'I COULD WEAR THAT...'

Bernard Hill admires his younger self on the Yosser tee, great! Thanks to Eddie for the pic. YHN

OUT & ABOUT : A SEVERN VALLEY DAY TRIP.

What could be nicer than cutting through the Severn Valley on an old school working steam train? doing it with beer! All that history, scenery and nostalgia. Thanks to our pal Warren for the pics.

NEW TEES....

Today we have a reissue of Northern Soul, on Red and on Navy tees. Available from 7pm.
We also have a restock of the popular Life Through a Tinted Lens, the Clockwork Orange proved too popular on release selling out quickly, so we've topped it right up real horrorshow Ultraviolence and a few more Stone Roses tees added back up due to popular demand, not long now until their second coming eh?
There's even more on the way after these too. Well, it's the right weather for it! CD

PROUDHEART & CASUAL CLOTHING, MOSCOW.

Some more blog love for another stockist, Proudheart. We supply two stores in Moscow, Russia, along with Casual Clothing a city where you'll find some very clued up and trendy people and one steeped in real history, it's a pleasure to supply our product to a cool looking store and sat alongside some great brands from all over the globe. Big up to our cohorts Evgeny,Alexsander and Yuri. Keep on keeping on comrades.
Check 'em out on Facebook too : Proudheart Casual Clothing. CD

CREATIVE #2

We're back ready for round two!
Last year we did our first 'connoisseur creative challenge'.
The premise - design a new connoisseur t-shirt. The brief was a Serpico themed tee.
We had a great deal of entries and in the end Minty's fantastic painting won it.
So onto number two...
This years competition is to design a tee based around The Beastie Boys theme.
What you choose to do can be anything you like, a take on artwork, logos or based around lyrics. It doesn't matter how obvious or loose the connection is as long as it ties in and it's new and original artwork from yourself. As last time; anyone can enter :- young or old, amateur or professional. Send you entries in an email to info@casualco.com
We'll add the entries together and give people around six weeks to get theirs in.
Closing date Friday 29th June.
Winner will be announced some time after. The winner receives the illustrious accolade of havign an officila connoisseur released tee, the winning t-shirt and a connoisseur goody bag!
We've been asked in the past for a tee paying tribute to the hardcore punk-cum-hip-hoppers, however with the recent sad news of Adam (MCA) Yauch passing on this became another topic of discussion. Rather than us appear to jump on some sort of bandwagon, this gives us a great opportunity to let passionate and hardcore fans have a bash at something unique and creative. So let's have them entries in. Once the tee is on general release a donation from sales will go to a chosen relevant charity. YHN

SPRING BREAKERS.

This looks pretty interesting. In fact it looks great!
Spring Breakers from Director Harmony Korine of Gummo and Kids (1995) fame, brings some fresh faced well to do family favourites like Selena Gomez and Vanessa Hudgens going right against type as some bad girls. Spring Breakers follows four college girls who rob a restaurant in order to fund their spring break trip, only to land in jail upon their arrival. When a drug and arms dealer (James Franco) bails them out in return for a few favors, things ... get a little freaky.
If mad, oddball films like the genius Gummo (1997) and the more recent Trash Humpers are up your street then this should defo be worth a watch. Currently showing at Cannes, so hopefully showing soon. YHN

CLOSER 中央区東心斎橋.

A new stockist for us and someone we've built a good friendship up with over the last year is Closer, based in Osaka Japan. Obsessed with British culture, music, punk and especially football and all the labels casual spawned, these guys are taking this thing of ours to their own level in the Far East. Check them out on Facebook, and keep an eye on their site Closer. CD

AN ANNOUNCEMENT : POSTAL COSTS.

Bit of a bland post here, but a necessary and important one at that...CHANGES TO PRICING & NEW CHECKOUT SYSTEM :-
Since we set off on the good ship connoisseur we always offered FREE worldwide shipping. Even though it meant we found ourselves losing out - especially for those "rest of World" parcels! 'Doh'. We appreciate we have a loyal fan base from each corner of the world and all in between and have always tried to offer the best value we can even though sometimes it's compromised our own budget.
HOWEVER... at the end of April Royal Mail's pricing structure increased by significant amounts and not only that the weight structure also means it's a double whammy of knockout blows as far as we're concerned!
For instance it's now the same price to send a parcel that weighs 2 grams as it is to send one for 750 grams - if that is then going recorded it's £3.65 per item! Overseas is even more with the average for our product ranging between £3.16-£6.62 for Europe and £4.42-£11.64 for everywhere else. You don't need to be a mathematician to work out that it's clearly not viable to send stuff out at our own costs any longer.
SO we've been having a restructure and the next stage in the near future is to introduce a more advanced checkout system. Feedback in the past was that although nice and easy to make a purchase if people wanted to buy more than one item they had to checkout multiple times. This new checkout will allow you to 'add to cart' and check out just once with how ever many items you are wanting to purchase and also calculate postage too. For those customers who want to know where their items are you can even have the option of international signed for/trackable mail too....as long as you pay extra for it, that is. We are working on introducing this over the coming months, once tested and if its running smoothly.In the meantime a small increase on the 'delivered' price will be implemented to cover the substantial increase set by Royal Mail.
Finally, perhaps most importantly we will not be charging you the exact postage prices! We appreciate it's a fair jump so we'll be sharing the costs somewhere in between, meaning we'll still be offering a worldwide postage that is far cheaper than most offer. Please bear with us during the changeover in case of any blasted darn buglets getting in the way. Thanks for your continued support. YHN

CITRUS SUN HAT.

The eagerly awaited and cool as fuckery Citrus Sun hat is available to buy from tomorrow (FRI 11th) at 7pm (GMT). As always this is deliberately limited too 100 pieces to retain exclusivity and keep it cooler than Captain Oates' cucumber. Probably the only hat you'll need all summer. CD

OUT & ABOUT : NATIONAL ARMY MUSEUM.

The Capital City has a host of museums, galleries and places to visit, some are more famous than others, and any fans of military history will be more than aware of the excellent Imperial War Museum.
People might be less aware of The National Army Museum tucked away amongst the four wheel drives and luxury flats in Chelsea. The other residents along the Royal Hospital Road are the Chelsea Pensioners, not a bad place to spend a well deserved retirement.

Not only is the museum free entry, the cloakroom is free which is handy with the April showers drenching me on my short walk from Sloane Square. The museum is on five floors and superbly laid out, you start at the bottom and walk your way through the entire history of the British Army. Like myself the camera was still drying out, so no photos of the beginning that focused the how the army evolved from the Civil War, right through to the conflicts with France in the 19th century.
So the Boer War was the first stop…


Those Zulus get everywhere.

As a Somerset lad, it was nice to see this memorial.

The older lads know this I’m sure.
Obviously World War 1 was a defining moment in the army’s history and like everywhere else in the museum the variety and number of artefact's big or small on display were plentiful and really interesting.



Like in history the World War 2 soon followed, and it would be remiss of my not to have a couple of shots of the clobber worn during the conflict…

No desert boots.

Nigel Cabourn next collection.

Smock glorious smock.
My visit coincided with the last day of the Commando comic’s exhibition. As a kid I spent hours pouring through my Dad’s cardboard box of his copies, so it was a real joy to have a look at the temporary display. It would be more than a perfect addition as a permanent exhibit, a shame that subsequent visitors will miss out.





Whilst it was no surprise given the quality of the museum from the start – the post war history of the Army was particularly impressive. The conflicts in Ireland, The Falklands, Iraq as well as the numerous peacekeeping missions are covered extremely well and just as vital impartially.

Leaflets and posters from both sides of the Irish conflict.

Diamonds the root of the peace keeping missions in Africa.
Post War 3 The man at the heart of two big conflicts.

A bomb disposal machine.

Post War 5 Afghanistan isn’t a new problem.


Another temporary exhibition is the one on War Horse which those familiar with the amazing West End play and the film will enjoy.
I spent over 3 hours at the Museum and that was my taking a more general look around the place rather than looking at every single thing – if you did you could easily spend all day there. It’s definitely a place to go back to again and again and spend an hour on a particular part of the huge museum. For those with little uns’ it’s well worth a visit, an excellent Kids Zone on the lower ground floor and with plenty of things for the kids to get their hands on and mess around with, and even the adults can even get involved.

Words and pictures by Seb W.