No Vacancy Inn: The Versatile Collective Uniting Music, Fashion & Art
By Something CuratedHelmed by Tremaine Emory and London-born musician Acyde, No Vacancy Inn operates without a fixed location or encompassing definition, reflecting the transient lifestyles of its co-founders. Having launched earlier this year, the duo have already collaborated on a number of interesting projects, including a Bodega pop up with New York-based artist Tom Sachs, a Boiler Room event with the likes of Virgil Abloh, Heron Preston and Benji B, and most recently, a series of t-shirts stocked at Dover Street Market. For the collection, the versatile collective focussed on eye-catching graphics inspired by Las Vegas and Al Pacino’s classic gangster film Carlito’s Way.
Georgia-born Tremaine Emory was raised in New York, and moved to London in 2010. He has provided creative consultation for large corporations, hotels, fashion companies and smaller independent brands, as well as having had his hand in music management, curating club nights in London and around the world, with a knack of combining different social worlds and sub-cultures under one roof. Born and raised in London, musician Acyde was one half of duo The Shining with Hyperdub producer Morgan Zarate. His musical tastes have been fundamental in the conception of No Vacancy Inn, which gained attention early on with their USB mixtapes.
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Acyde and Tremaine have been hosting parties together for some years, initially running a night in Dalston nearly half a decade ago. With an interest in developing a space which more precisely represented their mentality and vision, the pair were keen to create a platform that encompassed their interests in art, fashion and nightlife. Moving away from the physical, and inevitably stationary, the collaborators came up with the concept for No Vacancy Inn; “a sort of virtual realisation,” as Acyde puts it. With eventual notions of establishing a physical space, right now the project remains on the move, taking on diverse forms of life in collaboration with other creators.
Functioning as an “ever moving hangout spot”, the project merges parties, merchandise and a regular podcast radio show, in which the duo host in-depth interviews, giving cultural characters like Anti-Social Social Club’s Neek Lurk, Luka Sabbat and Dev Hynes of Blood Orange a platform to get their opinions and origin stories heard. Like the record shops, clothes stores or ascribed gathering points of pre-internet culture that would form the bases of youth communities, No Vacancy Inn has taken this ethos and revised it for a digital age. Their fusion of online content and real life parties are all very much established on the same ideologies of connection and collective values.
On the ethos behind No Vacancy Inn:
“It’s everywhere and nowhere … No Vacancy Inn is the attempt to try and find meaning in a transient life/lifestyle. It’s whatever we are feeling and living in the moment and expressing that.” – Tremaine Emory, Amuse, 2016
On setting up a physical space:
“It will eventually get there, but for now, we’re just taking it as an idea that we can move around and do with friends and family across the world and it’s kind of working out so far.” – Acyde, Dazed, 2016
On working in nightlife:
“It’s about the music and the fact that I’m a night hawk, I’ve always stayed up late even when I was little reading comics and listening to music. Also, all this stuff in London came out of just wanting to hear the records we love and doing parties with my man Acyde. There was no plan other than do a party we would go to if it wasn’t our party.” – Tremaine Emory, LC, 2014
On Internet radio:
“It’s what we have in the UK, we have that history. Before online stations there were pirate stations and the music they promoted built a lot of the music scenes that exist now. In some ways Internet radio is a continuation of the pirates.” – Acyde, Drowned In Sound, 2014