Palace Product Descriptions, The Selected Archive

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:

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.