jump!

by olima

Story of Opening Ceremony

‘What do we love? We love traveling, we love shopping, we love eating, we love magazines, we love music.

So what can we do to incorporate all these loves into, you know, a business?’ ”

They decided to open a store. They would name it Opening Ceremony after the Olympics (another of their loves), and they’d focus on a different country each year, pitting its young and established designers against young American designers. The gimmick of friendly competition—tallied by sales—was meant to spur designers to create their best work. Mostly, though, it was an excuse for Humberto and Carol to use their passports.

found a pro bono business adviser at Pace University to help with their prospectus.

Humberto and Carol had saved up $10,000 each, and they managed to get a matching loan. “We thought it was so much money,” says Humberto, laughing. They rented a former linen store at 35 Howard Street, on a quiet block mostly devoid of retail.

Conscripting friends for manual labor.

For the first six years, they kept the cash registers in the back room, just so monetary transactions wouldn’t be on the customers’ minds.

That store, along with the online business, was what turned them into a global phenomenon, but they insist it was really just born from a feeling of deep disappointment when they went to Japan on a buying trip. “You imagine you’ll find all these stores that are so mind-blowing, and we didn’t,” says Humberto. “We decided to open up our own version of what a Japanese store should be.”

“I think they’re filling a niche,” says Sevigny. “Where’s the department store for young people?” As in all Opening Ceremony outposts, the range of offerings is high, low, chic, strange—things you’d never wear and things you suddenly can’t live without.

“You can see that we are personally interested in every single thing that we represent in the store. I think if you can ask the question ‘What makes this so great?’ to every single thing that you buy, then chances are you have the right answer.”

http://nymag.com/news/features/establishments/68501/index2.html

REASONS TO LOVE NEW YORK # 8. Because This Is a Town Where Gabourey Sidibe Can Be an “It” Girl

As far as starlets go—a young woman in possession of that rare ability to walk into a room, command head-turns, and make her own fun wherever she goes—Gabourey Sidibe is not a usual suspect.

What she is armed with is an unshakable confidence. “People say I got this role and now I’m awesome, but the truth is I’ve always been awesome.”

“She charms people,” says Andrew Saffir, who invites her to his mover-and-shaker-stocked movie screenings for the Cinema Society. “When actors see her, they literally run for her. ”

“She defies all prejudices of mass-market stardom,” says Village Voice columnist Michael Musto. “No one ever looks or talks to her and says, ‘Who’s that again?’ ”

REASON TO LOVE NEW YORK # 11-13. Because There Are Now Three Women on the Supreme Court, All of Them From New York

one, perhaps, was inevitable (it’s a big city); two you could still call a fluke. But for all three female Supreme Court justices to have been born and bred in New York—that, frankly, starts to look like more than an accident.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan may have grown up under different circumstances and in different boroughs, but all of them are recognizably, and in some cases iconically, New York gals.

Say what you want about New York women: They’re not timid. Not in speech, not in opinions. And not in their fashion choices, either. As Goldberg notes, who else but three New York women would find the classiest, most formidable way to spend the rest of their lives in black?

eileen fisher lab store
new store idea

collection
+ samples (many not available elsewhere)
+ best picks from the current and previous year’s line
+ gently loved recycled items- proceeds benefit charitable initiatives designed to help empower girls and women.


eil

pared-down elegance, essential chic

sleek, clipped hair, minimal makeup, a daily uniform of white T-shirts, black flat-front Kenzo trousers which she loved and had the design copied and recopied for years, and maybe one of her bamboo-wrapped crystal, ballet flats and men’s cardigans.

stripping her life of what wasn’t necessary

“Definitely a slow approach can limit you, but it allows you time to learn from your mistakes."

“Holding onto your money for dear life is the most important thing. If you have to make your own labels to save money, then do it. You just have to gut it out.”

- Billy Reid, 2010 CFDA winner

if you want new emotions,

and really big emotions,

you need new techniques.

-ferran adria

friends and partners

they created "their first joint venture in a decade of friendship.

It’s another area of a brand they’re creating.

Maybe their friendship is a brand.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/12/fashion/12WINGMEN.html?ref=style

Jil and Amber

Tell it like IT IS

“People think of love as a binary thing; you’re either in love, or not.
But love is a process.”

CAMERON

JIL AD

PROPORTION

Pants by Phoebe

Amber Valletta

lee dalby basketmaker

from a business perspective, there had to be a better way. The system needs to be corrected. Flamboyant marketing budgets, unsustainable rents, saturation sales targets and the reckless pursuit of growth creates a toxic bubble that as we all know, inevitably bursts.

Something has to give. Usually it's the quality of the raw materials.

josh goot for target- vintage

he did an all merino line for target

clothes and clinton

MODERATOR 1: Okay. Which designers do you prefer?

SECRETARY CLINTON: What designers of clothes?

MODERATOR 1: Yes.

SECRETARY CLINTON: Would you ever ask a man that question? (Laughter.) (Applause.)

MODERATOR 1: Probably not. Probably not. (Applause.)

"When a man walks into a courtroom it's rare for someone to say, "Oh, look what he is wearing." (Laughter.) But if you walk into a courtroom, or any young woman walks into a courtroom, people are going to notice. And that will be an additional requirement that you have to meet." - Hillary Clinton

more theories about why many alpha women are unmarried or divorced

Sexual attraction in the 21st century, it seems, still feeds on 20th-century stereotypes. Now, as more women match or overtake men in education and the labor market, they are also turning traditional gender roles on their head, with some profound consequences for relationship dynamics.

There is a growing army of successful women in their 30s who have trouble finding a mate. there is also a small but growing number of women who out-earn their partners, giving rise to an assortment of behavioral contortions aimed at keeping the appearance of traditional gender roles intact.

Some men have more fundamental issues. One 38-year-old Italian manager complained that her boyfriend suggested she change jobs because he no longer felt able to “seduce her” after her salary rose above his.

It is amazing how even many liberal-minded men end up having sexual and emotional difficulties being with more obviously successful women.

Anke Domscheit-Berg of Microsoft Germany, who has stories of past would-be boyfriends fleeing after seeing “director” (of communications) on her business card, put it this way: “Success is not sexy.”

Dating sites seem to suggest that highly educated women have more trouble finding a partner than women in more traditionally female jobs. “Men don’t want successful women, men want to be admired."

Men who earn less than their partners struggle with two insecurities: “They feel socially and personally vulnerable. Socially, they go against millennia of beliefs and stereotypes that see them as the breadwinner. And the success of their partner also often gives them a feeling of personal failure.”

So are ambitious women condemned to singledom? Or are things changing as the number of female high achievers inches higher?

Ms. Kiechel in Paris says her boyfriend actively encourages her career and brags to friends how intelligent and hard-working she is. Ms. Haag and Ms. Domscheit-Berg both earn more than their husbands and report that their men actually enjoy watching the waiter’s reaction when they say their wife will pick up the tab.

Three bits of advice for well-paid women: Leave the snazzy company car at home on the first date; find your life partner in your 20s, rather than your 30s, before you’ve become too successful. And go after men who draw their confidence from sources other than money, like academics and artists.

“The more different their activity from your own, the better, because that makes an immediate comparison harder.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/01/world/europe/01iht-letter.html?_r=1&ref=katrin_bennhold