Posting about a belt, and just a belt, is something of a rarity on the blog, but this is a pretty nice looking belt and the photoshoot is pretty bizarre so there was no way I wasn’t posting this.

Costiness=$45 Buy it at Akomplice

Margin London has been kindly invited to contribute to HideYourArms. We’ll be posting some news about up-and-coming labels that will be exhibiting at Margin in February 2013, which takes place on the 10th & 11th, but firstly we think we should introduce ourselves.

Started back in 2002 as an affordable platform for new designers, Margin is the longest-running independent trade exhibition in London. The show presents designer women’s and men’s tailoring and accessories, as well as streetwear for men and women, to invited store buyers and press.

The humble tee has long been a starting point for numerous labels, and we’ve seen many an exhibitor start off with a t-shirt offering which has grown over the seasons to include a full range of clothing. Supremebeing, Lazy Oaf, Seventyseven, Dephect, YourEyesLie, and many others all started at Margin with tees before growing their stockist base and extending their range to include clothing, bags, jewellery (or jewelry for Americans!), and hats.

Margin has been providing a launchpad for brands to meet with key buyers and press for 10 years to date, and 2012 marked a decade of exhibitions.

To commemorate the occasion, a limited-edition 10 year book was printed for visitors to the show, but it’s also available to download as a PDF or as a super-interactive book for iPad. The iPad version features extensive galleries of previous seasons, as well as videos, and can be downloaded here.

Here’s the link to posts where HideYourArms mentions Margin including brand updates from when they last visited (well overdue for a revisit but Andy & the HideYourArms London correspondent are returning in February 2013!).

Margin is an intimate showroom exhibition in a white gallery space in the heart of Central London, and the only tradeshow in the UK where buyers and press can discover new & emerging design talent (most making their debut launch).  When we say “NEW”, we don’t just mean new to Margin, we mean brand-spanking, never-been-seen-before, new!

Since the exhibitions first started back in 2002, Margin can lay claim to providing the successful trade launch-pad for many brands such as Chateau Roux, Your Eyes Lie, Supremebeing, Dephect, Emily & Fin, Miyson, 1 in a 100, Missmilne, Worn By, Ashley Marc Hovelle, Humdrum, Worn Free, Sugarhill, King Apparel, Terratag, Lazy Oaf, Famous Forever, and Ruby Rocks, as well as the UK launching point of overseas brands including Silas, Upper Playground, Tank Theory, Eastpak Apparel, Loreak Mendian, Syndrome, Al & Alicia, Gama-Go, Mimobots, Double Goose, Stereo Sound Agency, Diamond Supply Co, Urban Originals, and Uzi amongst many others.

Margin has welcomed key stores to the exhibitions since first launching in 2002; from online players like ASOS, My-Wardrobe, and Urban Industry; multiples such as Ark, Joy, Beams, and Ships; department stores, such as Selfridges, Harvey Nichols, Liberty, House of Fraser, Psyche, Fenwick, El Corte Ingles, Galleries Lafayette, & Engelhorn Trendhaus; as well as the key independents Margin is renowned for, including Colette, Hip, Sakis, Wood, Royal Cheese, Natterjacks, 290sqm, Coggles, Market, Atoo, My Yard, Donuts, Caliroots, and Get Cutie, to name a few.

Margin has welcomed numerous stylists and fashion editors from magazines including Vogue, Wad, Elle, Wallpaper, Arena, i-D, FHM, Esquire, Cosmopolitan, Vice, DJ, Flux, WWD, Drapers, Sportswear International, and Sport & Street; as well as contributors from directional blogs such as BNTL, Coolhunting, Hypequest, Slamxhype, Hypebeast, and, of course, Hideyourarms.

For more info about Margin, visit the website here, find us on Facebook or Twitter, and we’ll be back soon to post about some great new labels that will be exhibiting at Margin in February 2013.

Really impressive release from Enclothe, who are a brand that I’ve never been disappointed by, and considering I’ve been writing about them since the early days of HYA that’s no mean feat. As you can see there are three new t-shirt designs in this release, and each of those designs is also available on the back of a hoodie. The belt isn’t actually a new design, but it is available in black for the first time after previously only being available in brown.

Venus Fallen added 33 new items into their shop, wow, what a selection of products AND styles. A wide variety including tees (of course), long sleeved crewnecks, pull-overs, hoodies, baseball tees, sweatshirts, belts, wallets, buttons – it’s a lot, I’m telling you! It was hard for me to pick only a few to show you, so go take a look in the shop for the whole selection.

Also, the popular and obviously fun Science Gives Me A Hadron tee (that was even shared by the one and only, George Takei) has been made into a zip-up, neat!

Keep in touch with Venus Fallen: Facebook, Twitter

Fair to say they’ve been a bit busy!

There’s a lot to like here from Akomplice, and just as with my previous post about Home is Where Your Heart Is I’m again impressed with the level of variety on offer in this collection. I know I’m not any kind of authority on these matters, but I really rather like those shorts!

Big, big, big release from Seventh.Ink today, some of the items are very limited and already close to selling out, which says a lot for the amount of excitement that Matt has been able to generate around the collection. The three designs you can see above are all available as t-shirts, hoodies and tank tops, all of which are limited edition and won’t be reprinted, but there are also some interesting ‘super limited’ items too. The laser engraved wooden book boxes are a new one on me, I can’t think of many other companies that have done something similar, there’s only seven of each design available on each box. There’s also the belts, which is an oft overlooked accessory at clothing brands, there’s only 10 of those available for each design, and lastly for the accessories there is a button pack.

I think it’s fair to say that with this being called ‘Series 1′ that we can expect to get more of the same from Seventh.Ink over the new few months, and hopefully the same goes for the innovative products that they’re putting out.

I got an e-mail from John at Abuv almost a month ago, and it’s taken me until now to get around to writing about them. That may provide some comfort to those of you that have e-mailed me an I haven’t got back to you yet. I say yet because I do intend to reply to everyone, there’s just only so many hours in the day, you know?

Abuv aren’t just a company that makes t-shirts (4 designs in at the moment, one of them is not pictured), webbing belts and bracelets, they’re setting themselves apart by offering 10% of all sales (not just 10% of profits) to charity, so if you make a purchase with them then you know precisely how much of your order will be going to charity. I’m not a bracelet wearer, but John from Abuv makes the bracelets by hand himself, and I think it’s cool that there is that personal connection to the items that they’re selling. I know that there’s always a connection when I talk about tee brands because they have the designs made or design them themselves and then get a printer company to produce finish product (it’s a smaller and smaller percentage of brands printing their own shirts these days), but it feels a little different with the idea of handmade bracelets.

The range available in their store isn’t massive at the moment, but everyone has to grow from something and I look forward to see what they come up with in the future.

Taking a short break from tees here, the guy who runs NESBuckle (the belt buckle for nerds) sent me an e-mail giving you guys a $10 off coupon code for NESBuckle.com, which as HYA regulars would probably guess is hideyourarms. The buckles, which are made of genuine NES controllers, cost $29.95 regularly, so $10 off is a good saving. I actually have a NES sat under the TV in the office right now, it doesn’t get much play anymore, but then again I don’t spend a huge amount of time playing videogames, my Xbox gets used far more as a media centre, dammit I’m old.

I thought that “destroy breast cancer” had a bit more punch to it than “support a breast cancer charity.” This isn’t a belt blog, that would be too niche even for me, but when it comes to a brand trying to help a charity I’m a bit of a sucker. Apparently October is National Breast Cancer Awareness month, and whilst the month may almost be out, Boston Cream are still trying to do their bit, and all proceeds from the sale of these pink $10 belts will be to Susan G. Komen for the Cure. We can expect to hear more from Boston Cream in the next few weeks too, as their Winter collection will be dropping on November 17th.

I know that title might make you think that I’m not impressed with Seventh.Ink‘s fall line, but I like it, I justed to try and show some kind of objectivity with one of my advertisers. I would write about them whether they were or weren’t helping to keep the server running and the HYA jet filled with supermodels, but HYA is a shill-free zone, so with posts like this I would prefer to just give you the facts and let you make up your own mind. They are being quite ambitious though, the three designs you can see above are being made available (when the line is released on Monday) as tee, hoodies, and belts. Read more about the new line on their blog, and check out all the previews in the gallery.