Archive for the ‘PAMFLET PRESS’ Category
Que es Pamflet en Espanol?
Last month we were e-interviewed by Sofía Ruiz de Velasco (muchas gracias) for the fashion blog on the El Pais website and the write-up – ‘moda, arte y feminismo’ -went online this week. If you can read Spanish, then check it out here and if you can’t, well have a look anyway! I still like to think I’m vaguely familiar with Spanish (a now rather ancient A-Level, topped up with near-yearly holidays where much food and drink vocabulary is utilised) but it’s not good enough to translate a journalistic piece. Needlesstosay from a scan through plus readings from key experts (better qualified Spanish-speaking friends) it’s about us and Pamflet and it’s nice!
***we can’t currently put accents etc in our blog titles – lo siento – we know they should be there (above).
friday bits and blogs
Blogs>>> The week started with an evening at the January edition of the Oh My Blog workshop on Mastering Social Media hosted by Bitchbuzz.com‘s editor Cate Sevilla and guest mentor the Twitter/FB expert Mauricio Samayoa at the TechHub near Old Street roundabout. Cate and Mauricio each did slick, friendly presentations and there was an informal, supportive atmosphere (mmm wine) amongst the 20 or so bloggers in attendance meaning that everyone was happy to share their questions and knowledge with each other. I was scribbling away throughout, but the one thing that Mauricio mentioned that I remembered without looking at my pad was TweetStats, a tool which analyses your activity on the site. It’s a good way of checking how useful/effective your tweets are by collating data on your top @s and RTs. Made for some slightly terrifying stats when I checked ours but nothing unexpected!
After the workshop wrapped, we headed to the pub across the road for some proper chats and old fashioned social-networking (facetoface!). I’ll definitely be at the next Oh My Blog and have major respect for Cate – both for launching the fabulous Bitchbuzz and for sharing her expertise and connecting internet peeps through OMB.
Bits>>> Last year Phoebe and I were interviewed by Jade Warne, a features writer for Australian fashion magazine Shop Til You Drop about style zines and the piece has just appeared in the new issue of the mag. It’s always flattering to be included in zine features even after all these years, so thank you to Jade for contacting us. I’ll post the scans shortly, but in the meantime you can read them at Girl With a Satchel.
Phoebe on girls-dressed-as-boys in TWIN 3
We’ve been fans of TWIN for ages and so I’m thrilled to have a story in the third issue of this biannual ‘art, fashion and feminism book’. Features Director Aimee Farrell has been a staunch supporter of Pamflet for years – in her Vogue guise she got our humble pink publication onto the pages of that illustrious fashion bible.
When I told her about my fascination with les garconnes – the Parisian women in the ’20s who dressed in masculine clothing to subvert social norms (and inadvertantly kickstarted one of the most enduring looks ever – the androgynous style beloved of everyone from Marlene to Madonna, Gaga to Katharine Hepburn), she asked me to write about it for TWIN.
I was more than happy to oblige and began researching the subject further, with the photo by Jaques Henri Lartigues (top) as my starting point. There’s surprisingly little out there about these fascinating women who ran the spectrum from Parisian socialites to suburban secretaries, but while playing detective I interviewed all sorts of cool people – Garance Dore for her take on the modern garconnes in Paris, the London College of Fashion’s Agnes Rocamora and academic Vike Plock to make sure I had the literary side of things covered.
But I’m not going to reveal too much – visit the TWIN blog for daily cool stuff and to find out how to purchase issue 3 featuring moi! //phoebe www.twinfactory.co.uk
ABSOLUTELY NO REGRETS.
above: pamflet details in the acknowledgements in fanzines

above: pamflet 1 alongside journalist leonie cooper’s 2005 mag revolution (which i contributed to) and other noughties feminist zines. this might be the only time i’ve wished that we had a cover. why don’t we have a cover?
we are honoured that pamflet issue 1 is featured in the LCC’s Teal Triggs’ new book on the history of fanzines. i don’t think that either of us could have ever imagined while scribbling away the pieces that would make it into pamf1 on post-it notes at deadend temp jobs that we would ever be a part – however small – of zine history. COOL.
i couldn’t wait to pick up my copy of fanzines at a D&AD event in Soho last night where Teal had invited Cathy from Arty mag, Alex from Fever Zine, Laura from Savage Messiah and Neil Boorman of Sleazenation and Shoreditch Tw£t to each do a presentation on their publications. I was particularly intrigued by neil’s place on the bill, having collected issues of his hipsterSCN rags [twa>t and sleaze] during their fin de siècle, hate-filled heydays and read his anti-capitalist-breakdown-plimsoll-memoir the bonfire of the brands.
i was glad that i got a comfy seat on the floor as the zinesters crammed through the door on berwick street because neil’s presentation was completely unexpectedly bloody hilarious. he remembered the tw?t [which ran out of 333 on old street as a glorified listings leaflet for the club] as an ‘outpouring of self-hatred’ on the part of its various illustrious contributors who ‘questioned what was cool’ and admitted as his presentation drew to a close that he was glad that they finally ended it around the time of the notorious guardian weekend pastiche issue because: ‘SHOREDITCH TWAT DESERVED TO DIE’. although he claims to be a recovering hipster, neil continues to have excellent hair, shoes and (unbranded) clothes.
hmm anyway, so was shoreditch tw!t, with its blatent ads and barely disguised uber-marketing agenda even a zine? i wondered as i perched on a cushion and flicked through fanzines. in the book – and last night too – teal’s remit as an expert and collector is broad and she’s collated hundreds and hundreds of publications which document subjects as diverse as periods, football, philosophy, pets and american sorority culture to tell the zinestory.
what links all of these pamphlets, manifestos, magazines, leaflets and fanzines, is that they each existed outside the mainstream, speaking for individuals, friends and communities with shared-interests rather than companies and advertisers.
they didn’t need a brief, a house-style or rules.
so fanzines/independently published mags/printed out from yr work PC and photocopied in yr at the weekend then stapled together/punkpublishing/whatever – fanzines made me hope that print is NOT dead yet.