Lipstick as economic indicator.
Ms. Stein's rationale for buying lipstick echoes a theory once proposed by Leonard Lauder, the chairman of Estee Lauder Companies. After the terrorist attacks of 2001 deflated the economy, Mr. Lauder noticed that his company was selling more lipstick than usual. He hypothesized that lipstick purchases are a way to gauge the economy. When it's shaky, he said, sales increase as women boost their mood with inexpensive lipstick purchases instead of $500 slingbacks.
More economic indicators: sushi, Big Macs, steakhouses, Starbucks coffee, Coca-Cola, cigarettes, and Jay-Z.
A list of responses to "The Question" asked of all kilt-wearing gentlement: What's under your kilt?
The Velocouture group on Flickr collects photographs of bicycle fashion fashion, on a bicycle. The best ones are of people who try to coordinate their outfits with their bikes. This gal is particularly fashionable. See also this NY Times slideshow.
Hate couture.
Coming from five generations of Ku Klux Klan members, 58-year-old "Ms. Ruth" sews hoods and robes for Klan members seven days a week, blessing each one when it's done. A red satin outfit for an Exalted Cyclops, the head of a local chapter, costs about $140. She uses the earnings to help care for her 40-year-old quadriplegic daughter, "Lilbit," who was injured in a car accident 10 years ago.
(via delicious ghost)
The iconic Birkin bag made by Hermes is supposedly so difficult to find that there's a two-year waiting list. In his book, Bringing Home the Birkin, Michael Tonello says the list is just a marketing ploy and that he was able to buy Birkin bags whenever he wanted.
"I would go into a store with a list in my Hermes Ulysse notebook and pile up scarves, shawls, bracelets, worth about $2,000. This made me seem a regular Hermes client," Tonello told Reuters in a telephone interview. "Once I had that pile ready to buy at the last moment I'd ask for a Birkin and they would usually produce one of the back room. In 2005 I bought 130 Birkins in a three-month period -- and you tell me there is a waiting list?"
The Birkin retails for thousands (and sometimes tens of thousands) of dollars and can be see here in situ, on the arms of celebrity millionaires. Lindsey Lohan looks like she can just about fit into hers. (via clusterflock)
A visual look at the top 10 trends in spring/summer 2008 fashion, including parachute silk, higher waistlines, and skinny belts.
As part of the the Takashi Murakami show at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the artist is collaborating with Louis Vuitton to station street vendors -- who typically sell counterfeit merchandise -- outside the museum selling real LV bags designed by Murakami himself.
Clothing libraries loan clothes out for free (or a small fee) to unemployed people for job interviews or to expecting mothers so they don't have to buy a whole bunch of maternity clothes. Great idea. (via magnetbox)
Related to last month's post about monochromatic outfits, here's some photos of children who do the same thing, pink for the girls and blue for the boys.
korean artist jeongmee yoon's 'pink and blue project' was inspired by her daughter. she would only wear pink and buy pink toys.
I find it interesting/odd that the children, some of whom aren't more than five years old, are the ones presumed to be making the color choice here. (via a.whole)
Around All-Star time a couple of weeks ago, Nike released a shoe called the Nike Trash Talk, "the first Nike performance basketball sneaker completely produced from manufacturing waste". The shoe, worn by Steve Nash in a recent game, looks a bit like Frankenstein's monster with all the exposed stitching; it's a beautiful shoe and I want a pair. The problem is that it's one of those limited edition deals...which means they're already all sold out and sitting on the shelves of sneaker collectors next to hundreds of other boxes of shoes that will never be worn. I looked on eBay and found two pair but not in my size. What are my chances of getting a pair of these at approximately retail price? I'm not looking for a collectors item...I just want to wear them!
Profiles of 5 New Yorkers that dress in only one color.
Why gray?
I actually wore turquoise for eight years, but last September, I switched to gray. I'd had a bad year and needed to get out of it.
That's a big switch.
I like everything to be clean, and gray is clean. Gray is between black and white, so it's a noncolor, almost. I feel messy and unclean if I wear other colors.
Where do you shop?
I make all my own clothes. I can't wear anyone else's.
What about shoes?
That's hard because even the soles of my shoes have to be gray or white. I get annoyed if the soles are black.
Buzzfeed has more on monochromatic outfits.
Monsterhoodies. When the hood is up, it looks like a shark, dinosaur, or monster is biting your head off. Rrwar!!
A list of controversial fashion advertisements. Can't believe the Calvin Klein stuff (the 1995 campaign especially) didn't make it on there.
Wear Palettes takes the outfits showcased in street fashion photos snapped by The Sartorialist and makes color palettes. 1500 different palettes so far.
Ridley Scott and the company behind "The Devil Wears Prada" will bring the epic story of the Gucci dynasty to the screen. From Variety:
Just when Maurizio [Gucci] was on the verge of his greatest success -- a daring fashion show debuting the clothes of newcomer Tom Ford -- his penchant for accumulating enemies caught up with him; Maurizio was gunned down in front of his Milan apartment in 1995.
Plenty of potential for intrigue in the history of the House of Gucci in the 1970s and 80s, fleshed out by what is sure to be extravagant production design mixed with Scott's highly-stylized aesthetic will make this an interesting project to look out for.
Previous big screen forays into the world of high fashion include this year's vanity documentary "Lagerfeld Confidential" and the maligned Robert Altman romp "Prêt-à-Porter (1994)." (via The Tastemakers Society)
Order your Dumbledore pride tshirts, now available in rainbow "I always knew" and "Wizards Are Gay" varieties.
Hot in Japan: wearable hiding places.
By holding the sheet open and stepping to the side of the road, she showed how a woman walking alone could elude pursuers -- by disguising herself as a vending machine.
The manhole bag is my favorite..."a purse that can hide your valuables by unfolding to look like a round sewer cover".
Lagerfeld Confidential is a documentary film about Karl Lagerfeld, the first such film done with Lagerfeld's authorization. It's playing at Film Forum in NYC later this month.
Remember Dove's Evolution video of a fashion model going from drab to fabulous with the help of makeup and Photoshop? They've got a new video out called Onslaught in which we see the barrage of images that are directed at young girls each day. BTW, Dove's parent company makes all sorts of products that may contibute to the problem that Dove is attacking here. (via debbie millman)
Jack Spade held an impromptu fashion show in Bryant Park outside the giant tent where Fashion Week was happening, enlisting passersby to carry Jack Spade bags up and back on the sidewalk. Wonderful stuff. (via design observer)
The third paragraph from a New Yorker profile of Donatella Versace (not online):
The trouble began when, between appointments, Donatella repaired to an outdoor terrace to smoke. Seated at a wrought-iron table, she thumbed open a pack of "special DV Marlboro Reds" (so called because her staff in Milan is instructed to cover the customary "Smoking Kills" label on every pack with a sticker bearing a DV monogram in medieval script).
...and that's as far as I read before deciding that reading yet another article about someone wealthy enough to have a staff helping them opt out of reality is a waste of my time, no matter how well written the article.
On finding your true self in a peer vacuum:
To move to a city where you are not afraid to try something new because all the people that labeled who THEY think you are (parents, childhood friends) are not their to say "that's not you" or "you've changed". Well, maybe that person didn't change but finally became who they really are.
Speaking of cool Etsy shops, elastiCo is selling pillows and tshirts with the most popular Google News search terms printed on them.
What sort of people buy bespoke suits: "the extremely wealthy, the status-crazed, and those so minutely particular in their needs that no preexisting suit will do". The author finds that during the course of writing the article, he may have turned into the minutely particular sort of bespoke suit buyer.
"The most famous [status detail on a bespoke suit] is working cuff holes. On most off-the-rack suits, that row of buttons on your cuff is simply sewn on, because this way you can move them up or down during alterations; once you've cut the buttonholes, you can't make the sleeve shorter or longer without screwing up the look. Another area of obsession is the stitching. On the front buttonholes and the flower loop, it shouldn't be too even; on the lapels, staggered 'pick stitching' is a big plus. When laymen claim they can smell bespoke from a mile away, most tend to mean these little signatures. But focusing on flourishes betrays the big idea. That idea is that you can ask for anything -- 40 pockets, a sewn-in gun holster, a third leg -- and, to a certain type of person, anything else is tyranny of the designer."
See also: English Cut, the blog of a bespoke Saville Row tailor.
Fun photo spread from the July 2007 issue of Vogue Italia called Super Mods Enter Rehab. I love all of the over-the-top no-underwear shots of models exiting cars.
Some Infinite Jest fashion notes: an Enfield Tennis Academy tshirt from Neighborhoodies and...
Was the designer of Infinite Jest's book cover influenced by the color palette of the Nikes that Andre Agassi wore in 1991? Compelling visual evidence is available at lonelysandwich.
Several of the web's most popular sites (Digg, YouTube, MySpace, CNN) are using the mullet strategy (business up front, party in the rear) for content to attract both boisterous users and well-heeled advertisers. "They let users party, argue, and vent on the secondary pages" -- that's the party in the rear -- "but professional editors keep the front page looking sharp" -- the business up front.
A brief history of the tshirt, specifically the ironic tee. "Whether you choose to admit it or not, chances are a critical reserve of self-esteem rests somewhere near the middle of your T-shirt drawer. For within this darkened, hidden quarter lies dormant a secret weapon so witty, so elusively allusive, or just so damn hip it finds itself swathing your chest on only the most important occasions."
Ariel Levy tells us about her lesbian wedding that wasn't really a wedding (it was "a party about love") and her struggle to find something she could wear for it. "I also didn't feel okay about spending all my free time on the phone with the flower guy and the tent man, or about making little checklists of who was coming, and who was not coming, and who was staying at the Goodstone Inn. And I definitely did not feel okay about telling the sales staff of half the better clothing retailers in New York City that I needed something fetching to wear to my big fat gay wedding."
If you're at a loss for something to wear tomorrow, check out the Wardrobe Remix photo pool on Flickr...12,000+ photos of normal people showing off what they're wearing. "i believe the best stylists walk the streets, not the photo sets, nor the backstage of the runways. the real innovators are you and me: real, fashionable people, men and women alike."
Interview with Gretchen Ludwig about her dressing room photography. She started the project after she noticed her anti-advertising, anti-corporation self buying a lot of clothes from big corporations that advertise a lot. "The dressing room is not only a very private space, but it is also a space where consumers make most of their decisions. And it's also mostly void of extraneous marketing 'noise.' You don't have the trendy atmosphere, you don't have the pressure of others watching and judging you."
The Sartorialist recently went to a shop in Milan to get some new shirts. His salesperson didn't even need to take any measurements:
Once I decided on which shirts I was going to buy I started toward the dressing room to try the shirt on for the sleeve alteration - this is where he really got me.
He just looks at me and says "what are you doing?"
"I'm trying the shirt on so you can shorten the sleeves" I said.
"It's ok, I have it" he said.
"I'm really particular" I warned. To this point I had not said anything about my blog or anything about my background.
"I have it " he said with a with a slight arrogance that comes from years of experience.
"Well, understand I want the length to be right here" I said pointing to the base of my wrist.
"I have it" he repeated.
"Ok, but if it is wrong you won't have time to fix it before I leave Milan." I warned again.
"No problem" he assured me.
Of course he got it just right:
I went back to the store two days later and damn! if the sleeve length wasn't perfect!
I can't recall if I've written about this on kottke.org before, but I had a similar experience when I went to buy a suit for my wedding. Meg and I walked into the store, talked briefly with a salesperson, telling him what I was looking for (wedding suit, black or dark grey, simple). He said, "I've got the perfect suit for you." He turned on his heel and returned 5 minutes later with a simple black suit. I tried it on and it fit perfectly. The cut was just right for my body and the size was dead-on as well. Just to compare, I tried on 3-4 more suits -- all simple and black/dark grey -- and none of them were quite right, just like the man had said. I'd planned on looking at a few more places, but his expertise had convinced me that I'd found the right suit. It remains the only formal clothing I own that I feel completely comfortable in.
Update: The Sartorialist has more on the proper sleeve length. Most American men wear their sleeves too long.
Shoe-fitting fluoroscopes were used in the 30s, 40s, and 50s to x-ray customers' feet to make sure their potential new shoes were fitting correctly. The machines were eventually banned because of radiation concerns, but not before causing some injuries to their operators. "Many shoe salespersons put their hands into the x-ray beam to squeeze the shoe during the fitting. As a result, one saleswoman who had operated a shoe fitting fluoroscope 10 to 20 times each day over a ten year period developed dermatitis of the hands." (via that's how it happened)
Vogue is adding blogs to their site but editor Anna Wintour hates the word "blog" so much that she's got her staff working on alternate language. Wintour's a little late to the party...everyone I know has been hating that word since 1999. (via fashionologie)
Profile of fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld, who admits he doesn't know "what 'normal' means".
My friends Zach and Youngna are in the NY Times this morning in an article about how difficult it is for "senior beauty analysts" and "vice presidents for global marketing" to produce and market products to twentysomethings who wouldn't even trust a "senior beauty analyst" to watch their bag while they went for a pee. The Times also had to draw a distinction between Mr. Klein, Calvin and Mr. Klein, Zach: "no relation".
Advertising Age reports (via gulfstream) that despite having spent as much as a reported $100 million on advertising and promotion, the (RED) campaign has raised only $18 million to fight AIDS in Africa. (RED) CEO Bobby Shriver responds by saying that the amount will soon be $25 million, they're in it for the long haul, and that there are non-monetary benefits to all of the advertising -- "A phenomenal benefit is that Gap, Apple, Sprint and other sales people are meeting Americans and explaining that 5,500 Africans dying daily of AIDS is preventable".
The (RED) campaign strikes me as part of a larger trend in the US (and perhaps elsewhere too): the idea that if you, the consumer, spend normally (or even increase your spending), it is possible to break the law of conservation of energy and somehow save more money or lives. Other examples of the spend-to-save trend include the Discover Card Cashback Bonus program, the Bank of America Keep the Change program, and hundreds of retail promotions where, golly, if you spend another $20 on something you don't need, you get a free something that you really don't need.
It seems to me that if The Gap really cared about stopping HIV/AIDS in Africa, they would just donate the $7.8 million they spend on (RED) advertising to the Clinton Foundation. If Discover really cared about saving you money, they'd lower their APR to prime + 1.
I realize that the entire US economy is a house of cards kept standing by the escalation of spending and credit card debt by American consumers, but the sad fact is that to save money, you need to cut spending or increase income. And if you really want to help fight AIDS in Africa, instead of buying that (RED) Gap t-shirt for which Gap will donate 50% of its profit to The Global Fund, buy a cheaper one at American Apparel and send the $13 difference to the Global Fund yourself.
Ah, an oldie but a goodie: Mullets Galore. They decode the confusing world of hockey hair and break it down into 99 helpful classifications like "cameromullet" and "Loch Ness mullet".
Top 10 most litigious US companies from 2001-2006 (based on trademark cases): 1. Microsoft. 2. Cendent. 3. Altria/Philip Morris. 4. Best Western. 5. Dunkin' Donuts. 6. Lorillard Tobacco. 7. Levi Strauss. 8. Baskin-Robbins. 9. Chanel. 10. Nike. Found in the sidebar of this article on Levi Strauss suing other jeans companies for their triangle pockets.
Browsing the various Nintendo Wii forums around the web, I've noticed more and more people pratically bragging that they play the Wii sitting down, flicking their wrists instead of the beautiful and healthful full-body motion that nature intended. These couch potatoes shall not be suffered. For the Wii purist, I made this prototype for a tshirt:
A ladies version is also in the works, even though the pun doesn't work as well.
With rising domestic silk prices, decreasing sales and retiring masters, Japanese-made kimonos may become a thing of the past. One of the last remaining masters, 102-year-old Yasujiro Yamaguchi, says, "It cannot be helped. All we can do now is keep trying to make kimonos so beautiful that they will no longer be able to resist it. What choice do we have?" (via rc3)
Things have been a little slow on the site today because I broke one of my contact lenses this morning while putting them in. For most people, this isn't much of a problem, but a) I wear hard lenses, not disposables, so they are not easily replaced (2 days to a week to order more), b) the prescription on my backup glasses is at least 7 years old and the lenses are scratched all to hell anyway, and c) without contacts or glasses, I'm functionally blind, so unless I wanted to listen to podcasts all day (gah, could you imagine anything worse?), I took off as soon as I could for the optometrist.
So, my new contacts are on order, and until then I have a new pair of glasses to wear. The thing is, since I went alone and can't see a thing without corrective lenses, I had to choose new frames without really being able to see them properly. But I have two weeks to exchange them for other frames, so I wanted to ask your collective expert opinion...what do you think of my glasses?
Hair coloring for your "betty"...you know, pubic hair dye, so you can match your cuffs to your collars. (via dethroner)
Nike hightops for sale. Price: $8500. Sneakers are the new wine.
Just how much women's underwear can be stashed in one person's closet? "Next I discovered two loose pairs of women's underwear. Next I discovered a Pokemon lunchbox containing 20 pairs of women's underwear, and next I discovered a blue hardened briefcase containing 73 pairs of women's underwear."
State of Emergency photo shoot from the September 2006 issue of Vogue Italia. The editorial of these fashion photos exceeds that of much photography found in more conventional US news media. (via bb)
This tshirt with infographics on it is too nerdy even for me. That and I've been getting a ton of crap from everyone I know about how many Threadless tshirts I own.
Joe Malia's privacy scarves provide mobile phone users and portable video game players with privacy, a light/glare-free texting/playing environment, and warm necks. "Users of the wearable mobile phone scarf can venture into public spaces confident that if the need to compose a private text message were to arise the object could be pulled over the face to create an isolated environment." (via eyeteeth)
"Dude, it's time. Girls, you too. Time to pack up the whole in-your-face, raw, hyper-sexualized, porno, skater, white trash, open wounds, self-effacing, Jackass, loose ethics, 80's bar mitzvah disco, and party-till-you vomit movement, aesthetic and attitude. Go on, scram. Beat it. We don't want you hanging around anymore."
Some neat tech-inspired jewelry and accessories from Zelle. I don't what's coolest, the transistor earrings, microcontroller cufflinks, the belt made from an IDE cable, or the capacitor necklace.
Some dreams deserve to be immortalized on tshirts:
He can feel the anger in my voice, so he immediately tries to calm me down. "I'm trying to explain the differences between MySQL and Perl to my friend," he answers as if that were the most logical thing to ever come out of his mouth.
"You're friends with Gisele Bundchen?" I ask.
"Well, yeah," he says. "I met her on a WordPress message board a few months ago."
My whole world does a sort of belly flop, and I start to get a little dizzy because what I used to think was right-side-up is now turned on its head. "That's not okay," I say to him.
"What do you mean it's not okay?" he asks. "We're talking about databases, for crying out loud."
Apologies to Mike for beating him to the punch.
ps. Sorry, you can't actually order the shirts. I've offered Heather the design if she wants to do so at some point.
One of the main characters in the film The Night of the White Pants, played by Nick Stahl, wears a Threadless tshirt (this one, which I happen to have as well) for most of the movie.
Lamenting the sad state of the typography on girls' asses. "This booty type is in fact similar to public signage that I've worked so closely with over the years: it's meant to be seen, it's communicating important and relevant information, it can be used to alert people of a problem ("SLUT!"), or it can simply be pointing out a scenic overlook."
Here's a line of pre-pixelated clothes suitable for wearing on television shows where the producers don't want to worry about clearing the rights to clothing logos. Fun idea.
The fashion industry doesn't try to control its creativity the way that the music and film industries do. "The fashion world recognizes that creativity cannot be bridled and controlled and that obsessive quests to do so will only diminish its vitality. Other content industries would do well to heed this wisdom."
It's fashion week in NYC next week and the last couple of years, Slate asked fashion expert Josh Patner to provide answers to some frequently asked questions about fashion shows (more here).
Scott Nelson produces a "tribute brand" called MIKE that's an homage to Michael Jordan, Nike branding, and shoes. After looking at his products (photos and interviews here and here), I'm amazed Nike hasn't sued him back to the Stone Age. Nelson's site is mike23.com.
Online tshirt commerce is so easy now; individuals can even offer a new tshirt design every single day. My favorite shirt of the day is this scarlet/Scarlett fiddle-dee-dee one from yesterday.
For those of you who are Napoleon Dynamited out, how about a "Pedro Lacks Political Experience" tshirt?
A series of art projects based on Flickr. The Flickr tag cloud tshirt is clever; the printing on the shirts is reversed so that you can read them in the mirror..."the [Flickr user's] narrative is actually addressing himself while claiming to address others". (via ia)
Teenaged necktie maven Baruch Shemtov. He made his first tie for school and has since turned it into a business, selling his wares in Fifth Avenue shops and online for $100 apiece.
Dressed to the Nines is an interactive look at the design of baseball uniforms. "Whether we are looking at someone in a uniform or we are trying it on ourselves, it is the feeling of the fabric, the design on the cap and jersey, the colors, cut, and history of the outfit, that all lend meaning to our relationship with the game."
Interview with the fellows from skinnyCorp. Half of my current wardrobe is from Threadless and I haven't had occasion to wear my nifty Naked & Angry tie yet.
Fans of Six Feet Under will want to get their hands (and arms) on a Narm! tshirt. Narm. Narm!
Fantasy Fashion League is fashion's answer to fantasy football and rotisserie baseball. Pick your favorite designers and earn points when their fashions show up in magazines. (via E&N) Related: NY Times ombudsman Daniel Okrent helped invent rotisserie baseball?
Counterfeiters print Excel function on jeans by accident. "The counterfeiters are using Excel or Access to store all the logos for their counterfeit jeans and then print them out onto leather. This is what happens when there is a bug in their software."
The Chanel exhibition at the Met showcases the fashion designs of Coco Chanel as well as the more recent fashions of Karl Lagerfeld's design. The exhibition attempts to draw parallels between the older Chanel fashions and Lagerfeld's newer work (words like "interpretation" and "reinvention" sprinkled the exhibition walls), but I had a hard time seeing Coco's influence in much of his work. Seems more like Lagerfeld is out on his own, which is in keeping with his thoughts in this 2001 interview with Paper magazine. Initially he says he hates "nothing more than people who only look in one direction, which means only in their direction" but then that he finds it hard to collaborate with others (except with himself). Then:
When I do my own things, I'm not really too interested in other people telling me what to do.
Lagerfeld is a fascinating figure and may have captured the cultural zeitgeist of the 80s and 90s in Chanel's fashions, but I don't know if I buy any of this reinvention business. If you'd like the check out the exhibit for yourself, you'd better hurry...it's only on for a few more days.
Possible future market for Gucci?
Leather master Tom Cruise. "Owning one leather jacket: cool. Owning eleven (and counting) different leather jackets: not so cool."
