today in catalogs
God, I hate the new Free People catalog. I hate the faux-cigarette burns or whatever those are on the cover. I hate that there are
illustrations of clothes inside. I hate that the weathered, worn, clothes that you'd find on the floor at the Salvation Army often cost over $100. I hate some other stuff, too: Seethe with me, after the jump.
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minority report
A couple of days ago, a
post titled "Background Color" appeared on Racialicious. The jumping-off point is a photograph, by Alex Hoerner, from
Nylon magazine (at left), in which Beth Ditto from The Gossip is playing cards with the housekeeper in a motel. And yeah, the housekeeper is a woman of color. The post's author, Mimi, writes: "In the story that coalesces for me, studying this photograph, she has just been forced to play cards with a guest — not because she wants to, but because she could lose her job if she doesn’t. Nor does the game even feel like a break from her domestic labor; this sort of affective labor is no less taxing. In her mind (in the story I imagine about this editorial), she calculates how much longer she’ll have to stay and clean in order to meet her day’s quota."
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today in catalogs
The new Free People catalog arrived, and it is full of fugly: Mismatched patterns, awkward layers, misshapen knits and (yikes!) elephantine bell-bottoms. If you love sleek, polished, pretty and sophisticated clothing, you're out of luck! Oh, the catalog has a rather "international" look, to be sure, but it's not as "jet set" as it is "oppressed proletariat." Bolshevik babe duds have a place in this world — just not in my closet. Faux-rustic ensembles for the plebe in you, after the jump.
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today in catalogs
The May Free People catalog has arrived, and its "global" aesthetic has gone all '70s California girl. But the prices the company is charging for some of this retro boho? Enough to make your ironed hair curl. Oh, and here's a question: Is it okay to have a "Tibetan Festival dress" in a catalog called "Free People"? Overpriced pseudo-homespun "worldly" wares, after the jump.
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today in catalogs
Did you know that Urban Outfitters, Free People and Anthropologie, are all owned by
Urban Outfitters Inc.? But they sort of have their own distinct vibes.
Sort of. Free People skews younger, brighter, more gypsy chic; Urban Outfitters is edgy and dark; Anthropologie skews older, more expensive, more ladylike but still vaguely ethnic and crafty. But each catalog uses one blonde-haired model and one brunette — and they love the "exotic" backdrops. And really, they're all shilling the same damn crocheted, patterned, flowy, unique yet ubiquitous clothing. Given a page from one of their newest catalogs, can you tell which brand is being represented? A quiz, after the jump.
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today in catalogs
Did you see
Darjeeling Limited? The one where the
brothers go on a trip through India, carrying
luggage made by Marc Jacobs for Louis Vuitton? Think the people who put together the Free People catalog did? They chose India — Jaipur, to be exact — as the setting for their new photo shoot. And chose a sunny blonde (à la Owen Wilson?) to star. Sixty-eight dollar T-shirts, four hundred dollar necklaces and brown people as accessories, after the jump.
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today in catalogs
The Free People catalog is beautifully shot, but the half-naked teenage girls and $400 shoes give us pause. Hey, $400 shoes have their place — but when everything else in the catalog is relatively well-priced, it's just odd. Let's take a look, shall we?
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supply chain gangs
In theory, our only beef with retail chains having bloggers is that Abercrombie & Fitch doesn't have one whose ex-boyfriend he can IM about how it might have worked out if he weren't so overt about his gayness. Anyway, Urban Outfitters spawn brand Free People, like American Apparel
before it, has a blog. And guess what! Like American Apparel it blogs about hanging out with its factory workers! Today's post
introduces us to Kit Yee, who "works for one of the factories we work with" in Hong Kong and just paid a visit to the Urban Outfitters corporate campus in Philadelphia:
She saw a lot of Philadelphia during her stay, including a visit to Franklin Fountain on Market St. She loved the egg cream!
How cute! But why do we have an inkling most people working full-time at the world's leading hotbed of hipsterexia would never actually themselves go to Franklin Fountain? Maybe because we, um, just
know.
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Jezebel
Shipwrecked!
The November issue of Vogue features a "Field Of Dreams" photo shoot starring Natalia Vodianova, her husband and kids. In the opening spread, the family is standing in a boat which is moored on dry land. For those of you keeping count, this is the fourth time since August we've seen a double-page spread of models posing in a boat on dry land or very shallow water. Glamour and Bazaar did it in September; Free People did it in the October We The Free catalog. Are wooden boats a trend? Are we gonna see them at Forever 21? (Click the image at left to enlarge and to see the complete fleet of ships.)
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The Week That Was
