END Celebrates Two Decades with a Needles ‘Nylon’ Capsule

END marks twenty years on the streetwear map by returning to the brand that helped build its credibility.

By all accounts, it has been a stylish twenty years for END. The British retailer is marking its milestone birthday alongside  one of its longest-running creative crushes: Japanese streetwear label Needles. 

In 2005 the retailer was a single Newcastle shop importing Japanese curiosities while most of Britain queued for Supreme; Needles’ butterfly-embroidered track suits (a reference) to Steve McQueen’s Papillon), became an immediate cult purchase through the back-room rail. Two decades later their partnership underlines how sustained curiosity rather than hype cycles has kept both names relevant in the streetwear space.

Their collaboration is a continuation of the visual language already seen in past END. x Needles collabs like ‘Rattan’ and ‘Indigo Wash’, but ‘Nylon’ dials back the volume, opting instead for muted palettes and refined silhouettes.

The fabric of choice is a crinkled nylon that lends each piece a techwear edge without veering too much into Blade Runner realm. 

As for the pieces themselves, they’re Needles through and through with a reworked tapered tracksuit, a camp-collar shirt and worker cap (a reference to Keizo Shimizu’s archive of vintage Americana) and a lightly padded sports jacket.

END. was one of the UK’s first retailers to get behind Needles, and  Two decades on, the capsule shows how a retailer and a designer can evolve in parallel while preserving the spark that drew them together in the first place. 

It is a collection that feels like a deep and calming exhale; mature, measured and made for those who know. 

You can read the full article at: https://www.newwavemagazine.com/single-post/end-celebrates-two-decades-with-a-needles-nylon-capsule?fbclid=PAdGRleAMj9IVleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABpwlz2sYh2bFK7DP9rfUITX8Az9JvovAWgcpWflSyi9A1rSamlifUyxbDr7kd_aem_haG5xzcGxOoAv0zG_lG8lA