Trend report for Fall: Mini-bags

WhoWhatWear

Great Articles: Invasion of the Pop-ups

"What if there was a bowling alley in the middle of a busy transit station?"

 

Why not.

 

And so far, this "What If?", "Why Not?" Culture has brought us to this point in reality, where you'd actually find that bowling alley in the middle of the Grand Central Terminal. The question is: is it wrong?



 

Grand Central Terminal: Bowling Alley?

Cubic Shopping: Uniqlo on the streets

  

While the article below will tell you that it can affect tourists and children, I believe that this pop-up culture has actually made the retail industry more exciting. It gives a different dimension to the lifestyles of people today. Whether it's a pop-up clothing store or a retailtainment idea, the good-to-know fact is that these new, hip, places-to-be have actually considered the effective life-span that they've always had. So that, on the retailers end, should the product be just a fad, the expenditures on permits, rent, fixtures costs dont go over-board, and the short span of time becomes a  safety net should they prefer to call it quits sooner than expected.

At the same time, this pop-up culture becomes a great incentive as well for shoppers/ consumers. With the product availability limited to a span of time, there's more reason to buy now rather than later. Also, there's a continued expectation for newer things and more exciting purchases from the same brand in the future.

Below you will find, a copy of the article from the NYTIMES mentioning involved retailers, how they executed their concepts, and  how much this new trend has grown in the past few months. 





Invasion of the Pop-Ups: Time for a Smackdown



By NEIL GENZLINGER

Somebody get me a large mallet.

There’s an epidemic in this town that seems to have reached crisis proportions in recent weeks, and it cries out for a whack-a-mole-style response. This has turned into the Summer of the Pop-Up.

Pop-ups — temporary business or cultural enterprises that materialize in empty storefronts, vacant lots and such, flaunting their own ephemerality — are hardly new, but suddenly they are everywhere. So are the news releases announcing them, which is the first clue that this phenomenon has lost any guerrilla chic it might once have had.

Roberta’s, the revered Brooklyn restaurant, currently has a pop-up version of itself in the East Village, associated with the mobile BMW Guggenheim Lab on urban life. Nearby, the Alphabet City Dolly Film Festival was scheduled for this weekend, billing itself as “a pop-up pub crawl and movie marathon.” (If “pop-up” and “pub crawl” seem to you to be a contradiction in terms, you are not alone.) Someone put a temporary bowling alley in Grand Central Terminal the other day for a teenagers’ competition, and same-sex weddings were performed last month in pop-up chapels in Central Park.

For a study in just how out of control this phenomenon is, stop by the northern end of the High Line park at West 30th Street.

As you come down from the park, an ugly stretch of blacktop (or, to quote the park’s Web site, “a vibrant and diverse gathering space for the neighborhood and the city at large”) is home to a pop-up food court called the Lot, which materialized a few months ago. Beside the Lot is a pop-up roller-skating rink sponsored by Uniqlo, a Japanese clothing concern. And now, beside the pop-up skating rink, two cube-shaped stores have popped up. Last weekend they were selling T-shirts and cashmere sweaters.

That’s right, a pop-up has sprouted a pop-up, which has in turn sprouted two more pop-ups. Whack, whack, whack, whack.

I’m not saying that pop-ups can’t be worthy.

Pop-Up SoHo on Wooster Street, an art exhibition staged by an outfit called the Pop-Up Museum of Queer History, has compelling stuff in it, some of it by young people from a program at the Hetrick-Martin Institute.

The institute promotes a kind of tolerance for alternative versions of sexuality that did not exist a few decades ago, a contrast that was startlingly evident on Tuesday night when the pop-up hosted an evening featuring performances by the students: poetry, plays, even a fashion show.

As the students performed, on a wall nearby was an artwork called “Sip-In” by Tim McMath depicting a protest in 1966 by three gay men challenging a discriminatory passage in regulations governing liquor service. The New York Times put this headline on its article about the protest: “3 Deviates Invite Exclusion by Bars.” Sheesh.

So, no, it’s not that pop-ups are inherently evil. My objection is, in part, to the term itself, and its sudden ubiquity. So many people are tossing it around now that it has achieved “hipster” status: that is, as with that word, merely using it labels you a shameless bandwagon-jumper.

And who picked this term, anyway? I’m not sure which usage came first, but why continue to label something with a phrase that also describes the second-worst thing on the Internet, the pop-up ad?

Computer aficionados knew better when they went searching for a name for the No. 1 worst thing on the Internet. “Hmm, we need a way to describe this gremlin that’s destroying our computers. What word has really negative connotations in the real world? I know: ‘virus.’ ” Perfect.

But when the tables were turned, the mental calculation went inexplicably awry. “Hmm, what phrase can I use to make people want to come spend money at my temporary T-shirt cube? I know; I’ll pick something that annoys the heck out of everyone who has ever touched a computer keyboard: ‘pop-up.’ ” It’s akin to naming your skin-care salon Leprosy.

Beyond the annoyance factor in the term itself, though, I’m concerned about the effect the pop-up phenomenon is having on two of our most vulnerable populations: tourists and children.

Tourists have enough trouble finding our most permanent, most visible attractions, as evident from the fact that you cannot linger in Midtown for five minutes before someone asks you where the Empire State Building is.

It won’t take many exchanges like this one before our tourist industry goes the way of garment-making and meatpacking:

“Excuse me, I’ve come 4,000 miles to see the Archery and Anchovies sports-booth-plus-pizza parlor that I read about last year. Can you direct me to it?”

“Archery and Anchovies? That was a pop-up, pal; it shut down last October. I think there’s a Pinkberry there now.”

And don’t children have enough impermanence in their lives, what with parents getting divorced, pop-culture heroes being jailed, pets dying, television shows being canceled and so on?

“Mommy, please tell me that the Gallery of Post-Proto-Feminist Fabric Art won’t disappear like Daddy did when he ran off with my nanny.”

“Well, Timmy, it won’t be in this same spot — I think they’re putting a Pinkberry there — but they’re sending it to a farm upstate where it can live with all the other pop-up galleries.”

“WAAAAH.”

We need to put a stop to the pop-up infestation now. A City Council committee on the issue needs to be created immediately. Ad hoc, of course.

 



Fashion Forecast for Pre-fall 2011

Here's a round-up of all the pre-fall trends that will be taking effect next month!

Sartorialist



Fashionologie



Style.com

Listen Up Men: How to Wear it Right

Accessories

Matching socks with shoes and slacks

There seems to be an ongoing debate about whether socks should match shoes or slacks. I believe GQ has said socks should match slacks, but does that apply only to certain color combinations? I wear khakis and black shoes with tan socks. My friends say the socks should be black to match the shoes. Please advise.

My advice is, never listen to your friends. If you’re going for a very formal look, you should wear black socks with a black suit, navy with navy. If you like, you can match your socks with your trousers, as you’re doing. But matching socks with your shoes isn’t such a smooth move. It will make your beautiful, expensive shoes more invisible, or you’ll look as if you have bootees on. But socks can also go their own way. If you’re going sporty, you might have them reflect the color of your shirt or sweater. Or you can feature independent socks, like argyles, as long as they’re part of the same spectrum as the rest of your gear. If you’re wearing a suit, the socks could reflect the color of your tie or pocket square. Or they could be another color altogether, as long as it matches the rest of your look in tonality and subtlety. There’s no reason at all that socks should be a solid block of color. Among my favorites are my navy socks with small white polka dots, a pair of brown herringbone socks and some black socks with small red Devil heads on them. They add a little spark when I’m wearing my black suit and a black shirt. At least I won’t be mistaken for a priest.

Read More http://www.gq.com/style/style-guy/accessories/200010/sock-slack-matching#ixzz1TpuG3Tlh

Listen Up Men: How-to Wear It Right

From the StyleGuy/GQ

 

 

How much your shirt cuff should cover your watch?



From Sartorialist



 

 

 

Q: I recently purchased a Rolex Submariner, which I have been wearing with my suits. I wear Brioni and Zegna dress shirts, and they do not cover my watch, especially the French-cuff shirts. Should the cuff cover the watch, or is it acceptable to have the cuff ride above the watch?

A: I suspect your shirts may be a little short in the sleeve. Your cuffs should at least half-cover the watch. While shirt collars come in half-inch increments, sleeves come in one-inch increments, so sometimes it’s hard to get them just right. If the next size longer seems too long, you might try custom shirts. They’re not much more expensive than off-the-rack, especially since you’re wearing these brands, anyway. Otherwise, it’s a fairly simple matter to have your shirtsleeves altered by a tailor. Many stores will do it for free. Some dandies actually wear their watch over their cuff, but to get away with this you have to be a mighty sharp dresser, have slim cuffs and wear a dressy watch. A Rolex Submariner is expensive but not dressy. The only cuff it should be worn over is that of a wet suit.

Read More http://www.gq.com/style/style-guy/accessories/200011/rolex-submariner#ixzz1Tpr3h7FN

Great Articles: London Underground

As more and more trends are beginning to declare a new culture for "hanging out", such as the previous article I sent in about pop-up parties in New York, the exponential growth in re-inventing shacks, old factories, and shady restaurants to new relaxed nirvana for different kinds of sub-cultures is truly starting to spark my curiosity in the future of retail.

While the past 10 years has revealed the globalization of retailing, the trend of its evolution is starting to seem as if it jumped completely off-track from the previous mass-market, big-branding retail (i.e. Starbucks) phenomena into a new kind of its sort. Something more niche, less branded-just simple retail created and located in places that directly target the kind of people they envision in their store.

Also, while this retailing trend is still very young, the fact that it is slowly starting to appear in different cities around the world (Manila included) is definitely a factor to be considered. The article below is a blog post is another example of this new retail culture, one that is currently taking place in a building beside and beneath a flyover:

Source: NYTimes

London Underground | Canal Plus

By ELIAS REDSTONE

June 30, 2011, 3:13 pm

Folly for a Flyover, located beneath the A12 highway in London, acts as a cafe as well as a venue for local artists.

A rather peculiar building has appeared next to a canal in Hackney Wick, London. Just outside the future Olympics site, and shoehorned beneath the underpass of the A12 highway, “Folly for a Flyover” is the work of Assemble, a young collective of designers, artists and architects. The red brick structure — with a roof that peaks out between the eastbound and westbound lanes of highway above — was constructed by volunteers from reclaimed and donated materials. On the weekends the Folly houses a cafe, workshops and performances. Adventurous visitors can rent handmade rowboats from a small dock on the canal. In the evenings, from Friday to Sunday, there is a bar and an adjacent auditorium space underneath the highway, which hosts a series of screenings curated by the Barbican Art Gallery as part of its current exhibition “Watch Me Move: The Animation Show.”

Assemble came together in 2010, motivated by the need to break away from the formal language and processes of architectural practice. Its first project was the transformation of a derelict garage on Clerkenwell Road in central London into a temporary cinema, “The Cineroleum.” The Folly is more ambitious — and more public. It came into being thanks to the Bank of America Merrill Lynch Create Art Award — set up to support participatory art projects — and will no doubt give people a new perspective on this underused and underappreciated location.

Studio Weave and Somewhere finish the Floating Cinema’s construction.  It will be moored at Folly for a Flyover on July 9, prepared with a full day of programming.

Another canal-side project popping up this summer is the Floating Cinema. Designed by the architects Studio Weave (who also designed the very long bench in the seaside town of Littlehampton) and the artist duo Somewhere (Nina Pope and Karen Guthrie), the cinema-on-a-boat will travel around London with a program of intimate on-board screenings as well as larger, outdoor waterside events.
And, in a beautiful moment of synchronicity, the Floating Cinema will be moored next to the Folly for a Flyover on July 9, with a full day of programming.

Great Articles: "Dress Codes in New York Clubs: Will This Get Me In?"

I've always been curious as to what makes today's "happening" places tick. Coming from behind the lines of media, people have come to agree that it is the beautiful people that can make any club- dingy or not- one of the popular choices for weekend game-planning. For example, here in Manila, we know for a fact that the great clubs/lounges are those actually financially and reputationally-backed up by Manila's socialites. And in knowing so, everyone flocks to these clubs with the (subconscious or not) thought that if those kinds of people party here, I must party here.

Today, however, I found myself reading an article that feeds new insights into the same topic- begging one to ask:

What if it's not the beautiful people, but the beautifully dressed people that actually make the place a hotspot?

Below is an article from the NYTIMES that talks about "dress codes" as the new standard of hot retail spots in NY. Apparently, its not who you are but what you wear that will get you in.

P.S. Does this also mean that Fashion is so powerful today that you can use it to dictate who your market ( and only market) will be?

Source: NYTIMES

July 27, 2011

Dress Codes in New York Clubs: Will This Get Me In?

By DOUGLAS QUENQUA

GENTLEMEN who prefer Ed Hardy shirts, those dragon-happy hallmarks of “Jersey Shore” chic, will not be getting into the Mulberry Project, the subterranean speakeasy cocktail lounge in Little Italy, any time soon. If you prefer your dress shirts colorful and boldly striped, don’t bother with the club Provocateur, in the meatpacking district. Baggy, low-slung jeans your style? Lots of East Village bars may be O.K. with that, but there will be no Continental for you tonight.

 Dress codes have long been the secret language of New York City night life; fluency can mean the difference between an epic night out and a humiliating kick to the curb. “There’s nothing that dresses a room like a crowd,” said Ian Parms, an owner of the Mulberry Project. “The ambience of the experience is the people around you, so it’s important for us to keep those people fashion-forward and eclectic and interesting and engaging.”

 Beyond being inherently snobbish, such selectivity has invited charges of racism. In December, the New York City Commission on Human Rights opened an investigation (still in progress) into the Continental, a sports bar in the East Village on Third Avenue, for its “no baggy jeans or bling” policy, which civil rights groups called a barely concealed ploy to keep out blacks. Trigger Smith, the owner of the Continental, denied that he was trying to exclude people of a certain race. “It just so happens that more minorities wear these” kinds of clothes, he told The New York Times in January. “There isn’t a racist bone in my body.”  One reason some may have found the Continental’s policy hard to swallow is the bar’s otherwise obvious lack of interest in fashion. On a typical Saturday night, the Continental’s mixture of frat boys and barflies sports an unironic mélange of ripped blue jeans, grubby backpacks, baseball hats and sneakers. (And for what it’s worth, the crowd was about 30 percent black on a visit in April.)

 But Mr. Smith’s defense illuminates a truth about dress codes at even the most exclusive velvet-roped clubs: they are frequently intended to keep out a certain type of person. The clothes themselves are secondary.

Michael Satsky, proprietor of Provocateur, at the Gansevoort Hotel (but now on a brief summer hiatus), admitted that he strived to keep his bar free of the randy bridge-and-tunnel boys who prowl the neighborhood on weekends. Luckily for him, they apparently self-identify through their shirts.

“We do not do plaid, and we don’t do stripes,” he said. The ideal Provocateur guest “doesn’t have to wear crazy stripes on his shirt to draw attention to himself.” (Plaid was just fine, however, at the closing night of Beige in the East Village a few months ago, where nearly every fashionable gay man who showed up seemed to be clad in a gingham shirt.)

Mr. Satsky suggests that his male patrons wear “a blazer, a solid button-down or a solid sweater.” For women, shoes are key. “Minimum five-inch heel,” he said. “Christians are our favorite,” he added, referring not to the faithful but to Christian Louboutin, the designer known for his red soles. Jimmy Choo and Christian Dior are also welcome. If the crowd in Provocateur on any given night is a gauge, being European, gorgeous and at least 5-foot-10 is good, too.

An injunction against flannel, shorts and other typical brunch fashions helps convey the message that the sparklers-and-champagne bacchanal known as the Day and Night Brunch, which until June was held at the Plaza, is for socialites and financiers, not hotel guests in search of French toast, said Daniel Koch, who runs the weekly party with his twin brother, Derek.

“You get guys in from L.A., they think a brunch is a brunch,” Mr. Koch said. “We have to say, ‘Look, dude, this isn’t what you think it is.’ You can’t rock a T-shirt here unless you’re a rock star.”

(How does one dress for a brunch that resembles a Russian oligarch’s stag party? Ladies should consider brightly colored dresses or skirts and avoid cleavage-baring blouses. “You don’t want that in your face at brunch,” said Mr. Koch, who now holds his brunch at different locations each week, including the Hamptons and St.-Tropez. Guys “need an edge; wear a bow tie or, if you have to, go out and buy a $400 pair of sunglasses.”

New Yorkers fleeing the city in summer may think they’ve earned a vacation from judgment, but they’re wrong — particularly at South Pointe, a hot new dance club in Southampton, N.Y.

“We cater to the ‘authentic’ Hamptons crowd,” said Ben Grieff, an owner, “people who are actually from the Hamptons, not just people who drive out here to see a big D.J.” (Mr. Grieff clarified: “From the Hamptons” refers to people whose parents had a summer home there as a child, not to duck farmers.)

Keeping out the time-share crowd means a strict (though unadvertised) policy forbidding vacation wear like flip-flops or shorts. Hamptons wannabes tend to “just show up after dinner thinking everything is going to be fine in shorts and sandals,” he said. But “our friends dress right out of a Ralph Lauren advertisement.” What does that mean? “Tapered jeans, dress shoes, colored button-downs, women in elegant sundresses.”

The days when “jacket required” was enough to ensure a better element of patron began dying after World War II, said Anne Hollander, a fashion historian and author of “Seeing Through Clothes.” As fashion standards relaxed and television and movies took a more central role in American culture, people ceased to dress according to class and began dressing according to character.

“Today, people dress in costume,” she said. “We wear what we wish to be seen as,” whether that’s an emo kid, a Guidette (a female Guido) or a gangster.

Hence, the surest way for proprietors to create the “right” atmosphere in their clubs is to keep out the crowd they don’t want by banning an essential element of their style.

 Ryan Dusheiko, general manager of Riff Raff’s, a new tiki-themed club in the Flatiron district, put it simply, “It’s not what you’re wearing; it’s who you are.” (Guys confused by the upscale tiki-lounge concept are encouraged to wear “a nice sports coat, a really great flower-print shirt underneath, maybe a matching pocket square,” Mr. Dusheiko said. “We respect individuality.”)

 For patrons, such flexibility can be either liberating or paralyzing, depending on their level of comfort with fashion. Who knows what you can get away with where anymore? Lauren Cosenza, a makeup artist who lives in NoLIta, said she has learned to dress for the neighborhood, not the club.

 “Different neighborhoods reflect different tribes,” said Ms. Cosenza, who can be found in clubs like GoldBar, in Little Italy; Griffin, in the meatpacking district; and XIX, in NoLIta, four to five nights a week. For example, the hipster bars on the Lower East Side prefer “natural fabrics, lots of skinny denim on boys and girls, a lot of draping fabrics and muted colors.” The East Village is “more rock ’n’ roll with punk undertones” (try ripped or distressed denim). “Meatpacking is your party dress, your five-inch heels, designer bags.” In SoHo and NoLIta, she said, anything goes.

 “I once saw a woman in GoldBar wearing pajama pants,” Ms. Cosenza recalled, insisting the woman pulled it off, thanks to the right accessories — a “cool tank top and thick shoes”— and tons of confidence. “To walk into a place and know it’s ridiculous but I couldn’t care less because I’m rockin’ my pajama pants,” she said, “that’s very SoHo.”

 Of course, many club owners are loath to admit they have any dress code at all. They posit that anything works as long as you wear it with confidence.

“There are people who can put together a T-shirt and jeans and sneakers and make it look as good as a three-piece suit,” said Eugene Remm, who oversees Tenjune and SL in the meatpacking district, “and there are people who can wear a three-piece suit and make it look sloppy.”

 “Fashion is totally personal now,” Mr. Remm continued. “So it’s kind of a joke when someone says, ‘This is our dress code.’ It’s how a person holds himself up. It’s all personality.”