INTERVIEW WITH PROPER MAGAZINE

Proper Magazine interview with The Casual Connoisseur: 

"When we decided to up our interview game there was a natural place to start. We’ve known the lads behind The Casual Connoisseur for over a decade now. From daft days out watching a declining football club to late night emails comparing goretex scores on US eBay, we’ve a lot in common. That said, we’ve not seen each other enough lately, so to put that to bed and bag the first in our Talking Threads series, we led them to a Manchester rooftop and took pictures of them, before sitting down with a brew, all civilised." 

Click here for the interview.

ACE NEW PRODUCT ARRIVING ONLINE FROM MARCH

Now then, just a quick update that from March onwards there will be new products arriving online from the little niceties of mugs, keyrings and new pin badges, to lots of new tees and premium tweed headwear as well as a very limited, very special edition jacket with 6876 and Our Culture as part of 6876's Black Project, this is some serious outerwear; Ventile outer with taped seams, made with the Ministry of Defence in England. There'll be a lot more on that one soon, so stay tuned.

Please note whilst the shop remains open as normal, for the next twenty days there may be slight delays with sending orders as our local distribution centre (Post Office) is closed for a refurbishment. "Use another?" We will/are, but no where else is willing to do the system we have implemented and is vital our regular one does - hence time delays and a difficult decision had to be made of no new releases during this short period. Please also note any orders purchased from Thursday 27th Feb will be subject to a little delay with normal service resuming on Wednesday 5th March, (4 working days in total) we hope you can understand this brief disruption, they'll be plenty coming online in a week or so.TC 

TRAINSPOTTING - LOGO LOVE.

One of the greatest, coolest logos in British design history has to be the 'double arrows' British Rail logo, for me, anyway. Now pretty much defunct due to all the changes and privatisation over the years, however, the logo is still in use at most stations and visible on most tickets and signs throughout England, simply for that very very reason, it's unmistakable, it's classic, it's iconic. 
Designed in 1965 by 21 year old Gerry Barney, along with it's own accompanying Alphabet, designed by Jock Kinneir still in use today and adopted worldwide. The logo is so simple and timeless and as a corporate identity it's unforgettable. Seen on anything from the side of trains, the conductors and drivers great old uniforms, to it's own condiments, cutlery and even carpets, which we'll soon come to.
During the late 1970's to the 80's, the logo really came into it's own, with the train the choice of travel for football fans, with the now defunct, but infamous ramshackle Football Specials. The trains, which carried thousands of unsavory fans across the country during the days of yore for the football bovver boy. Coinciding with the boom of the casual era and those who wanted to go undetected, taking the better, posher trains like the Intercity 125, First Class of course, Bex Bissell style. The 80's saw a real peak for British Rail, old posters and television adverts featuring their tagline 'This is the Age of the Train'. Those adverts featuring the now 'orrible c*nt Jimmy Savile promoting the service in his Mountain Equipment Fitzroy coat. Once an iconic piece of footage - in an unlikely style icon kind of way. Now, the less said about it the better, especially as I've got that same coat! Persil also did those special deals with their product which allowed you to collect tokens for rail travel, these were easily tampered with and were taken advantage of once again, by football fans on their away jaunts.


To look at it today, the trains are a bit bland and boring. Conductors had ace uniforms, topped off with their own hats, it wouldn't happen today. Even Rail workers out in the field had their own outfits, Orange parkas, boiler suits, their own yellow trucks and vans. There was even British Rail ships on the seas.  Uniformed throughout, from head to toe, pencil to paper. Everything touched by that 'barb wire' logo, a real identity.
Anyway, getting massively carried away here, people might think I'm dead into trains, this takes us to our next idea, it's another carpet inspired pattern, back when British Rail started it's corporate takeover, everything was covered in that cool logo, even carpets. Our nod to that superb logo comes in the form of new hats.

Would that make a good hat? Yes it would. Available very soon. DC
Reference : Creative Review, Test Pressing, Bring Back British Rail.

WEIR 6.2

Our Weir 6.2 are released this Thursday at 7pm (GMT). The last of the Weir designs and colours for this winter. Coming in three new colours as always and limited to 50 per colour, as always. TC

PRODUCT UPDATE.

Now then! From new tees, to a variety of little badges, keyrings and mugs, to new bonce warmers of both the cult and classic persuasion. New shirts and shorts made in Portugal, new footwear and exciting collaborations galore! 

There's that much going on here we felt the need to write it down and inform you of our goings on. And there is a lot. Big tings a 'gwan!

Hats!

The course of the next few weeks see's the release of several hats, the first of which is the last of this winters' Weir 6. Three more colours of fifty ski-hats, then off they pop for another year. Released Thursday 13th FEB 7pm (GMT). A day earlier than usual so not to affect any lovebirds. 

We've also got our splendid range of classic hats, the Noodles, the Sherlock and the Villain too, each release will be going online within a few days of each other very soon and we'll give a heads up when that is. Likely week commencing 17th Feb. These come in several sizes and are proper Obie Trice the lot of them, checking your size is easy - just measure the circumference of your noggin' above the eyebrows. 
The Sherlock is also complimented by a scarf release of the same Cashmere/Wool mix and check pattern. It's all proper premium schmutter this. Delightful!

At this point we'll drop a hint on another special edition hat that's going online this winter, a closely guarded secret which shall be revealed in more detail soon. Let's just say there's two colours of fifty and it'll make trainspotters gush and the haters blush!

T-shirts!

There's lot's of tees due online and ready to go in for order at present. It's going to be a busy Spring/Summer for sure. We've got our Brand With 2C's tee and our special collabo with our matryoshka Danja almost ready to go online, (we're just waiting on some white tees), those two have been and almost gone through respective stockists already (so apologies for the delay). 
Not to mention a refresh of two of our favourites from last year Chicks in Kicks III by Saul and Working Men's Club.  

(Breaking Good were added last week too). We've got two more authentic Russian designed tees from our Russian friends Outskirts going into production for a Spring release, not to mention about a dozen more already designed and ready to go including a nod to our favourite film this year The Wolf Of Wall Street, a couple of cheeky riffs, several new tees from new people and another from Russia and more, busy, busy, busy! 

Collabos!

One thing we're working hard on here at CCHQ is the continued pushing of world domination, brand progression! We're working our socks off to try and develop and evolve the brand as we go and are doing alright thus far. Footwear and proper clothing is always nice and there'll be some more niceties for your plates, with Veras and Walsh. 

The Cheshire alliance continues with a couple more bits alongside Curva Nord.

There's more shirt options with Tuktuk and of course one we've been working on for a while a collaboration with Portugal based Newfangle on the long awaited Union II chambray shirt and AND some belting shorts for summer, more of which you can read about on a new post soon with a bigger preview and pics.

We're also in the development stages of producing and releasing a range of clothing together in a limited edition return with the Drooghi mafia Rather Not Say. Then there's outerwear, we love jackets, we've got some nice options we're planning and working on, not to mention a super limited release of one of our favourite jackets, the Capandula with 6876 as part of the Black Project. More info soon, but this is something we're delighted to be involved in and a top of the end, top end coat!

Extras!
As always, we like to offer little extras, quirky stuff.
We've got a bunch of pins to come out and more in production, we've got mugs, beermats and more too. We love stickers and we've had some nice ones in recently. They go out with orders, well whilst they last!

Please note: orders purchased in the afternoon from Tuesday 4th Feb will be subject to several days delay due to work commitments, apologies for any inconvenience but this is unavoidable! 
Keep on keeping on. TC/DC

ONEUPMANSHIP JOURNAL & TUMBLR

As I'm sure some of you will know the Oneupmanship Journal is/was run by one half of us and is currently dormant, this isn't because we're too busy (we are) but because it won't let him gain access to make new posts!!
That's right, around August last year Blogger and Google did some form of merger and since then it's seemingly conflicted itself not allowing any access. Blogger have been really helpful....NOT! 
So for the last few months he's been unable to add his independent mutterings. This remains something he's trying to rectify, but at present there appears to be no answer - aside from starting again, which he'd rather not have to do. If anyone does have a scooby on how to remedy it, or actually knows someone at Google or something, then please let us know.

In the meantime over the festive period we added a new tumblr account to the website, full of product shots, a little T&A and other random stuff that makes us tick, so do check it out. TC

HAPPY NEW WEIR...

Now then, as per the last few winters, a new year means a new 'Weir' release.
Date and time confirmed. Friday 17th January, 7pm (UK time). 
Three brand new colourways in limited produced numbers, never to be repeated that usually go very quickly. You know the score by now. fast fingers and all that, so no moaning. Remember people have 5 minutes to check out if they don't complete the transaction they can go back into stock so if you've missed out stay off twitter and facebook and keep trying would be our advice.
Orange/Navy/White, Indigo/Red/Denim and what we'll call the 'ghost' edition.  
All available exclusively online only.  TC