When browsing the rails of the Brewer Street Palace store in spring 2017, the skateboard label’s devoted disciples happened upon a single racked T-shirt. Sitting alongside the familiarly failsafe edit of baseball caps, cagoules, penny loafers, track-wear, signet rings, button downs, slacks and boards, it didn’t stay in the shop long. The T-shirt bore an image of Elton John in all his plumage: big hair, big jewels and diamante jacket, hammering away at his piano. With deft photoshop trickery, the two lenses of Elton’s fabulous sunspecs had their arms extended, morphing into two of the brand’s signature Ps, as if having a conversation with one another. The item became an instantly covetable Palace classic: cheeky, British, funny, lavish and street. It brushed some of the outer edges of good taste Palace occasionally likes to tickle, to test the brand’s originality, demography and audacity. The raw appeal of Palace lies somewhere between its rock-solid eye for clothes men want to wear and the idiosyncratic playfulness it can bring to them. As with everything in the Palace lexicon, the Elton T-shirt came from a place of sincerity. A British skateboard label with global weight was never meant to happen. You only get there by teetering toward the edges of acceptability and enjoying yourself along the way. Read more at i-D.
