Dualité

While I was sitting at my local laundromat waiting for the spin cycle to end, I picked up a past issue of the New Yorker, the March 2008 edition, and started flipping through the pages for distraction.

Although I have forgotten the title of it, I read a very interesting article about the downturn of the housing market and made a correlation between the mass foreclosures in North America with the spending habits of fellow consumers.

During the real estate boom between 1996 and 2004, borrowing credit had never been easier. Lending restrictions were lax and putting a down payment on a home was virtually non-existant. The average down payment for a home would only reach as little as 2%, leaving consumers less likely to save up for the future and spending more. This extra spending habit conveniently coupled with the rise of accessible luxury was a recipe for extravagance.

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I was perusing Business Week‘s site and found this brilliant YouTube of an old Levi’s commercial made in the 1970′s.

Granted that the colors and style are dated, but the approach and conceptualization of the commercial I find is pretty relevant to today. I think the fashion industry is in dire need of a “stranger” to come and breathe life back into our wardrobe. Sure, fashion editors spew this mantra every season, but every so-called golden designer is yesterday’s news  within 2 weeks of being announced.

Plus, when was the last time you’ve seen a memorable fashion commercial made by neither by Gap or Chanel? I don’t particularly recall any significant tv air time for fashion brands anymore. Perhaps because they are too costly to produce, considering Chanel No. 5 with Nicole Kidman cost a whopping £18million ($25 million) to produce in 2004. Too many brands rely too much on celebrity influence to sell their products when they could invest those millions into smart ad agencies and come up with a spectacular concept. If beer and sports companies can come up with the most original works during the Super Bowl, you would think fashion (who needs to be the best at – well, everything) would come up with the best ideas for their air time.

Fashion is drowning by clinging onto magazine ads, their life support needs to extend beyond magazine pages and into cyberspace and back to the tv airwaves. Mere runway shows won’t do, we want to be excited again by fashion. Calvin Klein ads begone! We want something fresh, new and exciting! This is a perfect time to bring back significant, original fashion commercials.

While the buzz online about digital fashion are of online stores, captivating flash websites, and bubbly social networks, others are thinking outside the box and into the copper wires of technology.

While browsing through TechCrunch, a site who reports on the latest startup companies and the occasional oddball news, has reported some bizarre, yet plausible stuff in the making.

Fembots: A reality?

Japan is reknown for their fascination with robots, and the journey continues as one technological institute in Hyougo introduced Manekin Robotto (Mannequin Robot), a humanoid robot that is supposed to move and act like a female model. Crude as she may look and standing only at 160cm (about 5’3″), she’s hardly what one would describe as an end of human fashion models, however, conceptually it would make for an interesting fashion show. With the right technological advancement and application, a robot model can introduce a range of new advantages (and disadvantages) on the runway.

Digital Clutch – Lipstick space not included

Designer Vivienne Tam had struck a deal with Hewlett-Packard in creating a customized laptop, the HP Mini, with a flowery design. The mini laptop is available for $699 on HP’s website and claims to be the first digital clutch. However cool the design may be, HP forgot what a clutch’s main purpose should be: carrying our credit cards and money of course! Maybe if they made a matching carrying case, now we’d be talking…

Transforming  Sneaker Sandals

Last year I blogged about UK’s female car insurance, Sheila’s Wheels, about their convertible high heels. Well it seems that the same would go for men looking to alleviate themselves with a converse-like shoe into sandals. The practicality does pose a problem. Were the person choose to wear sandals and they would have to carry the external pair around like extra luggage. At least with Sheila’s shoes, the transformation is inconspicuous.

I’m starting a new self-observing shopping section on this blog, to keep track of my spendings on the clothes that I buy. Starting with the first official purchase of the year, I’d like to know how long garmens will last considering of my somewhat rough handling of them. I call it “The Closet Price Tag” and made a special page for it to give a summary of my purchases.

The first purchase of the year goes to the Calvin Klein’s cable knit sweater. Bought on sale for $100 at the Forum Shops at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas. 80% lambswool and 20% cashmere. Made in China. Dry Clean only.

Only A Handful of Stores

It’s perhaps the first and only Calvin Klein store I’ve ever seen or been to, as the brand has been out of the limelight for a while, it’s only recently re-emerging and repositioning itself in the market. Considering its previous success with its perfume and jeans line in the 1980s and 1990s, I’m surprised that CK had never  officially opened any stand alone retail stores. As of late, since Francisco Costa, who had taken over as head designer for the brand, I’ve come to really appreciate the minimalistic look with luxurious fabrics on the runway. I’ve heard little about their bridge collections, so I was pleased to visit the Calvin Klein store in Vegas.

According to Wikipedia, the following brand names are as followed:

• Calvin Klein Collection (black label, top-end designer line)
• ck Calvin Klein (grey label, recently repositioned as bridge collection line)
• Calvin Klein (white label, better sportswear line)
• Calvin Klein Sport (sports version of the white label line for Macy’s)
• Calvin Klein Jeans (denimwear line)
• Calvin Klein Home (high end bedding, towel, bath rug and accessory collections)
• Calvin Klein Golf (launched in late 2007)
• Calvin Klein Underwear (underwear collections)

I have yet to see or notice an actual Calvin Klein Collection piece in the higher end department stores, it would be great to see anything up close and personal for judgement.

The store I’ve been to is clearly Calvin Klein (white label line), offering a nice collection of gray toned apparels in silks, cashmere and wool blends. The silk dresses were of nice prints, however upon touching them, they were unlined and had a familiar H&M quality to them. Prices are accessible like Banana Republic, around $50 to $500.

The cable knit sweater I bought was on sale, if you can call it that, for $100. I’ve been searching for a nice warm cable knit sweater, but can’t seem to find any in Montreal’s bargain hunting grounds. No doubt the Calvin Klein label doesn’t seem to make an appearance in our local luxury stores. It is indeed a warm sweater, however it has a tendency to leave pieces of itself on darker clothing. I had reservations about the Made in China label. An indication that it was made for cheap but with very skilled hands (or machinery). The debate comes down to: which of the evils do you choose? Have those dollars spent to support the overworked laborers in China so they can feed themselves of what little they can save? Or, not pay for the sweater and thinking of the risk that that factory may not exist in a year or so?

The purchase itself may seem like such an easy thing to do, however, our little action of buying somehow goes down much deeper to the person on the other side of the world. It’s hard to decide. Keep supporting Chinese manufacturers to feed those that need work (despite them being overworked) or not support them and take away their hard earned money.

In the end I went for the purchase. I don’t know if my purchase will help keep Chinese people their jobs or not, I don’t know if the manufacturers in Italy or Scotland should be better off with my money, eventhough on a certain standpoint, Chinese people need it much more than Europeans do. I’d like to think I’m helping the Chinese, but who can really say? This is what I wish I knew more about the manufacturing industry…where does your dollar really go?

Total spent for 2009 closet: $100.00

It’s been about 4-5 months since I’ve bought my first Mackage wool coat. I am crestfallen like a child whose lollipop suddenly fell to ground because the stick wasn’t properly attached to the candy.

This goes the same for the beautiful buttons who are unraveling before my eyes at lightning pace.

Is it too much to ask to have properly sewn buttons? How many more dollars can you save on having poorly sewn buttons, because I would like to know. How many more dollars do we need to spend to have buttons that will stay on forever with high quality threads? $100? $200?

Do I really have to reach for $1000+ coats just to get a button fix?

Next time you’re looking for a coat with buttons, pull on them. If you’re too afraid of testing them on the spot, then you know your confidence on those buttons isn’t very high, nor would it be worth your money to spend no matter how nice they are. Unless you don’t mind sewing the buttons back on once in a while.

Image credit: Mackage Isa wool coat

Already crippled by the battering recession, flailing consumer confidence, and shrunken profits, the luxury industry would last expect violence surging into the equation.

Since the Mumbai attacks in December 2008 on luxury hotel resorts, there was a report in Paris about one of their famed department stores, Printemps Haussman, threatened of an attack. Police found a bundle of dynamite on the third floor’s restroom.

French news agency Agence France-Presse said it received a letter Tuesday morning from a group calling itself the Afghan Revolutionary Front saying that several bombs had been planted in the store. Police said they searched the store and found the dynamite because of the warning.

Fortunately, nobody was hurt and the store was safely evacuated. However this was not the first time a Paris department store had been targeted, previously in 1985, there was a wave of explosions in Paris’ Les Galeries Lafayette injuring 43 people.

Also in December, a jewelry heist at Harry Winston in Paris took place, suspected to be the Pink Panthers’ handywork, a network of robbers located all over Europe. The total loot amounted to over $105 million.

…[Interpol] blame the group for scooping up jewels worth more than $132 million in bold robberies in Dubai, Switzerland, Japan, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Spain and Monaco.

Sadly, these are not pages of a movie script like Oceans’ Eleven, it is real life and I’m afraid that the violence may escalate. Studies have shown that copycats of  famous attacks (like the Columbine shootings) escalate due to the media coverage and attention. Could the Mumbai attacks have spawned the Paris threats? What of other luxury tourist destinations? Are they also at risk?

One thing is for certain, people are on their guard.

The annual Sustainable Luxury Conference, hosted by Suzy Menkes, was supposed to be held on Dec. 3rd and 4th in New Delhi, but because of the Mumbai attacks it has been pushed back to March 25th-26th. “Publisher Stephen Dunbar-Johnson assured security will be at a maximum,” says WWD.

The good news is that the copycat violence dies down after a couple of months. It’s one thing to lose out on a lot of money, it’s another thing to have dead customers in your luxury store.