Slam Jam x Nationhood: Beyond History

Over 30 years since its establishment, Slam Jam, street culture brand leader, is opening the doors of its archive for the first time with an exclusive project devised by Nationhood.

Founded by Luca Benini in 1989, Slam Jam was born to serve the underground long before the term “streetwear” existed, becoming the first Italian importer of then unknown brands such as Stüssy. From its headquarter in Ferrara to the fashion capital of Milan, Slam Jam honed a unique and highly distinctive style guided by art, music and clubbing, connecting tribes of like-minded people across the world.

Nationhood is a multidisciplinary studio founded by Achille Filipponi and Matteo Milaneschi. Its goal is to generate new codes and languages in the field of cultural communication, focusing on editorial design. The studio partners with international brands and cultural institutions. Its activities span from the creation of magazines and photography books, through the creative management of digital projects, to curatorship.

The project of the Slam Jam Archivio curated by Nationhood comprises a new location in Slam Jam’s headquarters in Ferrara, and a consultable online atlas stemming from an experimental publishing plan focused on the brand’s cultural heritage.

The private collection of Mr. Benini is now a new cultural resource with its own digital platform, a long list of publications, and various offline off-shoot activities hinging on visual art and culture. Nationhood designed an infinite scroll to connect different contents in a sequence of images, a collision of Lo-Fi cinema and visual brutalism aesthetic. The upshot is a new digital device showing the anthropology of the look and underground subcultures of which Luca Benini was a founding presence: from clubbing on the Riviera Romagnola, London and NY in the early nineties, to the international hip-hop scene and Japan’s noughties fashion neo- avant-garde.