Since I brought up supply chain and packaging, I need to use Aladdin as an example again of what can be done. They print their labels on kraft paper for their e Cycle ™ products. And it works. It’s eye popping, simple…..get’s the message across and it continues to communicate what they are about, which is providing eco friendly solutions and keeping us hydrated without guilt all at the same time (all of their recycled, recyclable product is BPA free.

Hey, works for me!

P.S. Gotta comment on the fact that their mug and travel mug are microwaveable (left and middle). How cool is that?
For more info on what theypre doing and how theypre doing it, visit Aladdin’s website, www.aladdin-pmi.com.

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It’s become clearer to me over the last year that people need some sort of scale that represents the dialog surrounding the production of environmentally friendly products, buildings, businesses. The facts are muddy given the degrees by which a company or the products one produces or that we as consumers purchase are considered environmentally friendly.

While this scale is by no means exhaustive, it is my attempt at trying to clarify those degrees or at least create the debate surrounding it. In other words, it’s a beginning, albeit a primitive one. Until the Environmental Protection Agency creates certification not unlike what the Food and Drug Administration does for what we ingest, we will have to do our own monitoring.

Consumers and people in industry continue to speak about Greenwashing….marketing that says a product or service is green but isn’t really. Maybe it takes more energy to create that product so negates it’s greeness, or the product isn’t based on any green properties per se only that it is to be kept for a long time (not disposable in other words such as bespoke tailoring or even haute couture), so where or how to judge the eco friendliness of your choices? The Green Scale is meant to create debate and help create better definitions associated with our progress. And, progress, not perfection, is what we are looking for.

Aladdin has a proprietary manufacturing process called e Cycle ™ which takes product originally headed for landfills, i.e., cottage cheese containers, yogurt containers, dip tubs and so on, breaks it down then uses it along with its recycled plastic to create its mugs and travel mugs which are also recyclable wherever plastic water bottles can be recyled. So, some percentage of post consumer industrial waste is now the buzz phrase. In Aladdin’s case it is 25% post industrial consumer waste and 75% recycled product that makes up their BPA free water bottle, mugs, and travel mugs.

In the case of Design Ideas’ EcoGen, their proprietary technology that has created plastic that looks and acts and feels (even tastes like) plastic but is in fact biodegradeable in composts so comes even closer to being perfect, don’t ya think? Except one must basically plant it or put it in soil for the proper bacteria to come together before it can break down. Tossed into a landfill, Eco Gen’s product won’t break down and there’s the rub.

But, to my knowledge, no one is doing that technology.

Bed Bath Beyond and Container Store both carry Eco Gen’s bath products. This season Eco Gen added onto to this product line with desktop product. And while this is a wonderful move, another equally important one is the issue of price. Eco Gen says their product pricing is being reduced by some 30%. The company spokesman didn’t say where that reduction was coming from, but one can guess…..economies of scale are being achieved but also in general prices coming down wherever they are getting it produced. This helps. Once more of that happens then the larger plastic guys whose product is more commodity and mostly based on price can also take advantage of the technology. (That green will just become a deeper color green….it may still be a number 9, but it’s a stronger color of green, right?).

Henry Poole & Co. 2007 ForbesTraveler.com “London’s Bespoke Tailors.”

And then there are the conversations that took place in the Conference on Sustainability in India for the fashion industry. Suzy Menkes interviewed Stella McCartney who is a leader in the fashion industry on living and producing environmentally conscious products (she uses no real leather or furs and uses organic cotton), also made reference to bespoke tailoring like what one finds on Seville Row in London. Something someone keeps for 10 years or more, (haute couture belongs in this bracket as well depending on the designer, I think). With the continuing furor over disposable fashion created cheaply with cheap fabrics and even cheaper (some think sweat shops, and who really knows?) labor purchasing better quality goods that just last longer and aren’t meant to be replaced must be considered as a serious part of the equation (green scale ™). Made once, kept for 10-15 years, perhaps put into Good Will and becomes part of someone else’s wardrobe for maybe another 4 years suggests another type of sustainability.

I can not engage in this conversation without bringing up China and the energy it is taking to bring goods in from China. The supply chain to me is where much of the focus needs to go (and on packaging) to help create more enviromentally friendly businesses and products. It’s as much a part of the Green Scale ™ as the creation of products that break down in composts or are recycled even with post consumer waste. We can’t ignore China as a resource obviously but we can use more local manufacturers or craftsmen to make our product…..this too has to be placed on the Green Scale ™, but where? On it’s own? As part of a company’s basket of green practices? Nau, Inc. might have been a 10 on this Green Scale ™, but they filed. Granted they were purchased, and thankfully continue today, however, their story is one that just indicates how expensive perfection is and how and why we can’t get their immediately. Progress not perfection.

And so, the conversation continues.

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Form-fitting, removable, washable, universal-sized slip covers for lampshades, FROCKZ allow a consumer to transform an existing lamp into a design statement by simply slipping a FROCKZ over their lamps existing shade. FROCKZ saves lampshades otherwise destined for landfills.

“As long as the frame is good,” says co-inventor/founder Shelly Dick, “it doesn’t matter if the fabric has long since rotted or if it’s torn, faded or dented. If the frame is OK, Frockz will give new life to it.” The idea was born out of a friendship between Ms. Dick, an attorney, and Wanda Guadarmud, a business manager (now the other half of the Frockz team) for a network of physical therapists and their shared frustration for a lack of contemporary and modern lighting resources near their homes in Baton Rouge, La..

Frockz ™ patented stretch fabric process for covering any sized lampshade.

Available in 2 shapes, drum or cone, and three sizes each, small, medium or large the designs are basically divided into four categories: traditional, animal print, modern and fun. Made out of a special stretch fabric, the covers conform to practically any shape and at prices ranging from $26.00 to $34.00 are an affordable alternative to buying a new lampshade. For more info or to purchase your very own visit Frockz’s website.

It’s an innovative idea to be sure, and, I’ve seen first hand, they work. Very easy to use and very colorful Frockz definitely fulfils a need. Wonder where it falls on my theoretical Green Scale?

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Live blogging the Home and Housewares Show in Chicago, exhibitors have decidedly and overwhelmingly used color to offset these recessionary economic times.

The theory is manufacturers and retailers must give the consumer a reason to buy and color can immediately outdate a product and make it necessary to purchase on the basis of color.

Color has always been used, though generally cautiously by most housewares manufacturers and retailers, i.e., Target…Wal-Mart, but without question, color is now THE statement. Case in point is Whitmoor, above. They’ve taken an ordinary ironing board cover and used great eye popping colors to enhance its utility.

I can tell you I don’t need an ironing board cover, but this is an inexpensive (relatively speaking) purchase that is going to make me feel good. That dull green (that I purchased a few years back in hopes of updating my everyday routine) can now be replaced by a HAPPY COLOR.

Other show trends are focused on cooking (as a large percentage of consumers have decided fine dining is expendable); so celebrity chefs are here, and gourmet cooking utensils now rule.

Lauren Greenwood, my pr contact at the show, also pointed out when showing me through the media rooms selected products, that manufacturers have also responded to these recessionary times by creating products and offerings to enhance a new DIY sensibility…..where you may have farmed out the cleaning to a maid at one point in time, you are now doing it yourself and manufacturers are enhancing that everyday utilitarian product.

My favorite of these is ALICE Supply Co., a self described hip housewares company who is putting fun into home chores by using HAPPY COLORS and designs (stripes and camouflage) on plungers and hoses and dustpans and broom handles, oh my!

Maria Barnes and Raili Clasen are the brains behind ALICE Supply Co.. Friends since college, Maria and Raili both came out of the fashion industry having worked for Roxy and Quicksilver. Using those connections and those sources, ALICE Supply Co., now all of two months old, is bringing that same hip cool formula from the surfer world and making waves in a formerly staid part of the housewares industry. You can find their product currently at Fred Siegal in Los Angeles and Lisa Perry in New York. Their website is www.alicesupplyco.com but is in the process of being designed so is coming soon.

As to the GREEN category it’s still alive and well but it looks to have receded to some degree in importance (with the exception of water bottles which proliferate at this show) while manufacturers decide how best to define themselves in the green/sustainable environment. There is a focus on more durable long lasting product as opposed to throw-away disposable products. This in itself can be defined as part of the green movement. But I can tell, overall, the lingo of what is green and what is not or where a product falls on the GREEN SCALE (a term I’ve coined) is yet to be clarified.

In an effort to help not only the consumer but other manufacturers clarify their position on the sustainable movement, I’ll be using Aladdin and Eco Gen (I blogged about Eco Gen launched at last year’s housewares show) as the best of the best when it comes to walking the walk.
Check back soon for the details.

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This collection designed by Edward Van Vilet for Moroso and previewed for Milan, is some cooly calculated combination of patchwork, geometrics and kid fun (thus the ’sushi’) Plus those colors!

It hits a lot of cords at one time which is why I give it a heads up. Edward claims he used a spirograph for the print design. I knew I recognized that from somewhere (I think from my daughter’s tool kit when she was a kid). So he’s gone beyond the usual stars and dots. Fabulous thinking and an even better result.

For more images and a video of the designer’s thought process see designboom.

(he was influenced by Marrakesh, too!)

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Adele.No longer just a compaign slogan, but a reality, the change we were all longing for is upon us, but in ways we haven’t expected or maybe even desired. That’s the beauty of change though isn’t? It’s different than what we had. Some, many, actually fear change. It disturbs the status quo which can only unearth a whole multitude of sins.

For instance, yesterday I listened to someone giving a short motivational talk and he said, “unless you overcome the fear you have within whatever it is you are seeking will only return even if what you get what you were looking for you succeeded in achieving.” He was quoting from a book citing research that the individuals who created this abundance of white collar crime overwhelmingly had one thing in common: a fear of failure.

So, even though they accumulated millions in personal wealth it was never enough for them. They went on to in some cases embezzle money from their company leaving their employees without jobs and without 401 k’s to keep feeding their fear of failure when all they had to do was get over their fear of failure. Think of the pain they could have spared thousands of people if only they as individuals faced their own fear which had nothing to do with anything but themselves.

It’s exciting to see some of the long sought changes in the status quo coming to fruition. Like some of these instances in financial fraud being uncovered and what and how the bulk of the middle class, in some cases whole industries have arrived at where they (we) are today.
It’s more than exciting, it’s a hoot!

So many honest hard working people left without retirement, without anything because of this fear that drove their leaders over a cliff taking the security of thousands with them. And as it turns out, these aren’t isolated instances. Frankly, Madoff is probably only the tip of the iceberg.

But that’s really only half the story isn’t it? These instances of financial fraud don’t cover the other half which are those who haven’t been swift enough to adapt to the rumblings underneath their wings that said as customers we aren’t going to support you anymore. You aren’t giving us what we want and what our lifestyle needs and demands.

I fault retailers for this as much if not more than manufacturers. The retailers these days have had manufacturers under control. They essentially tell them what they think their customers are clamoring for, that’s not across the board, however. Manufacturers enter in partnerships in some cases with retailers and there is an even exchange in communication. These can represent the most successful of outcomes…..some manufacturers….. many, have just circumvented the retailer altogether going straight to the web and their customers are finding them.

Like the story of Adele, the British singer who won the Grammy for Best New Artist. Adele circumvented the establishment, and American Idol and got her start on My Space. She is a legend on more than one level and she is only the tip of this iceberg. Adele is the flip side to Bernie Madoff and his ilk. She is the flip side to GM and those who have become too big to fail. Sorry Adele if I am putting too much on your plate, but really……Adele is one of the superpowers I wrote about a few posts ago. She took the place of Amy Winehouse, someone we all put our faith in who showed she wasn’t up to the task. Sorry, Amy, next? Arrive Adele.

It’s a cautionary tale for many of us, the point arriving in some cases too late. Wonder how the history books will define this era? Obamanomics as opposed to Reaganomics? Hardly. I remember the 80’s. The kinds of shifts we are experiencing right now are far more significant than what transpired in the 80’s. In the 80’s there was an almost coming of age thought process as the many boomers shifted from the wild ones to the drivers of commerce.

Here we are having massive global meltdowns, whole industries, jobs disapppearing and especially the American way of life threatened. Truthfully, it’s because we all became too complacent. I can almost feel the fat globules on my thighs thickening thinking about it. Perhaps in the end we will all have found this a necessary evil, a metamorphisis that will only result in better things to come. The process hasn’t been, isn’t fun but necessary for real progress and sustained growth.

I am not advocating throwing the baby out with the bath water. Some things in this country actually worked and served us well. Manufacturing, to my way of thinking, is actually one of them. I am not of the mind that we should be shifting all of our manufacturing overseas.

Is that a strategy that serves only to feed the beast of someone’s fear of failure, in the process ridding a country of the tangible forms of progress? In the Industrial Age, the wagon trains gave way to the railway and whole industries grew as a result.

In this great period of upheaval, what represents the wagon train and what represents the railway? What’s the marker? The internet vs the retailer?

The wagon train came to be obsolete as an example. Will the retailer become obsolete? In other words traveling did not become obsolete, so neither will shopping, shipping did not become obsolete, we still have to get from point A to point B so the railway made all kinds of things possible that the wagon train just wasn’t capable of: speed and safety are two things that immediately come to mind. It’s probably not too far out of the realm to consider that one day we will be able to just dissolve cellular matter to instantaneously get things where we want them to be. Star Trek for real.

We are in the midst of a great shift, we’ve had many starts and failures along these lines in our attempts to incorporate the internet and technology into our human lives.

At the heart of all change though, it is the human that drives it, not the other way around. And to that end humans are fallible. To create a God out of Google is just one more mistake this world will be making since well there’s always Microsoft…..and to create a God out of Twitter is akin to creating a God out of Juicy Couture: in other words our love affair with it will take many shapes and forms before it becomes a permanent part of the landscape.

image from chromaisa

We need to identify our permanent markers. There’s a shift alright but where to? For the sake of the retailers I hope they are giving this matter some real thought because life is no longer what it used to be. What many of us are going through right now is so significant that our minds and our habits and thought processes will be permanently altered. To think that that is not the case means that you, someone, is still in that bubble and it’s just a matter of time before it bursts. So don’t kid yourself. This time around, there isn’t a soul on this earth who won’t be impacted by the change that is upon us. It may be a matter of time before it all shakes out, but mark my words, we are in the process of an evolutionary change.

Maybe this is too sweeping of a statement to make, and yet, whoever would have thought that there would be no Lehman Brothers, possibly no General Motors? Do you really think you are safe from the changes that are taking place?

Let’s not be afraid. Just embrace it, and change accordingly. My words are as much to the current captains of industry and goverments as well as to the individual on the street.

Exciting isn’t it?

To that end, Trendbites will endeavor to chronicle those changes as they emerge anywhere and everywhere. It’s such an historical moment, and this time I’m not going to miss it.

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An economy shot to hell, colors on the Paris runways for fall/winter 09 (with exceptions of course…there are always exceptions) reflected the mood and were largely black, black and black…..but with texture.

The fabric of the day? Leather. Not just the supple buttery kind, but leather like you’ve never seen leather before. My guess is that you’ll be buying some variation of black leather sometime this year, but if you want something besides leather in black, well there’s that too.

Prada Waders (Milan, not Paris….still leather)

Hermes

Dries Van Noten:

Honorable Mention for color (beyond leather):

Haider Ackermann

Miu Miu

Disclaimer: I select only some pieces to support my collective theories but these examples are by no means exhaustive. We are fortunate to have such a bevy of talented designers not only in the United States but around the world who had excellent collections despite this bleak economic forecast. Sadly there is genuinely not enough money currently nor appetite to support the abundance of talent that is out there.

The question remains how much of our consumption will come back or how much is on a temporary hiatus or how much will never (hopefully) return, as in maxed out credit cards for $3,000.00 “IT” bags?

Gone. Vanished…..just like the Madoff billions. Which begs another question, how much did the fashion industry benefit by the Madoff Ponzi scheme and its victims, (in addition to Wall Street’s addiction to derivatives) helping to create an economy that was in fact based on a House of Cards?

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My sentiment on the Paris Runway Shows. Now over, it’s all such a blur.

Opinions vary almost as much as the various collections presented themselves on what was good, what was hot, and what was not, with the exception of one….and that would be Alexander McQueen (Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garcons has critics as well as fans). Rave reviews from all around, McQueen took on the establishment, his peers and himself for being too referential in their collections from season to season. This season, as an almost too easy way to dialogue with the current recession, the eighties came back almost with a Twenties Roar but may crash in the end as a theme for fashion. Perhaps this was just a designer’s way of giving into the recessionary times, too overwhelmed by it to think of much more than the last time this all happened, ahem, the 80’s, Duh. Talk about self defeating.

This awkward 2009 FW season came with all the potential landmines known to the industry given the economic precipice the globe seems to be teetering on, but that did not stop the fashion industry from doing their part in trying to tip the scales in their favor. While the future of many in this industry remains unknown at least to the general public right now, one thing is clear…..there is still a market for creativity and innovation perhaps now more than ever.

Behold Alexander McQueen Women’s FW 09: (for more see Style.com and Eric Wilson’s NYT’s article, McQueen Leaves Fashion in Ruins)

Headpiece by Philip Treacy for Alexander McQueen FW 09
Top image, Street Movement Blur, from Righthandbits.

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Comme des Garcon Womens FW 09, the Telegraph.

The Japanese obviously have much to teach us. They appear to have learned something from their hard times, something the American, while resilient, sometimes refuses to do. Time will only tell on that. We have a way of making lemonade out of lemons.

Junya Watanabe, Comme des Garcon and Yohji Yamamoto spoke to this point in history, I thought, in ways I’ve yet to see in Europe. Most of the designers went basic in some way, obviously sensitive to these times, but the Japanese decided to be dark and have some fun with it at the same time.

Junya Watanabe focused on comforter style outwear tres dramatica:

Wigs, designed and made in Japan by Kastsuyo Kamo. Video by Hillary Alexander of the Telegraph.

Yohji Yamamoto worked his magic on the winter coat but became zen master of the evening coat:

images Style.com

And Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garcon (top image) has created a midruff jacket, coat, and sweater, among other army issued jackets and coats unlike any other invoking the rationed silk stocking at the same time as (more than) a wink and a nod to understanding hard times:

images Style.com

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Inparticular I am talking about Raf Simons for Jil Sander, Prada, and Versace, all three stellar examples of how quality will indeed pull out the bucks from those who can still spend.

Jil Sander Milan FW 09 Prada Milan FW 09

Versace Milan FW 09 and Mariesa Tomei Oscars Feb 09 in Versace

Raf Simons used the mid century ceramicist Pol Chambost as his inspiration while Muiccia Prada went to the country for hers. Both showed incredible expertise in tailoring yet let the woman shine through. Donatella Versace on the other hand still keeps sexy as her main thrust (for lack of a better word) but as with Mariesa Tomei’s dress for the Oscars, this designer is showing her chomps when it comes to detail. Rock On Donatella, Rock On!

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