The Risk-Averse Style Industry
I recently read a Vanity Fair article about how style hasn’t changed much since the 1980s. The writer suggested two reasons for this industry’s lack of change:
1. People are too shocked by changes in other aspect of their lives:
“I think, it’s an unconscious collective reaction to all the profound nonstop newness we’re experiencing on the tech and geopolitical and economic fronts. People have a limited capacity to embrace flux and strangeness and dissatisfaction, and right now we’re maxed out.”
2. Big business is risk averse, and the style industry is increasingly run by big business: “Like any lucrative capitalist sector, our massively scaled-up new style industry naturally seeks stability and predictability. Rapid and radical shifts in taste make it more expensive to do business and can even threaten the existence of an enterprise.”
Fast forward to today, and I’m recalling a gift certificate to Barney’s that’s in my possession. But instead of shopping, I am on the NY Times site, digressing, and I read that Amanda Brooks, the former Fashion Director of Barney’s, is going to a farm in England for a year. Alright, click.
Interestingly, there’s an explanation about why Barney’s is close to bankruptcy:
“These last few years have been the golden age of luxury,” said Howard Davidowitz, a retail consultant. “During this golden age, Barneys has been a train wreck. It’s sort of undeniable. It’s almost in bankruptcy. Why is that?”
His theory: “From a merchandising point of view, they focused themselves out of business. If you have a big store, you have to have a wide range of customers. Otherwise, you won’t do enough business. They were way further out on the fashion curve, and that means much more risk.”
It’s likely just part of the Barney’s story. One way to fight it? Someone (i.e. an entrepreneur) needs to start a business that removes the barriers Etsy designers and other DIY types face when it comes time to effectively scale their best products. Scalability services could include marketing, manufacturing the design, and so many other activities that are feasible for experts but impossible for the uninitiated. If it were set in a way that was favorable to all parties, that could be a new engine for design spontaneity.
In the meantime, I’ll go use my gift certificate. Before it’s too late.
Most entertaining NYC apartment listing so far
Click to enlarge and to close.
SASSY!! Wicked APT: fun, cool of SOHO, exhilaration & Rush of GREENWICH VILLA
RAZZLE DAZZLE. Best part of SoHo with a smidge of Greenwich Village. The artsy chic, the vibrant pulse! Drop-dead location with all the art, fashion and nightlife scene you can handle.Quiet building, Stylish full of character street, adorable, fully equipped apartment, all the appliances.WHO?S YOUR DADDY! Bargains all over Manhattan!I’M IN YOUR CORNER. Just give the word, and I?ll start working some magic to hand-tailor your dream home around your specified requirements.My long arms reach the farthest, darkest corners of Manhattan, no landlord is safe. Think big, aim high. You think an apartment, I think a mansion. From the mundane to the sublime, from the comfy to the monumental. No studio too artsy, no condo too neighborly, no penthouse too flashy. Call today and I will make some time to give you some room.
“What I “discovered” was that happiness is not something that happens. It is not the result of good fortune or random chance. It is not something that money can buy or power command. It does not depend on outside events, but, rather, on how we interpret them. Happiness, in fact, is a condition that must be prepared for, cultivated, and defended privately by each person. People who learn to control inner experience will be able to determine the quality of their lives, which is as close as any of us can come to being happy.”
Flow, by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
“China babble has reigned among exactly the kinds of people who used to marvel at Hitler’s autobahns, Stalin’s steel mills, and Mussolini’s ability to make the trains run on time.”
“…she had known happiness, exquisite happiness, intense happiness, and it silvered the rough waves a little more brightly, as daylight faded, and the blue went out of the sea and it rolled in waves of pure lemon which curved and swelled and broke upon the beach and the ecstasy burst in her eyes and waves of pure delight raced over the floor of her mind and she felt, It is enough! It is enough!”
Four photos for Yom HaShoah
I’m taking a break from packing my Austin life into some suitcases, and my Facebook newsfeed reminded me of Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day).
This year I have time, so I am sharing four very personal family photos that tell one story of loss and rebuilding out of millions.
First: My grandmother Traute and her first husband, Joseph Seckbach, in Frankfurt around 1940/1. Joseph did not survive and left no descendants.
My grandparents, aunt and father had a special relationship with Joseph’s mother, who spent the entire Holocaust in Theresienstadt and lived into the late 1960s. When Joseph’s mother was too elderly to attend my father’s bar mitzvah, my grandmother brought a (very clunky) camcorder to her nursing home in New Jersey and showed her the film. (We still have that video. Old wedding videos not nearly as absurd / funny.)
Second: My great-grandmother Martha Katzenstein, mother of Traute, not too long before deportation. The contrast between this photo and several from her younger years reveal the toll that the progression of indignities in the 1930s took on her. She was taken away and murdered three months after she and my grandmother were sent to camps in Estonia. My grandmother said in her old age that this was the one death that she never managed to get over.
Third, my grandparents’ wedding in New York, 1949. Traute and Kurt Saul. Those near them are aunts, uncles or family friends, as none of their parents were alive:
Fourth and finally: My grandparents with my Aunt Marion and father George, mid-1950s, in Washington Heights:
It’s a single example of millions in a particular genre. I’m sharing because I believe that remembering ordinary lives that were cut down or miraculously continued prevents Yom HaShoah events from feeling hackneyed, as they are prone to even in the most well-meaning of hands.
Three weeks a year (Taken with Instagram at Thornwood, NY)
Betty’s Gone
Silly me for writing about a TV show, but I thought I’d share my thoughts with the larger Tumblr community after seeing last night’s episode of Mad Men. Ezra Klein lists a few reasons why he thinks Betty is terminally ill, so I thought I’d add to those:
1. Her expression, with eyes darting back and forth as she tells Henry it is a false alarm screams “lying”, besides not calling Don.
2. She eats Sally’s sundae afterward with such abandon that it almost seems like a gesture of fatalism. Who would care, after receiving such news?
3. It would be so retro and pre-liberation to keep one’s cancer a secret. Unlike the rest of the cast, she might still take that approach.
I guess we’ll find out in the next few weeks.
In the meantime, I’m coming to New York!
littleaugury:
Jean-Gabriel Domergue’s A l’Ombre d’une Jeune Fille en Fleur 1922
Twitter users, check out @LustreFound
It’ll explain why I’ve been a bit absent on Tumblr of late.
But seriously, everyday I am pleased to see who’s followed me. (Minus those annoying spammers and porn types, obvi. Their photos are awful.) For example, The Week just followed me. Yay!
If you’re a Twitter user who wants to read some interesting stuff, check out https://twitter.com/#!/lustrefound for links and also to see what I’ve been up to.
Cheers to all!
