled Bleeding. Inspired by high energy underground industrial music band performances where the audience count can be as little as ten, Li sees Samizdat line as a platform to make “something exist which we like- and that’s it.” @Samizdat_official Instagram profile banner is ’No Commercial Potential.’
li says Samizdat consists of on-going collaboration projects and sub-culture references. Japanese illustrator Keiichi Ohta is currently on the brand’s list of future collaborators. As for references, something from a book, a film, an album or an artwork that inspires Li will pop up. This season, Yukio Mishima’s ‘Confession of a Mask’ references, Michael Haneke film references to drawings made by 80’s ‘retro’ computer drawing program are seen. Even the ‘merch style’ brand logos are printed using 80’s photocopier that was widely used to print zines back then.
There are Samizdat caps, album art reference t-shirts, hoodies with printed list of film makers and even a Samizdat Soundcloud (https://soundcloud.com/sonicd
To view Yang Li's Samizdat 2017 SS, visit www.kokko.me or or KOKKO Luxury Boutique at 4151 Hazelbridge Way, Richmond BC.