Happy 2010 everybody. Happy New Decade, one that I predict will bring prominence to the individual. Not in a reality show kind of way but in the way that is truly meaningful and reflective of how the average individual is impacted by the decisions often made by a few individuals behind closed doors. Transparency, authenticity and engagement will be the rule of the day.

I am optimistic about 2010 itself simply because it’s also an election year, something that always motivates change for good.
Job Creation and solutions to the currently unacceptable high unemployment number in the United States will finally become Job 1 for the country’s leaders. If not, the Democrats are sure to lose their majority rule.

Social Media, already an exploding industry, will become formalized this year and I for one am very excited about it. The doors to so much will open as a conseqence of this movement for it’s sheer simplicity for reaching across the globe if for no other reason.

Luxury Fashion will reinvent itself because it has to and there is too much money being left on the table. Fashion has become democratized as a consequence of the web but also because of designer brands creating limited edition lines going into such places as Target and even Wal Mart–that’s unlikely to change. While some think haute couture is less defacto of luxury fashion, I think it will rise to a new prominence…it’s one of the few ways luxury can in fact distance itself from fast fashion. But new technology will allow for more instant and more improved results and services.

This decade will finally bring a new emphasis back to the boomer and marketer’s will begin targeting them once again with less emphasis on youth and more emphasis on reaching and speaking to the full range of demographics. Ethics (ageist discrimination) may be the initial motivation, but eventually it will be because of the bottom line. Boomers still are the wealthiest of the demographics and buy more than just drugs and financial services.

Speaking of which, financial services will be revamped….more of that focus on the individual. Much like broadcast television and mainstream media reinventing itself so too will the financial services industry. Serving the broader good will showcase itself back to the 60’s mantra of creating programs and policies where “all boats will be lifted.”

The anger and frustration that is throbbing beneath the surface of a self serving Congress, Mainstream Media, Celebrity Culture and CEO control will finally surface to the point that the person on the street gets their day in the sun and for more than the 15 minutes Mr. Warhol once declared. This time it will be to actually serve the person on the street and restore them to their rightful place in society. Systems like Twitter exemplify the emergence of the individual. People though like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett will be instrumental in making these things happen, even to the point of exerting influence in politics to create the change in focus. These two personify the movement. When they decide to focus on the average individual, they above all will benefit from it. The collaspe of institutions, companies, industries and governments at the end of this last decade has finally proven the individual has given up way to much power to the hands of a few and are back to claim it.

Ironically, while this report is macro to a fault, it’s all about things in importance being reduced to the most micro of levels: the individual.

Bookmark

First I object to calling the consumer a Post Crisis Consumer as we know the worst is still happening……

Secondly there’s some arrogance about the assessment of the trends; I don’t dispute the trends just some of the assessments. There’s a notation on a yacht club becoming blue collar because to join you have to actually work on the boats. I’d say this lacks some transparency. To turn being down trodden into something fashionable is only a continuance of surface living; but there’s hope. In due time the charade may become more real as Main Street takes flight, and we all know it will.

“>John Berzema on the Post Consumer Crisis:

If you’d like to know how to apply these trends to your company’s initiatives, call me.

Bookmark

I’d like to be the one credited with discovering this great new young talent, but she’s been working on accumulating her own credits, not to mention her own business, for a few years now. Cindy Brown of St. Louis not only has her own design business, LookyLuClothng but she’s also a student in Washington University’s fashion school.

Along with talent, Cindy has an eco conscience and a costumer’s mind so she created this incredible (the above image) from toilet paper rolls. Genius, huh?

But that’s not all, Cindy has a full page of her costumes on her website as well as her original designs and more eco fashion (she has another beautiful one made out of a shower curtain) that can be purchased online.

I’m proud to call Cindy a native of St. Louis, MO but I doubt she’ll be one for very long &;)

In full disclosure I’ve never met Cindy nor do I own any of her clothing……image by Michael Pearce of Black Magic Studio.

Bookmark

During Milan Fashion Week, as a way to boost the sustainable movement in fashion, Princess Charlotte Casiraghi, 23, daughter of Princess Caroline of Monaco, chose the Cittadellarte Fashion: Bio Ethical Sustainable Trend event to fuse fashion and the sustainable movement by featuring eco fashion as the theme of her and her partners first publication for The EVER Manifesto a publication focusing solely on ecology and sustainability and published only when they feel they have something to say or people to support.

From the New York Times: ‘ “It’s only recently that I’ve questioned the way that I’ve been consuming,” said Ms. Casiraghi, who mentioned as her personal inspirations the environmental activism of her uncle, Prince Albert II, as well as her own stint as guest editor at the eco-slanted Above Magazine. But, she added, “I haven’t been as conscious as I should have been.” ‘

Wow. That’s impressive. First of all that she’s admitted it or is even conscious of it, and secondly she admitted it in public. Well, that’s, um, I’m a little speechless. It’s laudable.

God knows the movement needs some support, especially in fashion, and from a grass roots level. If someone like Princess Casiraghi can be a spokesperson for the younger set to become conscious of anything besides twitter, facebook, youtube, Iphones, Ipods, and video games then I’m all for it!

Did her appearance overshadow the event? Who cares? If these posts get put on twitter, if her interest as a royal in sustaining our earth is highlighted and along with it what appeared at the Cittadellarte in eco fashion then it’s a win win for everyone, but most particulary our great green earth.

Let’s see what follows. Meantime, you can view the eco fashions created for the event at the Cittadellarte from September 23, 2009 through February of 2010. What’s really cool about this, is that the Cittadellarte founded by a Mr. Pistoletto, now 76, has labs dedicated to art, education, politics and ecology. He organized this project because he thought fashion needed an eco boost. (from NYT) “It’s about unifying aesthetics with ethics,” he said. “The mission here is what I call ‘The Third Paradise’ — the unification of technology with nature so that both can coexist in harmony.”

Mr. Pistoletto said sustainability had been a guiding principle for activities at Cittadellarte since its founding. But the topic is still relatively unexplored within Italy’s fashion industry. Eleven different designers were brought into the event to create fabrics, dyes, and garments all ethically and sustainably and of course they confronted the issues that come with the territory.

There are more than a few that come up in production….availability of materials is one because the science just isn’t there….and I hear that, frequently. It is, actually, but demand has yet to be built up enough for the supply to happen, for manufacturers to get behind it, and once that happens lots of things can be discovered and pricing can drop.

So, yes, by all means, enter someone as glamourous as Charlotte Casiraghi and things just might start to happen.

Cittadellarte Fashion

Bookmark

It may even be upon us.

Allison Arieff writes about “Rethinking the Mall” on her blog, ByDesign, (NYT, June 1, 2009), when she was recently invited as a juror to ICSC (International Council on Shopping Centers) for the organization’s inaugural Future Image Architecture Competition, which asked entrants to imagine the shopping mall of the future. She notes that some developers with eyes to the future have envisioned “technology not as some sci-fi fantasy, but as something that could enhance not only the shopping experience but environmental and social conditions as well.” Hmmm, practical application.

by Coleman Architects.

Such as the Retail Galleries concept by Colman Architects (above image) with “its astute analysis and expansion of the customer-retailer relationship. Spaces are delineated for services akin to personal shopping, but go much further. With a nod to current consumer recalcitrance, Colman proposes Accounting Suites, where representatives assist consumers in budgeting for purchases (and avoiding future debt). Recycling Depots deal with the euphemistically brilliant dilemma of “‘after-wear’ management,” while the One World Desk allows customers to donate a percentage of their purchase price to charity.” (we can thank Nau, Inc. for this last thought)

It’s a shame it’s come to that….I mean after all we’ve been through, can’t we reel ourselves in, yet? That said, the idea, one has to admit, has merit.

But there’s more. Cathy Horyn, NYT’s fashion critic, just posted parts of her speech given to the 6th annual Citi Women & Co. event hosted by the Times on her blog, On The Runway. In “The Bigger Picture” she was asked to give her views on fashion and the economy with a backward glance at previous recessions but an eye toward what may signal the future for fashion as a consequence of this current recession. Big job, but she managed to do it and do it well. If I may, in essence, she creates the call for designers to develop “fashion that is not history-minded—this has been the pattern of the past 50 years—but rather future-oriented. It involves thinking of the consequences of technology, and relating these changes more imaginatively to how we dress, how we shop—the design of stores, the potential of online magazines and stores.”

She also brings up the “consumer,” as if this notion is something recently discovered. But, as a colleague of mine and I were also discussing, people in industry, as much as they talk about it, really aren’t doing it–talking to the consumer that is. My colleague suggested it was because manufactuers were so “operations” oriented. Ms. Horyn indicated in this article as she has in past articles, that the fashion industry is too “marketing oriented,” creating the urge without having anything truly meaningful or relevant to today’s consumer behind it.

Another article that is circling the internet is from Forbes and how the internet has forever impacted the retailing environment, giving instances of retailers with business models that are working in spite of the economy (well that’s relative, but nonetheless they will come out okay), vs. those who seem to be flailing: Why Retailing Will Never Be the Same, by John Karonis and Madison Riley.

I agree with some of the observations Karonis and Riley mention, but I don’t agree that becoming vertical as a business model is for everyone. They too bring up the consumer as it relates to offering services. Again, like it’s a novel thought, but as it is currently being “not practiced,” these are at least examples of very thoughtful processes as it relates to “what will make the consumer happy and spend again.”

What I can agree on with everyone I’ve mentioned here, is being forward thinking and working at finding solutions, now that we have come to grips with the fact that the future isn’t what it used to be.

Bookmark

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.

Bookmark

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.

Bookmark

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?

Bookmark

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.

Bookmark

The New York Times published an article today about the much maligned but yet to disappear plastic bag. Seems it can be as hard to get rid of in deed as in principle, “Many Plans to Curtail Use of Plastic Bags, but Not Much Action.”

Then right on cue (pun intended), here comes Blue Q, like one of those new superpowers I blogged about the other day, to answer the eternal question:

Blue Q’s new line of eco friendly bags are made from 95% recycled post-consumer material (recycled plastic water bottles), the highest percentage of any woven polypropylene bag on the market.

Lately, my coin purse, which is a Coach wristlet, has just been irritating me…..continuing to get lost in my giant messenger bag mix of things, also indicative of the times don’t you think (losing money)? Imagine my surprise when I laid eyes on another of Blue Q’s eco friendly pouches, the coin purse:

Available for purchase at BlueQ’s website, the reuseable shopping bag (top) sells for just $12.00 and This Economy Sucks coin purse is only $4.00. Even their prices nail it.

To further encourage consumers to make environmentally conscious choices, a portion of the proceeds of this collection benefit The Nature Conservancy, the world’s leading conservation organization working to protect ecologically important lands and waters across the globe.

Bookmark