Not long ago, I watched my eight-year-old daughter place a toy she’d just built from Lego onto an interactive display and press a button.
“Let’s hear about your idea behind this masterpiece,” said an outsize virtual Lego figure on the screen in front of her, in response.
Nina explained she’s built a car that went around parks and picked up litter. It had an antenna and was charged by solar panels. The Lego figure – who was dressed in a white lab coat complete with a pen clipped to its pocket – scribbled along on his virtual pad as she spoke, blinking enthusiastically.
“You have really thought this through,” the figure announced. “What do you say we send it to the laboratory, to see what my colleagues think?”
Nina pressed a button and a digital likeness of her physical creation appeared on the screen and was “beamed up” into the ether.
We were in the Blue Zone, one of four primary-coloured areas within Lego House, the architecturally spectacular 130,00sq ft marvel in Billund, Denmark – part-visitors’ centre, part-creative playground – known as the “Home of The Brick”, a reference to the fact Lego originated in the city.
Lego House was designed by Bjarke Ingels, one of the design world’s starriest names, whose commissions include Google’s HQ, the new World Trade Center and Audemars Piguet’s watch museum in Switzerland. Ingels, who is also Danish, certainly seems to have enjoyed himself.
The location resembles 21 giant Lego bricks stacked into a 30m tower. Visitors can climb up to the rooftop terrace and down the other side, pausing to take in attractions, restaurants, play zones and a gallery dedicated to fan-made Lego extravaganzas.
Lego House also expounds Lego’s brand values – Nina had been following a loose brief to come up with her litter-picking solar-panelled car, sadly her parents had not instilled those values in her – to create “playful learners for life”.
Wouldn’t we all like to be “playful learners for life”?
No one could say that doesn't sound like a nice thing to aspire to be.
And perhaps there’s something in those core values that helps explain Lego’s ongoing success – 75 years after it produced its first plastic brick, and 92 years after it was founded.
Despite a declining toy market, consumer sales of Lego were up again last year – with revenue at the company reaching DKK 65.9 bn [SGD12.9 bn].
You don’t achieve sales like that solely from eight-year-olds.
Lego has evolved with the times, expanding into different markets, different areas of the world, different themes, different virtual and physical mediums and a different target age range. By catering to its adult fans with complex, detailed sets that often tap into 1980s and 1990s pop culture, Adult Fans of Lego (AFOL) are growing more than ever before. By one estimate, 10 percent of all the Lego bought in America is purchased by grown-ups.
In my own personal orbit, I know a 49-year-old who always has one of Lego’s more challenging, black-boxed sets on the go – the 3,955-piece “Home Alone house”, or the 3,745-piece “Dungeons & Dragons: Red Dragon’s Tale”, for example – in part to give him something to do now he’s given up the booze. Also, a 24-year-old who is stoked to be collecting this year’s 25th anniversary releases in the Star Wars Lego line.
Celebrity Lego fans include Brad Pitt, David Beckham, Orlando Bloom and, most pleasingly, Mark Hamill. Ed Sheeran is also on-board, see his song: “Lego House”.
This October we’ll be able to visit the cinema to watch Piece by Piece, a biographical musical drama of the life of Pharrell, the men’s creative director at Louis Vuitton and multihyphenate, also starring the voices of Kendrick Lamar, Jay-Z and Snoop Dogg, and told entirely through Lego animation.
Recent years have seen the company cater more and more to its grown-up fans with complex Lego Architecture sets – recreating the Notre-Dame de Paris, the Great Pyramid of Giza, the Taj Mahal, the Statue of Liberty, an almost five-foot-tall version of the Eiffel Tower, and more. Meanwhile, the Lego Botanical Collection — consisting of sets of roses, succulents, wildflowers and orchids — has proved an unexpected hit.
“The Lego Group is putting more focus on creating products that aren’t really seen as toys,” Mike Ganderton, creative director bricks & fans tells me. “They’re seen as something else – a pastime, or a project. Something you pick up and you do because you need a little break from everyday life. It was a bit of a surprise that you could make these quite realistic flowers out a Lego bricks. And suddenly you open up this new audience of ‘I never knew Lego could do that.’”
“We’re seeing more and more adults coming to Lego House without children,” he continues. “And what we’re trying to do is say ‘If you really love Lego, and you want to experience more, and maybe you want to meet your tribe, then the place to come is Lego House.’”
Still, it wasn’t always smiley Lego faces at the company.
From its founding in 1932 until 1998, Lego had never posted a loss. By 2003 it was in serious trouble. Sales were down 30 per cent year-on-year and it was in debt. An internal report revealed it hadn’t added anything of value to its portfolio for a decade.
Consultants were dispatched to Lego’s Danish HQ. Their recommendation? Diversification. The brick had been around since the 1950s, they said, it was old-fashioned. Lego should look to Mattel, home to Fisher-Price, Barbie, Hot Wheels and Matchbox toys, a company whose portfolio was broad and varied. Lego took their advice: in doing so it almost went bust. It introduced jewellery for girls. There were Lego clothes.
It opened theme parks that cost £125m to build and lost £25m in their first year. It built its own video games company from scratch, the largest installation of Silicon Graphics supercomputers in northern Europe, despite having no experience in the field. Lego’s toys still sold, particularly tie-ins, like their Star Wars and Harry Potter-themed kits. But only if there was a movie out that year. Otherwise they sat on shelves.
“We are on a burning platform,” Lego’s CEO Jørgen Vig Knudstorp told colleagues. “We’re running out of cash… [and] likely won’t survive”.
Vig Knudstorp turned out to be Lego’s saviour. A father of four, he had arrived from management consultants McKinsey & Company in 2001 and was promoted to boss within three years, aged 36.
“In some ways, I think he’s a better model for innovation than Steve Jobs,” writes David Robertson, the author of Brick by Brick: How Lego Rewrote the Rules of Innovation, a book that has now become a set business text. Sony, Adidas and Boeing are said to refer to it. Google now uses Lego bricks to help its employees innovate.
Vig Knudstorp rescued Lego by methodically rebuilding it. He binned things it had no expertise in – the Legoland parks are now owned by the British company Merlin Entertainments, for example. He slashed the inventory, halving the number of individual pieces Lego produces from 13,000 to 6,500. (Brick colours had somehow expanded from the original bright yellow, red and blue, sourced from Piet Mondrian, to more than 50.)
He also encouraged interaction with Lego’s fans, something previously considered verboten. Far from killing off Lego, the internet has played a vital role in allowing fans to share their creations and promote events like Brickworld, the adult Lego fan conventions.
A year before James Surowiecki’s landmark book The Wisdom of Crowds was published, Lego launched its own crowdsourcing competition: originators of winning ideas get one per cent of their product’s net sales, designs that include the Back to the Future DeLorean time machine, the Beatles’ Yellow Submarine and a set of female Nasa scientists.
Then came the films.
When The Lego Movie came out in 2014, Rotten Tomatoes deemed it worthy of a 96 per cent approval rating. Only Oscar nominees 12 Years A Slave and Gravity matched it. The follow-up The Lego Batman Movie outperformed the preceding “actual” Batman movie so convincingly that DC’s cinematic superhero exploits have never really recovered.
In 2015, the still privately owned, family-controlled Lego Group overtook Ferrari to become the world’s most powerful brand. It announced profits of £660m, making it the number one toy company in Europe and Asia, and number three in North America, where sales topped USD1bn for the first time. From 2008 to 2010 its profits quadrupled, outstripping Apple’s.
Indeed, it has been called the Apple of toys: a profit-generating, design-driven miracle built around premium, intuitive, covetable hardware that fans can’t get enough of. There are around 70bn pieces of Lego sold each year, across 150 countries. Lego people – “Minifigures” – the 4cm-tall yellow characters with dotty eyes, permanent grins, hooks for hands and pegs for legs – outnumber humans. The British Toy Retailers Association voted Lego the Toy of the Century.
Lego House, which opened in 2017, is a physical embodiment of that everything-is-awesome success. As well as the interactive Build the Change experience, the environmentally aware activation that my daughter enjoyed, it currently offers a new multisensory upgrade to its walkthrough History Collection, about as unstuffy a museum experience as you could imagine and a must for any AFOL, as well as the perhaps less environmentally aware chance to explore a life-size Lego Technic McLaren Formula 1 Race Car.
“I think what the House offers, truly, is that it does display all those endless possibilities that the bricks offer,” says Vinnie Kuld Jensen, the diversity and inclusion lead at Lego House. “It’s really that tangible manifestation of what play does for us as human beings, not only for children, but also for adults. There is such a variety in the different experiences you can engage with that no matter what you prefer, whether it’s going deep and staying focused for a long time on a certain build, or being competitive and playful, it truly offers you all those opportunities.”
The average visitor spends 4.5 hours at Lego House. That’s an incredibly long time to spend under the roof of one brand. A testament not just to the activities you can do once you’re inside, but to the building itself.
Everything inside is clean, calm and nicely lit. Lego says its House received 300,000 guests last year, a record, and gets around 2,000 guests on a peak day. But it could be more. Tickets are capped so it never feels crowded. Given the sheer numbers of children inside, there is a notable absence of rowdy behaviour. And given the sheer amount of Lego lying around, 25 million bricks according to the Lego House website, there was a notable absence of conspicuous thieving. In short: it’s very Danish.
“I think that’s partly [thanks to] the architecture," says Mike Ganderton. "It's partly the Danish culture. But I think first and foremost, it looks neat and tidy and well looked after. If someone dropped a piece of litter, then everyone would drop a piece of litter.”
It might be, as Lego puts it, “the world’s best play date for adults, children at heart and actual children”.
“Play is for everyone,” says Kuld Jensen. “Everyone can benefit from play. The essence of what our product offers you, as a guest in our House, or just as a customer to the brand, is a really safe space to play and unfold yourself. There’s endless possibilities, because the versatility is so high.”
“We always said it could never be a museum of Lego,” Ganderton says. “Lego House opened seven years ago, but it can’t be stuck in 2017. It has to be Lego, whatever the year is. By definition we have to keep moving. Lego puts out 253 new products every year, along with innovations and new campaigns and new focuses. We’re the brand House and so we have to follow the brand. And that keeps things exciting.”
Or, as brand saviour and CEO Jørgen Vig Knudstorp put it when Lego House first opened:
“This had to be a place where even the most hardcore Lego fans would say, ‘Wow!’”
Originally published on Esquire UK
In a world where smartwatches threaten to render traditional timepieces obsolete, Breitling is reminding us why the mechanical machines strapped to our wrists will never go out of style. The Swiss watchmaker, known for equipping the wrists of pilots, divers, and the occasional Bond villain, is celebrating its 140th anniversary with a globe-trotting exhibition that doubles as a history lesson. Dubbed "Time Capsule: The Breitling Heritage Exhibition," this travelling showcase is less about selling watches and more about flexing 140 years of innovation. It's a greatest hits album but instead of chart-toppers, you're getting important timepieces that changed the game.
Take the 1915 mono-pusher for instance, the first watch that separated the chronograph functions from the crown, a move so revolutionary it's akin to inventing the steering wheel for cars. Or how about the 1942 Chronomat. The world's first smartwatch, long before Apple thought different. It came with a circular slide rule that basically turned your wrist into a mini-computer. Ahead of its time, I know.
These are watches that have literally been to space (hello, Cosmonaute) and saved lives (we're looking at you, Emergency), so it’s worth checking out. The exhibition is making 55 stops across four continents, and is currently in Singapore from now until 4th August at the Breitling boutique raffles city.
Time Capsule: The Breitling Heritage Exhibition is located at #01-35 Raffles City Shopping Centre 252 North Bridge Road, Singapore
It’s taken exactly twice as long as real-life Emperor Commodus’ reign to get another Gladiator movie. But finally, 24 years since Russell Crowe, Joaquin Phoenix, and the dog that played Well’ard in Eastenders taught us there’s no place like Rome, it’s here. Almost.
The swelteringly anticipated sequel to Ridley Scott’s sword-and-sandle epic hits cinemas this autumn. The original, about an all-conquering general betrayed and sold into slavery by a jealous new emperor, proved box office magic in 2000. It not only raked in USD 460 million worldwide, but won five Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Actor.
So big sandals to fill.
Beyond what we can glean from the trailer, the plot of the film is as closely guarded as an imperial bedchamber. Pretty much all we know is who’s in it – Pedro Pascal, Paul Mescal, Denzel Washington and Connie Nielsen. And, of course, Scott is again in the folding chair. We also know that it picks up the same story some 20 years later, following the (familiar-sounding) trajectory of Lucius (Mescal) – the cherubic boy in the first film, now with stubble and muscles – as he transforms into a ruthless gladiator.
As for the plot, here's what we know: Lucius, now an adult, has traded life at the top table (along with his mother) for one in the fields of Numidia, northern Africa. Now with a wife and child, he finally appears to have found inner peace. But then the armies of co-emperors Caracalla (Fred Hechinger) and Geta (Joseph Quinn) invade Numidia, led by general Marcus Acacius (Pascal). Lucius is captured and finds himself in the shackles of the very empire he was once meant to rule.
Washington’s character is completely new – a former slave turned wealthy merchant called Mercius with his own grudge against the emperors. Cut from a similar cloth as the late-Oliver Reed's Proximo, most certainly.
So what can we expect? A lot more of the same, probably, and more. It’s being touted as the blockbuster of 2024. But how close to historical truth does it tread, and who were the real-life Romans who inspired this epic?
Played in the movie by Fred Hechinger and Joseph Quinn, these brothers gave off strong Cain and Abel energy throughout their lives, the former now recognised as one of the most bloodthirsty tyrants in Roman history.
Upon his deathbed in AD211, their father Septimius Severus, made them co-emperors – surely one of the greatest errors in judgment of the Roman era, in a crowded market. Trouble was, Severus didn’t set out a division of rule for the brothers, who engaged in a bitter tug-of-war for the best parts of the empire.
For two years they ruled miserably together, the time in which Gladiator II is set. But in the end, their fragile egos could no longer contain their jealousies, and Caracalla had Geta murdered by his own guardsmen. Geta is said to have died in their mother’s arms. Caracalla then went full-Stalin on Geta’s memory, having his image removed from every painting in sight, and ordering the wholesale deaths of his supporters.
Caracalla was also known for a face as ugly as his soul. He earned the nickname Tarautas, after one of the most famous gladiators of the time, who also had a reputation for being offensively ugly and violent.
He did some good things, like grant Roman citizenship to all free men throughout the Roman Empire, and build the great public Baths of Caracalla in Rome. But most of that was overshadowed by the trail of death and destruction he left in his wake. Once, after a satirical play mocked him in Alexandria, Egypt, he ordered the indiscriminate massacre of thousands of Alexandrian citizens as payback. He had senators murdered, slaughtered entire populations of cities he conquered, and ultimately left the empire’s economy in tatters.
He was said to have studied Greek and could quote long passages from the Greek playwright Euripides but also that he strongly despised education and educated people.
In some way Caracalla died as he lived – urinating on whatever he saw before him. While travelling through southern Turkey to visit a temple, he stopped for a toilet break by the side of the road. There, as he relieved himself in the mud, a disgruntled soldier named Justin Martialis, ran over and stabbed him to death. He was 29 years old.
You’ll remember Lucilla from the first film – the beautiful emperor’s daughter caught in an uncomfortable love triangle between her brother (Commodus) and former lover (Maximus).
First minor discrepancy between fact and fiction: Lucilla died six years before Caracalla was born. But still, details.
Born into the purple of imperial Rome, Lucilla was no stranger to power and privilege. As the daughter of Emperor Marcus Aurelius, she was groomed for a life of political significance. At the age of (ahem) about 11, she was married off to her father's co-emperor, 29-year-old Lucius Verus. It was a union designed to cement their alliance. As empress, she enjoyed the trappings of her position, but fate had a cruel twist in store.
Verus' untimely death left Lucilla a widow, her power and influence diminished. Yet, her lineage made her a valuable pawn in the game of empires. A hasty remarriage to a senator followed, but she yearned for the power she once held.
When her brother Commodus ascended the throne, Lucilla watched in dismay as his erratic rule threatened to unravel their father's legacy. Driven by ambition and a desire to protect Rome, she became entangled in a daring plot to assassinate the emperor. However, the conspiracy was foiled, and Lucilla faced the wrath of her brother.
Exiled to the picturesque island of Capri, Lucilla's fate was sealed. Isolated and disgraced, she met her end at the hands of an assassin sent by Commodus.
Probably the biggest creative liberty, this, given that the real Lucius died before Commodus even became emperor. His full name was Lucius Verus II, the son of Lucilla and Lucius Verus (Marcus Aurelius' co-ruler). He had two sisters: Aurelia Lucilla and Lucilla Plautia and a little brother named Pompeianus from his mother's second marriage.
Lucius and his two sisters all died in childhood, most likely of illness, which was common for children of the time. Pompeianus, however, did survive childhood to become a soldier and, later, a senator. He was five when his mother was executed, and in his early 30s when he was murdered by bandits on the orders of emperor Caracalla.
While the plot for Gladiator II is shrouded in secrecy, the historical backdrop of Emperor Caracalla's reign offers a glimpse into the potential brutality and political intrigue that could unfold on screen. Caracalla's reputation for violence and ruthlessness, coupled with the power struggles and betrayals that characterised his rule, provides fertile ground for a compelling and action-packed sequel.
Whether the film delves into the darker aspects of Caracalla's reign, such as his penchant for massacres and purges, remains to be seen. However, the historical context suggests that the gladiatorial arena could be a fitting stage for a tale of vengeance, survival, and the struggle for power in a corrupt and decadent empire.
Originally published on Esquire UK
Genuinely, I'm sorry to do this, but you really need some context before we dive into my experience watching Napoleon. In freshman year history class, Mr. C demanded that I memorise the capital city of each and every state in this damned country. For reasons that amounted to "fuck this weird-baseball-coach-slash-history-teacher" and "fuck Little Rock and Topeka and Bismark and Montpelier," I made a clear-eyed decision to cheat my way through the next four years of high school history. When we hit Napoleon and the French Revolution, I think, I was copying tests from Frank and Gage. (If you're reading this, Frage... thank you.)
It's a long way around to telling you that, last week, I saw—or, bore witness to—director Ridley Scott's Napoleon. There I was, a 30-year-old man with popcorn butter stains on his sweatpants at the Times Square Regal E-Walk, wondering if there's any historical basis for Napoleon oinking at Joséphine when he wants to get nasty. Could this be history? I mused.
Reader, Napoleon is really fucking weird. It's easy to understand why critics seem so confused. A film that was advertised as the "Dad Movie of the Century" sways between tones like a boozy night on the Atlantic! To give you an idea of the experience, Napoleon is two hours and 38 minutes long. First act: We're introduced to the Napoleon your girlfriend tells you not to worry about. When his horse gets a cannonball to the chest, he asks someone to dig out the cannonball so he can keep it as a memento. Second act: Napoleon done in the style of a Bowen Yang-led Saturday Night Live! skit where the quippy, wounded emperor oinks when he's horny. Third act: Waterloo.
At different points in the film, my fellow audience members were either cackling or hush-quiet. They giggled at Bonaparte's takedown of the Austrian emperor or in awe of Scott's signature historical set-pieces. After seeing the long, yet hyper-focused Killers of the Flower Moon and The Holdovers's uncomplicated mushiness, Napoleon baffled me. I can't stop thinking about it, in a men-are-always-thinking-about-the-Roman-Empire kind of way. Of all the films I've seen this year, it was the one I couldn't stop myself from recapping around Esquire's offices to anyone who would listen.
The next day, I paid a visit to our managing editor—and noted reader of historical biographies—John Kenney, and brought up a number of questions I have for Napoleon, all of which haunted my eighth-grade-level history chops:
John, bless his soul, politely watched me blabber on. He didn't offer much background either way, because either I wasn't making sense, or Napoleon didn't make sense. (If we're being honest, probably both.)
It's possible—maybe even likely—that Scott intended Napoleon as one big roast of one very little man. This man, who (as we are reminded at the end of the film) ignited wars that caused millions of casualties. So he leaned into the creepo Napoleon (Creepoleon? That something?), who was most vulnerable when he was with Joséphine. Especially the letters: "I write you, me beloved one, very often, and you write very little. You are wicked and naughty, very naughty, as much as you are fickle."
Maybe Scott thought that going full Band of Brothers on the Napoleonic Wars would reach hero-worship territory. But that doesn' explain why the last hour or so, Napoleon is exactly that. Replete with an epic Ridley Scott battle, with plenty of guns, formations, stabbing, and death. Or, perhaps Napoleon's unevenness must thank Phoenix's take on the Frenchman, which has a little bit too much Joker and Beau in the alchemy. (Another hilarious, if dubious delivery from Phoenix, delivered at top-of-lungs decibels: "YOU THINK YOU'RE SO GREAT BECAUSE YOU HAVE BOATS!")
If you're looking for a neat, tidy takeaway for this one, I don't have it. All I know is that in between bites of turkey during this Thanksgiving, I'll wonder if Bonaparte actually needed a stepladder to properly view a mummy, and secretly wish that the turkey was a lamb chop. Ask me again next year, folks.
We love a comeback. And 2023 has played host to so many of them in fashion. Highlights include: Mowalola coming home from Paris to show at February London Fashion Week; Skepta shutting down September London Fashion Week with the relaunch of his marque Mains; the grand return of cult label ASAI, brainchild of Woolwich-raised designer A Sai Ta.
All stellar moments in their own right, but what's most fascinating is that, location aside, the throughline of these comebacks is another comeback—one of the American fashion kind. With a leg up from London, Timberland's boots have been stomping back into our lives (and onto our social feeds) in the very year it's celebrating its 50th anniversary.
Not that it ever really went away. The nubuck leather stomper—invented by the brand's Ukrainian-born founder, Nathan Swartz, with the help of his son, Sidney, in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1973—is the mainstay of many a shoe rack. In its early years, the Timberland boot was espoused by the very people that it was designed for: the blue-collar workers of New England and beyond. Said labourers appreciated that the design was resilient, protective, warm, and, thanks to Swartz’s employment of injection-moulding technology, waterproof. But it wasn’t long until the versatile footwear option transcended its target market.
In Milan in the Eighties, the tread was pivotal to the Paninaro. (Paninaro: a social phenomenon that saw the young bourgeois of the Italian metropolis forming cliques in and around sandwich shops and fast-food restaurants, yielding to Americanisation in response to the social unrest of the city in the seventies.) Alongside a Moncler puffer, a pair of Timberlands was a requisite part of their Italian-American uniform.
And in the early nineties, British ravers and Japanese Yankophiles embraced the traditionally-wheat-coloured kick. But, in retrospect, such events were mere build up to the brand's defining moment: the NYC hip-hop scene's adoption of "The Original Yellow Boot" in the mid-nineties.
“Seemingly overnight, Timberland and companies like Carhartt Inc and North Face, which have made their reputations on manufacturing authentic outdoor and work apparel, have, in the parlance of the street, become ‘dope’ and ‘phat’,” wrote Michel Marriott for The New York Times in 1993.
It is said that the city's rappers were put onto 'Timbs' by the hustlers of Harlem who would cop the formidable shoes from the brand's Madison Avenue flagship and wear them whilst doing business throughout the night. Ostensibly, they affiliated the boot with the hood that they sought to symbolise.
Timberland boots have been indivisible with hip-hop—and, by extension, streetwear—ever since. To celebrate the Timbnaissance—as well as the brand's 50th anniversary documentary titled This is Not a Boot: The Story of an Icon, which dropped this week—we've collated the top moments when Timberland left a footprint on culture through the agency of the hip-hop community.
In 1993, Tupac Shakur presented the Timbs 'fit blueprint: baggy denim + streets-approved accessories + The Original Yellow Boot.
Raekwon and the rest of the Wu-Tang Clan have been sporting Timberland boots ever since the collective was formed in the early nineties.
The man who once rapped, “Timbs for my hooligans in Brooklyn” performed in a chocolate brown pair of Timberlands, in addition to his other style essential, Versace shades, at ‘95's KMEL Summer Jam.
Stylist June Ambrose recently revealed to Footwear News that after Hype Williams' zeitgeisty music video for Busta Rhymes' 1997 hit 'Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Could See', the rapper “would not go on stage without the matching Timberlands to every customised look”.
“It was disruptive and sexy and provocative and very hip-hop.”
A decade after Timberlands began to pop-up on the feet of hip-hop's greatest, Sean Combs rocked some wheat-hued Timbs with a get-up typical of the rap set at the time.
Pink has always been Cam'ron's trademark colour. 14 years prior to the release of his song with blackbear, 'bright pink tims', the Harlem-born rapper wore a pair of pink bandana-print Timberland boots in the "Dipset Anthem" music video.
Hip-hop fanatic LeBron James paid homage to the music genre at the 2003 VMAs via an archetypal Timberland boot.
In 2012, Tupac's estate decided a pair of Timberlands is elemental to the late rapper's quintessential attire, as evidenced by the shoe's presence in his posthumous hologram.
A Watch the Throne-era Ye captured in a seminal ensemble that is largely responsible for Timberland's ubiquity during the early tens.
Drizzy kept the legacy afloat in the mid tens by teaming a pair of six-inch Timberlands with a turtle neck and joggers in Director X's indelible music video for 'Hotline Bling'.
Pharrell Williams—founder of Timberlands' regular collaborator, Billionaire Boys Club—put a bohemian twist on a Timbs 'fit in 2017, serving the world with a reminder of the boot's versatility.
Bellwether Rihanna ushered The Timberland Boot into yet another decade earlier this year, updating a nostalgic vest/baggy jeans/Timbs combo by pairing it with modish accessories.
Rihanna's other half, A$AP Rocky, verified the 2023 Timberland resurgence in his ad for Beats by Dr Dre's Studio Pro headphones. In it, the trendsetter is clad in some Timbs whilst running across a NYC neighbourhood to grab some diapers.
