Do you like fun, innovative, exciting, joyful, beautiful, and magical magazines? Do you like your fashion thought provoking, intellectually stimulating and visually arresting? You do? Well you are in luck, because the most fun, the most exciting, the most magical of magazines is back for their fifth issue. And boy have the boys from Buffalo Zine outdone themselves again. We didn’t think it was possible after Issue Four. Actually we didn’t think it was possible after Issues Three, Two and One, as well. But some how it just keeps on getting better and better. In fact, if we didn’t work here, we’d work there if they’d have us.
So to celebrate their fifth issue, we asked them five questions, as well as sharing some lovely images from inside. Read on, then go out and find a copy before it is too late and they’re all sold out and you regret it forever.
This is the fifth issue of Buffalo Zine now — can you rank them all in order, from your favourite to least favourite 🙂
Rank our children? No, we can’t! All parents have a favourite child… but would they admit it publicly would they?
The Lennon Gallagher cover is maybe the best cover ever. How difficult was it to get him into a Blur T-shirt? What did Patsy say?
Hahaha. Thank you so much! Ironically it was easier to get him to wear the T-shirts than it was to make the creative team to embrace the concept.
We wanted to propose this idea to Lennon and Patsy; we didn’t know if they would have the right sense of humour, honestly we really thought it wasn’t going to happen. We decided to take the risk and do it on set once they were warmed up. But we had all the clothes on the rack, ironed and hanging, including the Blur tees we’d bought on eBay. Lennon and Patsy arrived and we actually forgot that the tees were there!
Well the first thing Lennon did was take off his coat, go to the rack and pick up the Blur T-shirt — the one in the cover — from all the clothes in the rack. “This is for me?” he said. We all froze for what felt like forever. Then Patsy instantly said: “Oh, really? He loves Blur!” Well, me too, we all do! Lennon said he loved it, and asked to keep it.
We have a big crush on Lennon and Patsy. They are two of the most loving, gentle, humble and funny people we’ve worked with.
And we couldn’t not talk about Pamela, what was she like? As amazing as we imagine?
Pamela was a sweetheart, it took her a bit to warm up, but she’s not to blame. She arrived from her hotel, alone, in a cab at 6am — when it was still dark — to this godforsaken corner of London. She probably freaked out a bit when she saw the location. But she was very generous and gave us her best, although this one was probably a bit weirder than her average photo shoot. Reto Schmid shot her indoors and then outdoors on Hackney Road. She caused a bit of a scene posing outside the entrance of our building because we were shooting at the exact same time when all the workers of the warehouse next door were having their morning tea break on the street. Remember that Diet Coke advert? Well there was a lot of unwanted attention and a lot of requests for selfies.
But in this issue she’s also in a conversation with three young ladies from Hackney that have been supported by Centrepoint, a charity that helps homeless young people. We think it’s a really honest interview where she opens up about her personal life in a way that you don’t see often.
What are you proudest of in the issue?
For a couple of years we’ve had our office in the building where we made and shot this whole issue, and we feel that, very soon, this place will be gone. In the issue there’s this conversation between performance artist Divine David and David Pollard, who was the owner of the Joiners Arms, the legendary gay bar that was part of the same block, and closed down not so long ago. He says: “It’s like London is eating itself!”
So the whole building will disappear to make room for bankers, stake holders, gamers and content providers. “Proper hamburger” restaurants, tapas bars, and poverty chic designer stores, maybe even another shipping container mall. So before it’s gone forever, we invited the amazing artists and contributors featured in this issue to pop by, take a look around and shape their vision of this place for us. We think it’s a pretty cool memento.
Why should we all go out and buy a copy?
It’s the best issue of the whole season.
Credits
Text Felix Petty
Images courtesy Buffalo Zine