When Jasper told me Michael used to really like Vexed Generation design i felt very excited about the idea that he could share with me what vexed generation felt like……….
What follows are excerpts and information (misinformation?) gleaned from a mobile phone conversation with Michael Wood. This is in no way trying to be an exact account of what Vexed generation was, but an account of what and how Michael remembers it, therefore some of the following information could be incorrect.

“Vexed Generation started around 1995 they had a small shop on Berwick Street… “It was really hard to find it if you didn’t know where it was… You had to go down a back alley, where often you` d find lots of crackheads, once inside you had to go down a spiral staircase….THEY would often blank the people who would come into the shop. Sometimes even telling them to GO AWAY! (laughs)… very awkward and weird”…THEY were into experimental music and Detroit techno… mil plateau… “Every surface in the shop was covered with a highly reflective metal that was so polished…Almost opaque through which you would see yourself reflected everywhere… it was really good in there… reeeeally good”. THEY would dress mannequins hanging from the ceiling on meat hooks, but they were not complete mannequins … THEY created blank human beings… with really morose and blank expressions made from industrial wires. Other clothes were folded on the floor/// THEY used contemporary fabrics built for urban life like Kevlar for example… bullet proof materials or recycled materials like plastic… Shapes were redesigned/// one of the garments was a sort of exoskeleton made of Velcro and an almost jeans like material, padding would cover your kidneys skull and groin… Was a very political commentary cause it’s designed to protect from injury or from attack… Moreover you could protect your identity and it also had a respiratory mask…/// for their t-shirts THEY re-appropriated what THEY thought to be unused icons. Like Frankenstein. One had Scrabbled data from NASA…the cardiac readings from the death of Ronald Regan … Some of the clothes were made of hessian and sackcloth …Their Coats were a kind of re-visitation on the mod parker. .. “I bought a sort of batwing coat that you could be turn into a kind of sloan renger bag and had some sort of restraint it looked like a cross between a strait jacket and a sort of parachute”…
THEY also had odd accessories…
“I remember THEY used latex and bar codes laminated into florescent Perspex, lots of weird objects that you could turn into whatever you wanted as accessories…..it was a really cool approach though”… THEY designed a belt which went around your legs and back but not around your waste…

Kaisu Paakkul, from Torture Garden (fetish club), designed for them magnificent origami felt hats inspired by the Spanish inquisition, the cardinal, Pope Alexander VI and Lucrezia Borgia.
“THEY were friends with Jacque from the shop nearby which was called ‘the Pineal Eye’, HE stocked clothes from Ralf Simons and Victor and Rolf and up and coming designers from Antwerp. It was very avant-garde and au couture. HE played music from tuxedomoon and Isolation ward, they had odd events art exhibitions in there”…

Vexed Generation sold a fanzine called C.R.A.S.H (creating resistance against society hemorrhoids)… “On the back of the first issue they had Princess Diana, who had just died, inside a pickling jar being served in a chip shop… (laughs) and Inside there was a pull out 5 a side football match. As THEY couldn’t think of all the people THEY hated because they had to blank them from their consciousness THEY picked the 5 people they hated the most… to play in a 5 aside football match to the death! On one side was the west. The new world order… I think THEY had Jarvis Cocker… oh no no it was the lead singer from the band James. Keith Flint from the prodigy, and Anne Diamond who THEY hated for having intentional miscarriages and cot deaths because her career was failing and no one gave a shit about her anymore.. Then Prince Harry and another celebrity I can’t remember…on the other side were 5 non-existent Korean psychopath…” (laughs)…
The Vexed Generation logo was taken from the Next Generation (star treck) and turned upside down as to say the future is plummeting down… Vexed also means to be confused and sort of hexed.
“The clothes were expensive but affordable… and really durable. THEY became very collectable. IT was political clothing at the time. I think THEY saw the wave of shit that was coming to London and everywhere… the hierarchic in society… the 90’s were the harbinger of the working class having any say in culture whatsoever and… i think that’s what it was about”..