Shopping #5: These Boots Are Made For Biking!

Wow! It looks like we’re almost going from one shopping post to another – from delayed Christmas straight to my birthday! Winter is the gift season for me, and I can’t really complain about it… :P

This time, it was all about shoes, and not just ordinary shoes….

I’ve already shared my love for biker/cowboy boots before, so this won’t really come as a surprise to you. However, I’m still proud to announce that my collection now has two new wonderful pieces ^^

They are all from Spanish brand New Rock. For what I’ve seen in their website, this brand specializes in making gothic/biker shoes and clothing. They all come in beautiful black boxes with silver lids, and their slogan says: “Above all be original” – which is certainly a sentence I could use as a subtitle for this blog! (LOL)

The first pair is almost plain black and really sober: no fancy details, no studs, no clasps… they’re just boots! Serious biker boots for serious bikers (:P). They have something that makes me think of a Harley Davidson just by looking at them. I think it must be the colour combination on that label…

The other pair is beige and it’s my most cowboy-looking pair of boots to date! The tips are even bent upwards! (LOL) They have a couple of really badass buckles on both sides that I just adore. Plus, their unusual colour opens the door to a brand new world of outfit possibilities…

These are not biker boots, obviously, but a glamorous pair of trainers. I used to have a beautiful pair of deep red Nike trainers with golden details (I still have it, but they are completely worn out now) that I’ve been trying to replace for ages. They had a very special quality: they looked casual, but not too sporty, so you could wear them outside PE class and actually make them part of an outfit. I still don’t know if this pair will be the definitive substitute, but it’s as close as I’ve got yet, and they have a bit of a skater/gangsta (but still elegant) look I just love :D

With this and a little bit of light reading, I guess I’m ready for long nights on the road… ;)

Commando

Today I will be introducing my personal concept of casual wear. I hate boredom above all things, so I’m afraid this is the simplest my looks ever get these days. I can’t wear something if it doesn’t have a concept – not even at the supermarket!

I usually start my outfits from a single piece of clothing: I just put it on and see where it leads me. In this occasion I started off with the trainers.

These Converse-like shoes are always an invitation to teenage looks for me, so I usually end up wearing them with drainpipe jeans of any matching colour, just like the emo kids used to do a few years ago (I’m sure some of you still do it now – don’t lose it, Junge ;) ). Purple goes with purple, so purple jeans were the next logical step. I tried to add some white on the top (to match the white details on the trainers), but it didn’t work. I attempted a total purple look, but it bored me, so finally I decided to go for colour blocking. That’s a really unusual solution for me, but this time it seemed like the right thing to do.

I was quite surprised to see how good purple and khaki matched. I put on a khaki T-shirt with a vintage military-looking jacket and completed the look with a matching cap. However, that was just half of the work done.

The hardest part about creating this kind of teenage looks (any look that features tight jeans and Converse-like trainers is bound to be teenage by definition LOL) is not allowing them to end up looking too girly, and at this point that was my biggest concern. However, all my worries disappeared when I saw myself in the mirror.

When I looked at my reflection, the first thing that came to my mind was Commando (an awesome –and absurd– Arnold Schwarzenegger movie from the mid 80s) and the fictional country Val Verde.

(You might have guessed by this display of geeky knowledge that I’m somewhat of a fan of action movies LOL)

It was obvious that this look was asking for a military edge, and I had to figure out how to get it. Immediately, I thought of the outfit Bill Kaulitz wore for the press conference at the German Embassy in Tokio Hotel’s first visit to Japan: the camo jacket, the worn-out jeans, the fingerless gloves, the golden nails and *oh Lord* the bullet belt.

If THAT bullet belt isn’t iconic, I don’t know what is. I don’t have anything similar in my wardrobe (even though it’s in my shopping list from now on), but you know what my slogan says: “If you don’t have something you like, make your own version of it.” And that’s exactly what I did. I picked up my old XL leather belt (you might remember it from my previous post) and put it across my shoulder. Simple means, huge results :D

I added the leather collar and the chain to accentuate the guerrilla feel. Bennett (the guy with the thick moustache in the Commando trailer LOL) wears a chain on his neck too, and I found that really fancy. I specially liked the way this particular chain (I don’t need to remind you it’s really a dog collar LOL) looked in this outfit because the nameplate reminded me of soldiers’ dog tags. That idea led me to pick the cross pendant. That cross has always reminded me of the graves on Metallica’s Master Of Puppets cover.

There’s actually a name tag hanging from one of the crosses in the first row, so the Master connection was quite huge ;)

I used the bar code belt to add some structure to the bottom of the T-shirt. I have some kind of unhealthy obsession with that part of my outfits: I always HATE the way my T-shirts look down there and I get no sleep until I do something about it. When I looked at Bill’s pictures later, I noticed he also did the two belt thing in his own Commando look. However, that similarity wasn’t intentional LOL

The tank top was a last minute fix. I was facing an extremely cold morning and I desperately needed something that could warm me up a bit. A tank top is certainly not the warmest piece of clothing in the world, but it helped to protect my body from the icy air currents under my extremely loosely fit T-shirt, furthermore adding the perfect finish touch to my “The Ramones meet Schwarzenegger’s Commando” outfit :)

No need to wonder what would that sound like ;)

Tank top: Road Rage Motorcycles

T-shirt: MNG

Jeans: MNG

Trainers: North Star

Jacket: vintage (purchased at Humana)

Belt: vintage (Italy, 1991)

Bar code belt: unknown

Choker and chains: dog collars (purchased at Auchan)

Pendant: unknown (purchased at LSD)

Cap: CCC (stands for "Cheap Chinese Clothing" LOL)