Kenzo Minami told us before: "I admire Mathieu Van Damme for his sweetness". Today we met Mathieu for the first time, coz we'll be filming him for a TV-show. He runs this superdope shop in Ghent called Toykyo. He sells Kaws shirts, Bearbrick toys & Parra Artwork... 
I don't know why, because we've been meeting so many amazing people that are really down-to-earth, but somehow I was kinda scared that he was going to be some Ispitonanythingthatisnotcool-kid. I couldn't have been more wrong. We've only talked briefly but he is sooo nice and you could tell that he's totally passionate about his work.
He travels to NYC and Japan and just buys the stuff he likes and then resells it in his shop. And it's not even that expensive. Really.
A lot of the heads in Ghent know, so whenever he gets of the plane they raid his shop. So cool.
He also told me he and his partner have been working together with Parra on some new artwork which they will be selling from mid-October.
This is one of the coolest -DO NOT CALL IT STREETWEAR- shops in Belgium (another one is Fresh Kicks in BX Capitale).
He even stocks 'Dear Diary' by Lesley-Vice-Arfin. Le Grand Fromage and I, we read it and we totally disagree on the quality of the book (he loves it, me... well not so much. Maybe I expected a lot more) but it's a must-read.
And if only we'd known, we wouldn't have ordered it on Amazon, we would've bought it chez Mathieu. The cool dude.
(What did we buy today? Madlib CD & Peanut Butter Wolf DVD, new Lodown Magazine and custom-made Toykyo stickers. Remember: shop local!)
