EPISODE II After a bit of a discourse into the madness of this whole 'industry' - our interview with James went a bit offtrack from our usual questioning... Earn will join back in a bit later on, too. Do you ever sit down with James Jebbia or Nigo, or any of those guys and think, 'fucking hell things are way out of control, and this scene is going crazy' ? JL: (Laughs) Yeah all the time! That's it for me, it's not the same anymore, and you know it's just different. Well the thing is - it was a very scenic based thing. There was a lot of unity, and great deal of camaraderie, but like everything it changes, and everyone moves on. The way things have gone are not necessarily the way I thought it would. I didn't think it would become the size it has. But I think the way things like APE have gone... it's weird when your identity has suddenly become a mass thing. [We talk about Nigo appearing in The Neptune's video, Red Camo, and A Bathing Ape's spiralling popularity along with it's quality production.] JL: I think it's at a difficult stage now because it either going to blow-up or it's going to... Blow over ? JL: I think there are difficult areas to street culture in the fact that you have your brands, which represent the older viewpoint. If you want to wear Neighborhood it tends to be slightly subtler, and more of our generation who got into it in the initial phase - an alternative to designer culture, but it still has that aesthetic. Whereas with things like BAPE it's gone much more for the youth market. What sort of customers have you been getting at Surrender ? JL: Mainly over there its kids man, but this is the problem, it's at a weird stage because it's incredibly materialistic. It's the whole thing of buying T-shirts and ebaying them. We've just done a trainer with Sabotage, and I just spoke to my brother, and they're £400 which is a lot of money I think for a pair of sneakers anyway - there's only 24 pairs. A pair has been seen on eBay for 3.5 K ... JL: £400 is a lot for me. And the only reason they're that amount of money is because they're handmade. We're not making profit out of it, because by the time you've given a couple of mates a pair then that's it. But I find it's incredibly materialistic. The next step is to do something over here, and have more control. What I've realised is that there is a demand and interest in what you're doing - I did it very much on a whim, and it was like 'Yeah cool let's do a store!'. Then you realise that because of the Internet - information travelling so quickly that suddenly it's like 'oh my god you've created another thing!'. But the potential for people who are interested would mean it would be good to do something over here, and be more in control of what you are doing. But you can't control your market, and for me at the end of the day what I realised is that I have become a brand. This is not about ego or anything like that - this is not about James Lavelle, it's not about what people perceive, this is not about me. People don't know who I am, but they're buying into this historical brand, and what I have difficulty dealing with is whether you take advantage of it or not, and how to do that. So most of the people who are into that are kids, and on one level that's great because there's an audience out there who is stimulated, and excited.