Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Halloween Fully Zipped

It's no secret that I'm involved in Eminem's clothing label, Shady Ltd., as his manager. Recently, Shady Ltd. partnered up with the folks at Rocawear for a new manufacturing and distribution deal. The new partnership debuted officially at the February 2007 MAGIC clothing convention in Las Vegas. Our signature piece displayed prominently in front of the booth at this show was our full-zip hockey mask and chainsaw hoodie, pictured here.
Because of manufacturing delays overseas, the details of which I don't fully understand, it took a long time to bring this item to market. In fact, it just got to stores over this past weekend, just in time for Halloween. A certain clothing company decided that they liked the idea so much, that they copied it.

It's hard to make out here, but there are two chainsaws crossed on the front. You can read more about this, and see a detailed video on the subject, here. I will acknowledge that this company had a lot of success and did a fairly original piece with their full-zip skeleton hoodie (althought I think the first full-zip hoodies were put out by BAPE). So much so that I'm sure it inspired Shady Ltd.'s designers when they made our peice. However, thats where the inspiration ends. The hockey mask and chainsaw combo has been used by Eminem since the first Anger Management tour on stage in 2000, shown below.
Sure, the hockey mask is inspired by Jason of Friday the 13th fame, but he didn't really mess with chainsaws. The chainsaw comes from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre film. Em put the two together, and created his own icon, as shown again by this toy that was released in 2002 by Art Asylum.
The combination of Eminem, the chainsaw, and a hockey mask makes for a visual representation of a character that you all may know as Slim Shady...
Now, we've heard that the designers from the other clothing company claim that the Shady designers actually copied the idea from them, and somehow saw their design prior to our debut of our hockey mask hoodie in February. Really? The Shady Ltd. designers had to copy the idea of putting Eminem, a hockey mask, and a chainsaw together from somebody else? Come on, guys.
Here is me in my Halloween costume from this past Saturday.
I did my own little twist and added a baseball bat axe. After all, imitation is said to be the sincerest form of flattery. So, thank you.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

When shadyltd website will open?
We want buy lots of clothings on it!