Our friends at London’s Ragtop Vintage alert us to this trailer for upcoming short ‘The Ragtop Boys’. Watch as the gang take to the sea, dressed in some of the finest USA vintage this side of the Atlantic. Dave White, Ragtop’s founder, took a new approach to the lookbook, showcasing classic American casual and military wear on a bunch of stylish n’er do wells with the help of director John Turner. Look out for more from Ragtop later this week.

Joseph Abboud, HMX Group president and chief creative officer, has created a 7 piece Autumn/Winter capsule collection to celebrate 125 years of Hart Schaffner Marx. Made in America menswear, still manufacturing out of their Illinois factory, Joseph comments; “I think when…[the suits] are cut by hand, the touch, the feel of the fabric is so important. How you sew the shoulder, the softness of the chest… All of those go into a great quality product. And Hart Schaffner Marx, for 125 years, have been doing it the best way they know how.”

Close up and Private pay homage to Chubby Checker. If Sergei Sviatchenko wants to do the twist, who are we to stop him? If you’re watching this at work, go ahead, do a little foot shuffle under your desk.

A little bit of video action from the versatile Mr Slimane; “Commonwealth Projects is pleased to present this documentation of Hedi Slimane’s California Song. The self-commissioned video project was filmed over the course of the exhibition’s opening week. It includes footage of the opening night, No Age’s rehearsal for their performance, billboards featuring Hedi’s photographs across LA, and the artwork in the show.”

A preview video from tomorrow’s KENZO show. “Humberto Leon and Carol Lim are unveiling their first menswear collection for KENZO.”

Mister Freedom revisits Paris of the 1900s with this nice little video showcasing pieces from their current collection.  Comedic fisticuffs and suspicious lurking, the Apaches may cut ya as soon as look at ya but there’ll do it dressed in their finest. As ever, MF have really done their homework when it comes  to this collection, repros can be serious business but it’s nice to see a brand willing to keep things a bit light-hearted.

London 2012 have asked part time Baltimore badman and part time East End tortured detective Idris Stringer Luther Elba to talk a little about his home town of Hackney and the arrival of the Olympic games.

The film’s a bit slapdash which is kind of why we like it. Idris does his best to get you all excited about the Olympics, possibly because in typical London fashion, a lot of cynicism is flying about with this event and everyone’s scared of being trampled by white elephants or something to that effect. Click on and see if this sparks a bit of enthusiam.

An incredible Rube Goldberg inspired piece of machinery, Brooklyn based Joseph Herscher has created an incredibly complex and convoluted  page turning system. A ‘kinetic artist’, this is one of many wildly pointless but brilliant inventions from the part time app designer. “Machines that use complex chain reactions to complete mundane tasks. Some of Herscher’s effects here are subtle in their brilliance. He often creates small loops where his devices refer back to earlier steps, for instance the final state of step 25 is also used again as part of step 30.” Colossal has more.

As much as we enjoy those folk soundtracked, atmospheric, slow fade factory tours, sometimes it’s nice just to be shown around a place and hear ‘that’s where we keep the sewing machines, this is how we make our goods.’ This straightforward  tour, produced by Style Ledger and brought to us via OEN, takes us around tailor Martin Greenfield’s Brooklyn premises. Informative, simple, an interesting insight behind the scenes with some accompanying chatter from the man himself.

Edwin make great denim and great videos. If these are two things that interest you then please go ahead and press play. A look behind the scenes at their Japanese factory, these guys take the process of jean making very seriously. “The denim technicians at Edwin are true craftsmen, as their commitment and attention to the product is unquestionably what makes the Edwin product stand out from the mass of denim available within the market today. Whilst this remains ‘production’, the working philosophy remains closer to a greatly more efficient and productive Artisanal method.”