JOE FAGO
Words • Images • Ideas
Long format: catalog
Here's a sample of my long format writing, in this instance for a catalog. The idea behind Warrior's 2009 Black Market Collection catalog was to present Warrior hockey gear as adventurous, mysterious, slightly dangerous—and maybe even a little illicit. Our audience consisted of prep school through college-age males with a swaggering, push-conventions-to-the-limit attitude. Warrior Hockey is a subsidiary of New Balance fitness and athletic apparel.
GEAR SO AWESOME IT SHOULD BE ILLEGAL
2009 Warrior Hockey Catalog
Here it is, the 2009 Warrior Black Market Collection. This gear didn’t come down the usual channels—our stuff is weapons grade, clearly never meant to reach civilian hands. We figured you were tired of rummaging through Middle-Eastern markets, buying from dodgy characters in trench coats and sifting through overflowing Caddy trunks to get your fix of mayhem and destruction. Now go tell your friends. But not too loudly, we’re always being watched.
STICKS
Look, we’re not saying we cook up our sticks in an underground lab beneath a remote compound in Idaho. Or that we ship them in unmarked, vaguely military-style trucks in the dead of night. Or that to get your hands on them, you need know the password to get into a back room and talk to an indistinct silhouette named Vinnie. We’re not saying any of that. We will say that our sticks are the quickest, slickest, sickest hockey sticks ever. Just ask Vinnie.
GLOVES
We briefly considered smuggling this contraband via our usual mules, but try as we might, the gloves wouldn’t fit into the condoms. So we had to hire some between-seasons crop dusters to fly them in under the radar. Hey, no thanks needed—it’s the least we could do to deliver your fix of the most bad ass, addictively stylish gloves in existence.
BAGS
Here’s how it works: Drive the truck down a little-used logging road. In back, inside crates innocently labeled “plutonium” are some of the most stylish and durable gear bags in existence. You stop at the border, manned by an underpaid officer of the local constabulary. You show your passport – a 5000-quetzal note just happens to be folded into the page containing a fuzzy snapshot that may or may not be you. The gardai smiles, hands back a slightly lighter passport, and waves you through.
APPAREL
We know this guy who knows a guy who knows a guy, who used to deal in ivory, rare orchids and rhino-horn aphrodisiacs. Not the most environmentally enlightened hustla, maybe, but he knows every poorly lit, lightly-patrolled wharf on the waterfront. A useful and resourceful fellow, for all his failings, who helps us get this sweet apparel to market without it falling under the disapproving eyes of conventional commerce.