My loveliest memory of December was the flight back to England (first shot above). We left in early morning darkness and climbed above the clouds into daylight - an interzone of cerise stillness between here and there, everywhere and nowhere.

The title of this post is pilfered - it’s the name of the opening track of the Pure X album ‘Pleasure’. But it seemed apt for this selection of shots from my first roll of black and white film. There’s not enough light in any of them but I’ve deliberately avoided doing any post-processing - I like the opacity. I think part of what I love about film is, even when you nail an exposure, there can still feel like a lack of definition. The information of film is just different to digital. It leaves room for mystery.

There’s more on Flickr if you’re interested.

Tres Bien Shop is one of the world’s foremost independent menswear shops. Their brand list is one of the most select in the industry, from cult Japanese labels like Beams, Post O’Alls and Neighborhood to some of the leading lights of the American workwear revival, including Engineered Garments, Woolrich and Gitman.

The guys do a great job with social media. They’ve got good followings on both Twitter and Facebook and use both channels to keep their customers in the loop about when new collections arrive, occasional promotions, and to push out new blog content. For a while, they’ve also been running a video series called In Motion on their Vimeo channel. The idea is to showcase handpicked outfits in a more dynamic way - to give people a chance to see what certain garments look like ‘in motion’ - a smart, simple idea for a company that does most of its business online.

The videos themselves do a solid job in showing off the clothes but Chris and I felt that we could help them lift the aesthetic to a higher level. We sent them our CPH Meal videos and they agreed. The one-minute film below is the result. We wanted to inject a little narrative intrigue while still keeping the clothes central. Hope you like it.

(Incidentally, this is our first ‘official’ project as First XI. More details on that soon.)

Danish winters are often to be endured rather then enjoyed but I’ve been having a good one so far. Sofie’s getting bigger by the day - we’re expecting a girl at the end of February and we can’t wait. We went down to Langeland for a long weekend and were lucky with some gorgeous autumn sun. Otherwise work took me to Nuremberg and Karlskrona, I had a lovely lunch at Radio and I hung out with my friends.

iPhone snaps finished in ShakeItphoto from last month’s trip to the West coast.

After landing in San Francisco, we drove north on Highway 1 to Gualala for a friend’s wedding. We spent a couple of days there (we stayed in one of the houses at St Orres) and then drove inland to Anderson Valley and a two-day stay at The Madrones, just outside Philo. This was a lovely interlude. We explored the Hendy Woods State Park, sadly slated for closure next year, and the nearby Apple Farm, which was one of the most quietly beautiful places I’ve visited. If you’re ever in the area, stay there. Both nights we ate at Table 128 at the Boonville Hotel. This was a real treat - charming, unassuming service, excellent local wines and deliciously fresh and mostly locally grown food.

We headed back to San Francisco where we holed up in an old B&B in the Mission district. Highlights for me were visiting Unionmade in Castro and eating a stupendously good meal at Bar Tartine. Unionmade must represent a new pinnacle in retail - great brand mix, loving attention to detail and unobtrusive, friendly staff. I also got to hang out with my old friend Russell Quinn, now digital director of McSweeney’s. Russell took us to Mission Street Food and we also spent a nice afternoon drinking Guinness with Lucky Peach editor Chris Ying - good inspiration for CPH Meal.

And that was that.

Nike’s collaborations with underground designers have always left me cold. My cynical brain just perceived a monolithic global corporation that saw a way to ingratiate itself among subcultural movers and shakers and remained aloof. Unfortunately for my wallet, however, the moral high ground was never mine to occupy. It turns out I was never impervious to Nike’s branding efforts - they just hadn’t found my sweet spot.

The company’s collaboration with Jun Takahashi’s Undercover Lab passed me by for the first few seasons but earlier this month I read about the latest Gyakusou line on Inventory and immediately felt a pang of desire for one of the pictured items (the short-sleeve tee in a lovely subdued orange).

Some rapid linkhopping led me to the exquisite ‘Running Monks’ video above. This was the clincher. I fell hook, line and sinker for the execution - three impassive Japanese dudes about my age running through forests and temples to a glacially minimal ambient soundtrack.

The video is a beautiful way to present the products and, when coupled with the launch strategy, you can see how the line ticks a lot of boxes for style-conscious runners who want to separate themselves from the flock:

• Strictly limited edition
• Obscure Japanese credentials
• Not mass marketed (quietly spread on A-list men’s style blogs)
• Only available at select retailers

It’s insidious this. Nike are saying that it doesn’t matter how outside the status quo you consider yourself, they can identify that space, colonise it and get your money. As we speak, they are ‘doing the metrics’ on how to get more ’share of wallet’ from a group of Belgian nudists whose only form of transport  is pogo sticks.

I shot a roll of colour film on a lovely trip to the West coast last month. My dad gave me an old Canon FTb earlier this year and this was the first time using it.

For me, the texture of film is ineffably more lovely than digital but I was surprised by how much more pleasure I got from shooting with this camera. Knowing that you have so few exposures gives you pause, slows you down, makes you more decisive. My favourite moment was staring out at the sea in a quiet cove just outside Gualala waiting for the breakers to foam. The result is the first picture above.

Not all the shots were successful but those that were can be found here.

I’ve been thinking lately about how little I know. The flowers on my balcony wither without me even knowing their names. Convenience disconnects people from knowledge, we are immersed mostly in ourselves.

In this remarkable sequence from episode 11 of his groundbreaking series Cosmos (first broadcast in 1980), Carl Sagan all but predicts the rise of the Internet:

I was 12 in 1990 and largely ignorant of the world. I grew up in the frothy, knotty decade that followed. There came a geopolitical awakening of sorts when I fell for an Anglo-Jewish girl on holiday in Tenerife in 1991. Later I remember writing her awkward letters expressing my sympathies as Saddam Hussein set about bombing Israel.

My sexual awakening came a year or two later – lying prone on my bed as a girl considerably older than me gently kissed my neck. I learned much later that she died in a motorcycle accident. My family and I were living in New Zealand then. We returned to England in 1993, our circumstances a little straitened. My first mixed school. Deep crushes. Longing. I began writing poems. The experiences of moving away and then home again in the space of 15 months had solidified a melancholic sensibility. Then I met a girl who I would be with for the next five years.

I dearly wanted this to be just a preamble to a visual stream that reflected some of the less determinate images that flit through my ramshackle memories of that time but I’m not that good at the internet. The shot above is an X-Files screen-dump - the baleful Pacific Northwestern treescapes are my abiding memory of the series. I spent a lot of time in my attic room watching TV, often staying up late to watch shows like Northern Exposure. My life has often been little more than a reverie.