“What would you say to an As Four re-issue"
-Byronesque.
I’d say fucking hell yeah!”
- Mickey Boardman, PAPER Magazine.
As Four were the New York’s Lower East Side gang in the early 2000’s. Conspicuous by their unique signature look, as they biked around part of the city that they carved out before anyone else, like futuristic Warholianesque pied pipers. United by their circle bag design, worn and acknowledged like an avant-garde secret handshake.
This re-issue marks the first time the As Four four are collaborating again for our latest Machine-B project: The Reissue series.
Original circle bags were hand made with upcycled fabrics and a limited-edition selection of bags, handmade from fabric from the brands own archives, are available exclusively from Machine-B; online here and instore at Machine-A London.
SHOP THESE VERY LIMITED-EDITION UP-CYCLED HANDMADE ASFOUR CIRCLE BAGS
THIS RE-ISSUE MARKS THE FIRST TIME THE ORIGINAL FOUR ARE BACK TOGETHER
Photos by Miguel Villalobos
ADI GIL
NYC meant the world for us, a place where everyone is welcome, regardless of their origin, color, culture, gender, age, or race all as ONE. It felt like what we always dreamed about. A circle represents unity for us, with no beginning or end, making it the ultimate geometric symbol. We believe now more than ever is the right time to promote unity in today’s world.
GABI ASFOUR
New York City, a long & far away dream come true, a place where central ideas stem from global struggles. So many lives manifesting at the same time so many windows endless vibrations existing together side by side always moving always changing in harmony? Fascinating! Wao. I landed here in the early ‘90s to a community of downtown creatives where I could finally be myself and where inspiration was found just by walking down the streets of the Lower East Side connected with Adi & Angela then Kai. As Palestinian, as Jewish, as German, as Russian, as example, as family, as ourselves, as individuals, as a team, as community, as downtown, as uptown as New York City as the world, As Four.
ANGELA DONHAUSER
NYC… a tall, bighearted, starry eyed foster mother embracing her societal outcasts, runaway punks, starving poets, lovelorn queers, artistic adventurers, hopeful geniuses, and flamboyant dreamers. Housing us all under her cheaply rented cloaks on the Lower East Side, providing a community of free love and freedom of total self-expression. “Join the bustle if you’re up for the hustle”. Find your tribe and roll with it. The circle bag was the uniform of our downtown tribe.
KAI KUHNE
New York City and The Lower East Side, our Downtown felt to me like our bubble. A vacuum where we could invincibly be visible, play, create and communicate with our peers directly without the use of smartphones or social media. In between a fluid mix of the old Jewish and Hispanic and Chinese communities, we could find freedom to live the underground above the surface.
MICKEY BOARDMAN, PAPER MAGAZINE
“They’re still so relevant and so copied. To me, they remind me of other designers who are genius and do their own thing. Timeless people like Isabel Toledo or Rick Owens, or Azzedine Alaïa. People who, when you look at the clothes, you can’t tell if this is brand new, or 15 or 30 years old.
It was a very interesting time in terms of cross-pollination in New York, and nightlife was a huge part of all that. They really always had an entourage of people dressed like them. They really were an army of people. They were so recognizable—not just from the clothes but from the hairstyles, from the hair and makeup. A lot of the coming together of all these different worlds happened at nightclubs and at night and I think they really sort of flourished in that scene.
They were embraced by Collette in Paris and Seven New York and by Barneys; Julie Gilhart was a big supporter of theirs, and I think they had a very loyal following and a very supportive group of customers. They also really always batted above their weight, in the sense that they would work with Yoko Ono, with Björk, they always sort of were involved with creative leaders in their field who were very famous or very established and ASFOUR’s work always spoke to those people and vice versa, so there was always an interesting collaboration from that perspective.
I have to say, the circle bag to me, at the time, I remember thinking wow this could really be the thing that takes them to a new place because they’re very understandable and it’s the kind of thing that a person with an otherwise pretty average look, what could be considered a “normal” look, could use the bag and wear it and work the bag into it and feel like they were living the life, having a piece of the avant-garde lifestyle with that bag.
I say halle-fucking-lujah to this re-issue because it’s the kind of thing where they were ingenious then and ingenious now and maybe they were so far ahead that now the world has caught up.”
