Twisted Brothers: My Lost Uncle MissingSince1979's newest collection is hot camp testosterone

27 Mar 2020

Fashion designers/art project My Lost Uncle - MissingSince1979 have a new collection Twisted Brothers Set No 1. Those of us who are devoted fans, or fanatical fashionistas, need to act fast as the previous collections - Hustler White, Paul Goes to Hollywood, POP and Hustler White Unidentifiable Collectible No 1 Shades - have consistently sold out, with only a few pieces still available for order on their website. However, in relation to the current pandemic, there is a big banner on My Lost Uncle - MissingSince1979's splash page warning in all caps that: "The World is Closed. New Orders Will Be Shipped After 20th April 2020. Stay Safe!"

My Lost Uncle has never played it safe and their unique blend of fashion and art has been covered in previous posts though their manifesto and biography is in constant evolution. As usual it is difficult to determine what is factual, what is tongue-in-cheek, and what is awkward translation from the Finnish. No matter. Who could resist clothing that is an "homage to pop culture and art, irony of serious manhood, gender blending and collaborations with the real life superstars such as drag queens, porn stars, visual artists, Scandinavian contemporary dancers, musicians, geeks and men found on the streets."

The Twisted Brothers collection print is based on male "avatars" which My Lost Uncle explains are "a manifestation of a deity or released soul in bodily form on earth." Or even less succinctly, "film star heroes of the past decades with the ruthless beauty consciousness of modern times. The looks are mass production, only the human metabolism remains the same." The deities depicted are "Cobra, Jack Ramsay from the film Runaway, Snake Plissken, Mad Max and John from the film Nine 1/2 Weeks." Sly Stallone, Tom Selleck, Kurt Russell, Mel Gibson and Mickey Rourke, all in their pumped pulchritudinous prime. That is some serious camp testosterone.

And an extreme, and extremely welcome, example of gay desire subverting and claiming some very troublesome icons.

The collection, part one of two (the second due, pandemic willing, in April) speaks for itself with a t-shirt, shirt, hooded sweater, bomber jacket, bag and flip flops. Personally, I find the bag particularly covetable only because my astonishingly long-lasting faux-Andy Warhol printed TIMBUK2 bag is, after more than a decade, beginning to fray and TIMBUK2's newer designs are more staid than my now vintage piece. Though after seeing model Josh Cottam Umbrellaphone, street clown and composer of "futuristic music," as photographed by Swedish LGBTQ+ artist Ylva Åkerblom, it is impossible not to desire the bomber jacket as well.

The photos were shot, teases My Lost Uncle, in Bristol, UK (where the designers/artists are newly based) at the Barton Hill boxing club which was formerly the Dug Out youth club patronized by Banksy and "Massive Attack band members." That little nugget of information is either a clue, a mcguffin, a conceptual allusion to the avatars, or a stylistic flourish. All as convoluted, butch/camp and mysterious as my favourite enigmatic sentence on the website: 

"I`m Alive", told Andreas, designer`s lost uncle just before disappearing on his cargo ship trip to New York City in 1979.