Bristol Cars from Cool Hunting on Vimeo.

Disappointed that no iPod has more than 64GB of memory and convinced that my broadband connection would make the new hockey puck-esque AppleTV absolutely useless – Digital Britain is a sick joke.

Stüssy pretty much pioneered the modern streetwear market three decades ago with the Stüssy label, but hasn’t been involved with that company for a number of years now. Check here from 11pm UK time on April 12.

I know that this is supposed to be a take on Nike’s past designs with pony hair, but it looks more like Reebok have been kidnapping well loved soft toys from cribs across the world and recycling them into sneakers: a kind of 21st century Cruella De Vil.

No part of the soft toys were wasted as they were obviously used to line these revolting green models. The adults really need to get back in charge over there.

Given Shawn Stüssy‘s long association with music and California, it made sense that his original label Stüssy should reach out to Mr Hernandez to collaborate on t-shirt designs. Hernandez’ work moves well from paper to t-shirts. Its only a shame that Stüssy’s site still has mad hate for European customers.

However, over the past two years the brand has progressively made it harder for European consumers such as me to get hold of their gear. They closed down their London chapter store and sold a limited range through an e-commerce site based out of Germany. Gimme5 pranksters at The Hideout Store sell a very limited selection of the Stüssy range alongside a plethora of other streetwear brands.

Now it seems that they’ve closed down the German e-commerce store and flipped both the stussystore.co.uk and stussydirect.eu URIs back to their North American site stussy.com. The Stüssy site has a fancy flash interface with audio and video. The audio was labeled MP3s, but there’s no download love going on – a bit of mislabeling but no biggie. I even found a blog with dodgy navigation and an RSS feed which I couldn’t subscribe to.

Ok, this is maybe just for brand consistency so I read the shipping instructions, yes they still ship to Europe. Your gear would come via UPS. The cost seemed reasonable and I wasn’t that suspicious when the prices were in US dollars – how they do this is their business.

I selected seven items and went to the check out only to find that it would only allow US and Canadian billing addresses.

I was a little disappointed (yep, that’s an understatement):

• If you don’t want business from customers in Europe, be up front about it instead of dicking us about. Put up a splash screen explaining this on the European domains you own
• If this is a temporary thing, before you let us all back into the International Stüssy Tribe again, tell us, better still do a blog and keep us updated with developments. There’s a really good style-and-design orientated blog here if you want tips on how to write one
• If you are going to spend a fortune on a web site get the user experience as well as the fancy Flash interface right

Tenderloin is a Japanese label who make beautiful quality streetwear and accessories. These items aren’t cheap but they are made by the best people in their respective businesses.Take Tenderloin’s ’Specs’ glasses are a classic plastic frame shape that hark back to Michael Caine’s Harry Palmer character in The Ipcress File. The frames are made the craftspeople at Hakusan Glasses in Japan made famous by Beatle legend John Lennon. These can be bought online at Bond International.

This post follows on from earlier retail observations a few days ago on HKG life:

• Copywriting – is so different to the UK. Even though it comes across as a little odd, Hong Kong copywriting like the the MTR advert above always puts a smile on my face. For that alone, I think that we can learn from them. (Click on the image if you would like to see it in a larger size)
• Bespoke versus tailored – Westerners who come out to Hong Kong are a sucker for the tailored suits, however locals love swish off the peg garments and Italian designers are particularly favoured. Ermenegildo Zegna is a particular favourite. They also like Bally shoes and for casualwear men over a certain age favour US-style golf attire like Ashworth Golf Company and Ralph Lauren
• Something for free – I lost my sunglasses and struggled to find another set of Oakleys, I also picked up a sweatshirt because the flight out was a bit chilly. As I was paying my bill at the counter, I was asked was I a Hong Kong resident and then ten per cent came off the bill and was then told that I get a free gift. The gift in this case was a Mickey Mouse Club travel towel. What is most interesting about this was that a) I got a free gift and b) They didn’t actively promote the hell out of it before you got to point-of-purchase, which I guess was a way to ‘delight’ shoppers and blow post-purchase dissonance out of the water. On further enquiry I found that most shops were giving gifts themed around the forthcoming year of the rat celebrations

Hong Kong isn’t known for its online and web start-up community, so I thought I would link to the details of a site that I got sent by email the other day. Sketchplanet is a very primitive way of sharing doodles (done in an etch-a-sketch style) with other people on the net. Maybe enough to provide a bit of amusement on a three-hour conference call when you are noodling on a sudoko problem.

Wandering around the Time Square complex in Causeway Bay yesterday gave me some food for thought:

• Personal wellness here is big business – there is a couple of shops dedicated to mechanical massage machines. Some were like white leather lazy boy chairs, others looked like a foot bath. Add to that at least six shops that sold just a handful of skincare products including drinks (crossing the line into what would be considered OTC drugs in the UK), creams and other treatments
• Electronics – HKG likes its TVs big, bigger than the UK. In mobile phones there was much more of a focus on feature phones rather than smart phones and the de-rigeur fashion accessory for the busy business executive is a leather mobile phone holster – nice…. Nokia has a huge presence as does Samsung under the Anycall brand
• Brands – Causeway Bay is primarily providing shopping for the Asian locals rather than ex-pats so western sizes aren’t catered for. I couldn’t get a set of UK size 10 (US size 10 1/2, JP size 285) trainers in the four shops that I tried, let alone in the fly colourways that were available on the market here. If you are out here, its worthwhile checking out D-Mop in the Time Square centre for streetwear
• Marketing – Some weirdness to the advertising here. HMV seems to only advertise in English and many other local brands only advertise in Chinese. It is the exception rather than the norm for dual copy ads. Chinese adverts use a lot of western models in the photography. Where there is an Asian model in beauty product pictures, her face is so made up that it looks very flat. I got lunch at a juice bar and all the packaging and signage was in English. Chinese speaking customers though welcome would not know that the clear plastic cup was made of corn starch and ‘good’ for the environment along with the rest of the packaging
• Electronic payment – many of the main retailers including HMV and the cinema chains sell credit card-style gift vouchers on behalf of each other. I bought cinema tickets to go and see Blueberry Nights and there was a rack of cards from different retailers for sale. In addition, Octopus (the HKG version of Oyster) can be used as payment at the popcorn stand in the cinema
• PR – PR is very different in HKG. Swarovski were launching a collection of crystal panda ornaments and had a bamboo-themed display in the lobby of the shopping centre. They did a launch which was five minutes of a blonde model holding the pandas, a speech by a Chinese gentleman and an over-excited Chinese lady. This merited six TV crews and a mass of reporters (I have an aerial shot of the press event here)

The picture on this posting is of the different Beijing Olympic mascots, there is a hoarding in the airport that shows the panda demonstrating shooting (an olympic sport) that I want to get hold of because he looks gangster

More in Japanese here.