Palace Product Descriptions – The Selected Archive

EVERY GOOD DESCRIPTION
PALACE HAVE EVER DONE
IN ONE ROWDY HARDBACK
SOME RUBBISH ONES ALSO

Phaidon presents Palace Product Descriptions: The Selected Archive, the official printed archive of Palace Skateboard’s online product descriptions. Since their debut in 2013, Palace’s unconventional descriptors – which often have little or nothing to do with the product being described – have earned a cult following, with readers hooked on every line.

Authored by Palace co-founder, Lev Tanju, whose inimitable style essentially tore up the copywriting rulebook, the descriptions are full of humour, pathos, social commentary and unabashed opinion. Eschewing practical details, instead a jacket is described as:

TRENDSETTER
DON’T THINK SO MATE
YOU LOOK LIKE YOU MOONWALKED THROUGH TOPSHOP
WITH YOUR EYES CLOSED
COVERED IN GLUE

Collected here for the first time and printed as they appear online – a few lines set in all caps, formatted as a series of bullet points – the more than 3,000 descriptions are organised into 22 tongue-in-cheek categories, including Anatomy, Animals, Etiquette, Philanthropy, Romance and Travel. The text is interspersed with shots of highly coveted Palace products and chapter openers feature candid, behind-the-scenes images from Palace’s archive.

At once jokey toilet book and earnest coffee-table opus, this funny and honest volume serves as an essential record of an online phenomenon.