Archive for November, 2007
Here’s a rather frightening idea. Experian – which provides value-added information solutions to organizations and consumers – says that it can use the information held in its consumer databases and tie it to clothing buying habits which have been tracked by a massive consumer panel to classify each and every adult in the UK according to his or her attitudes towards fashion and clothes shopping!
According to Experian, all forty-seven million of us fall into one of twenty female or fifteen male fashions types, which they’ve typified with labels like `hit and run shoppers’, ’show string style’ and ‘mainstream fathers.’
It’s not all just a Big Brother exercise though. This classification tool was specifically designed to help manufacturers, retailers and agencies to position products more effectively, by including factors such as whether people are experimental, conservative, style-conscious, practical, quality or purely cost driven when shopping for clothes, shoes and fashion accessories.
The service then clusters people to bring together, under one label, individuals who, on the basis of what Experian knows about them, have similar attitudes and behaviours across all their clothes buying habits.
Crowd photograph by victoria peckham, used under a creative commons attribution licence
November 30th, 2007
The British Fashion Awards are held annually in the United Kingdom and recognise those who have made the most outstanding contributions to British clothing design during the previous year. The awards include that of British Designer of the Year, as well as awards to the ‘most-fashionable’ celebrities in various fields. The awards are organised by the British Fashion Council and will be announced tomorrow!
Some of this year’s nominees for the Best Young Designer Award, sponsored by Swarovski are: Giles Deacon Gareth Pugh, Marios Schwab, Louise Goldin. Zoe Ball will host the awards, which include one for the Model of the Year - this year’s shortlist for that title includes Lily Cole, Agyness Deyn and Irina.
Interestingly, one of the shortlisted designers for the category Menswear Designer of the Year is Christopher Bailey for Burberry – a brand that has been vilified recently for its role in chav culture. Perhaps Burberry is heading back to the top of the high, rather than low, fashion stakes?
The awards aren’t just a bun-fight and a bit of fun (or though they are both of those things too) but a chance for promising young designers to get their foot in the door with the major design houses or High Street chains, meaning that British fashion continues to spread across the globe.
Burberry photograph by wearitdotcom, used under a creative commons attribution licence.
November 27th, 2007
The good, the bad and the downright weird:
Firefighters in Escondido, California, have designed their own Firestorm 2007 T-shirt which they are selling to raise funds for people who lost their homes in the awful recent wildfires in that state.
ThinkGeek have the perfect Christmas present for the lazy geek in your family. A WiFi detector T-shirt (yes really!) . The black T-shirt uses three AA batteries to illuminate a radio tower logo on the shirt when in range of WiFi, meaning the aforesaid lazy geek doesn’t have to open up his or her laptop to see if they are in a WiFi hotspot - it even fluctuates according to signal strength.
A former employee is suing Norsk Hydro because he wasn’t allowed to work in a T-shirt. Jerry Josleyn is claiming that illness meant he was unable to work in the long sleeved shirts the company’s health and safety policy insisted on because it was too hot and made him unwell. He says he told management that he couldn’t complete an eight-hour shift without getting dehydrated and ill, but they ignored his need to wear a T-shirt and instead gave him two warnings and then sacked him!
Firefighter photograph by ysplix, used under a creative commons attribution licence
November 23rd, 2007
Thirty rock gig T-shirts go under the hammer at Christies New York this month. They feature the mega-bands of the sixties and seventies: The Rolling Stones, The Yardbirds, the Beatles, the Doors, The Who and many others.
The T-shirt worn by a rock journalist to the 1967 Monterey Pups rock concert is expected to fetch an astonishing $4000 (£2000) not bad for a ten dollar initial investment! All the shirts on auction were featured in the Johan Kugelberg book “What goes around comes around: Vintage Rock T-shirts”.
As an example, a long-sleeved jumper that was created to promote the Stones’ 1973 album “Goats Head Soup” is expected to reach at least $4500 - only about a dozen of the tops were ever produced, making them highly collectable. And a top that was created to celebrate John Lennon’s Christmas hit “Happy Xmas - War Is Over” has a reserve price of $2000 - meaning that some of the shirts, created to be worn and thrown away, have outlasted the rock legends they celebrate.
Mick Jagger photograph by Sean Dockery, used under a creative commons attribution licence
November 20th, 2007
Yes. And then again no.
As an example, the Fashion Targets Breast Cancer T-shirts have raised more £6.5 million since their launch in the UK twelve years ago. Designed by Ralph Lauren, after his friend Nina Hyde, the editor of the Washington Post, died of breast cancer, the T-shirts have been around since 1994 and are now part of an international campaign in ten countries. Supermodels who have sported the ‘target’ logo include Yasmin Le Bon, Jodie Kidd, Elle MacPherson and Gisele Bundchen. According to the charity Breakthrough Breast Cancer, the money raised by the T-shirts over the last decade is proof of their success.
Katherine Hamnett has become for her protest T-shirts. In 1984 she wore a T-shirt bearing the legend ‘58% Don’t Want Pershing’ – which might not sound too shocking, except that she wore it to Downing Street for a meeting with the then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher! Since then she’s sent models down the catwalk wearing T-shirts shouting ‘No War, Blair Out’ in 2003. And this year she took London Fashion Week, and model Naomi Campbell, to urge people living in Aids-ravaged Africa to wear condoms.
But can her T-shirts change the world? She’s not convinced, because there is a danger with T-shirts (and marches) that they ‘give people the feeling that they have done something when they haven’t', she says.
The success of the Trevor Beattie FCUK campaign was astonishing. When it was first launched in 1997 the French Connection clothing store piled on profits as its tongue-in-cheek T-shirts, alongside advertising hoardings, captured our attention and sparked an equal quantities of buyers and protestors. But even they have moved on - a company spokesman says, brands and logos are no longer as fashionable. ‘It is very much not the market anymore,’ she added.
FCUK photograph by Xerones, used under a creative commons attribution licence
November 16th, 2007
If you’re watching the TV news and see a country that looks surprising pink – there is a reason. Almost the entire Thai population is wearing pink shirts in tribute to their 79-year-old king, who checked out of hospital this week in a wheelchair, sporting in a blazer and a pink dress shirt.
For about two years, Thais have shown their respect for King Bhumibol Adulyadej by wearing yellow—the colour that in Buddhist tradition symbolises Monday, the day of the week the monarch was born. Many Thais have donned yellow shirts every Monday since 2006, the year of Bhumibol’s 60th anniversary on the throne.
But it seems pink is about to become the new yellow in Thailand, and demand for pink T-shirts is snowballing because astrologers have determined pink to be an auspicious colour for the king’s 80th year. A royal emblem, using pink among other colours, was specially designed for his birthday and pink T-shirts went on sale earlier this year, just after the emblem was designed. The Thai Commerce ministry is preparing to produce 30,000 pink shirts in coming weeks to meet rising demand.
But some are warning that with some many people wearing the colour pink it could have repercussions. One fortune teller said Thailand, due to hold a general election in December to return the country to civilian rule after the latest army coup last year, could become chaotic if everybody started wearing pink on the same day. “We will be under the influence of Mars from next week to February, which will bring conflicts to the country,” said the fortune teller. “If many people wear pink, I am afraid that will strengthen Mars’ influence.” Mars, in Thai astrology, is associated with conflict and violence and it is believed that if lots of people wear pink it would strengthen those negative characteristics.
Pink shirt photograph by Katmere, used under a creative commons attribution licence.
November 12th, 2007
Women are increasingly taking senior positions in companies that have not previously had a female boss - and that means that the clothing rules that always applied are out of the window.
T-shirts have massive advantages for office wear; they are comfortable, they don’t look too severe, they aren’t difficult to wash and dry, they come in a wide range of colours and styles and they work if your office environment is hot and steamy or chilly air conditioning. But what does a gal team with her T-shirt?
The things NOT to do:
Don’t wear a V-neck if you want to impress people with your efficiency
Don’t wear pink
Don’t team a T-shirt with a cardigan or short-sleeved jacket, always go for full sleeves
Don’t wear red unless you’re the boss (red is a dominant colour and implies that you want people to look at you, if you wear it, there will be a tendency for people to think you’re asserting yourelf - that’s good if you’re the one in charge but bad if your boss starts to have the unconscious impression that you’re ‘dominating’ him or her).
Never wear T-shirt and trainers, it suggests you’re the sandwich delivery person, not a valued team member!
What to do:
Choose neutral colours
Either go for short sleeves or wear a jacket - too much arm on show suggests you’re looking for a day at the beach rather than the desk
Wear simple jewellery, and team your T-shirt with a dressy jacket or smart trousers
