It’s 1969. Say it with me. Nineteen for the century. Sixty-nine for the freaks. Napalm and corn fed Nebraska farm boys rain on Vietnam. Charles Manson’s fucked up youths terrorize Los Angeles. Iggy Pop slashes his own chest on a plywood starve in a heroin stupor. Apollo 11 lands on the moon and the U.S.A. achieves cosmic supremacy from thenceforth until the end of eternity, baby.

This twelve year old kid Pablo wanders Manhattan unchaperoned. It’s a dog eat dog world and he’s out there in the thick of it — pettin’ dogs, wrestlin’ dogs, bitin’ dogs back when they bite him. He’s got a butterfly blade he lifted off a KO’d greaser in a Gowanus gutter. He’s got a half burnt heater he’s saving for later. He’s got little black suit and horsebit loafers and he’s three buttons deep because, gentlemen, there are ladies present.

Click clack click clack his little I-talian loafer soles go uptown over west and uptown again. He rounds the corner of 53rd and 3rd and bam, runs smack dab into a suit with lapels wide as Cary Grant’s pearly whites. The guy inside the suit says “Woah there, kid. You alright?” Little Pablo says “Ain’t got no tie man” in his Spanish accent. The guy smiles, says “Hold on a second.” and whips out a maroon silk tie striped in navy blue and eggshell to highhhh heaven. The suit kneels and half Windsors the too big thing around little Pablo’s neck in six seconds flat.

He takes little Pablo by the shoulders and turns him toward his own little reflection in a nearby coffee shop window. Pablo glows nuclear in skyscraper shadows. The man says “Keep it, sport. That one’s on me, but the next one’ll cost ya’.” He tucks a whole pack of Lucky Strikes in little Pablo’s suitjacket pocket and walks off to sell his ties to the entire world. Pablo watches him go. Some blonde dish across the street gives him googly eyes. He strikes a match and burns up a lucky.

Folks, that man was Ralph Lauren and the kid was Pablo Picasso, and neither would ever be the same again. 

A Zonlen Zoolen Haus design for Takeout Los Angeles