On the west side of one of the busiest stretches of the westernmost highway in the United States, Danielle Hutchinson, owner and manager of Lark and Meadow boutique in Lincoln City, Oregon, walked around, pointing out her favorite items in the shop on a sunny Saturday afternoon in March.

“We like to cater to our locals and to people who are visiting here,” Hutchinson said of her typical clientele. “It’s mostly locals here right now, but that’s why we wanted to open in February so we could get the locals’ opinion. I think it’s really important for the people who live here to have input on our store.”

Hutchinson said she’s been working on opening her own store and dreaming of a boutique like Lark and Meadow for a long time. Originally conceiving the idea for a children’s clothing store, the concept for the store eventually evolved to include items for women, as well as for children.

“My family and I have lived here now for just over five years,” Hutchinson said. “We moved here from the [Willamette] Valley, and I felt I was constantly going online for shopping and paying for shipping or we were needing to go to the valley to find unique things that weren’t at our mall here.”

With more than 20 such boutiques between the two most populous cities in the Willamette Valley, Eugene and Salem, Hutchinson’s problem on the coast was indeed presented a problem to fashion consumers on the coast. A quick Google search will yield only a small handful of stores that aren’t chains or big box stores, and with only four or five in Lincoln County, the boutique stores similar to Hutchinson’s are small in number.

“I decided to bring it to our community,” Hutchinson said. “I thought it was something people in the community could appreciate, too.”

The clothes Hutchinson sells in her store come from big warehouses in Los Angeles, she said, although she still works with small shop owners in other areas, as well. Her passion for collaborating with other small business owners like herself pushes her to find shops that are doing good things for their communities.

Some brands Hutchinson carries in her store, like Kate Quinn and Wee Little Rascals, she sources from other small shop owners. Other brands, like the women’s line Sugarlips, is often sold in places like Nordstrom and Urban Outfitters, Hutchinson said.

“I love that we sell Pacific and Pines,” she said. “They’re actually local to Lincoln City, so they are a husband and wife team that are just amazing. They have really adorable stuff.”

Pacific and Pines isn’t the only brand in the store Hutchinson finds adorable. Some of Lark and Meadows infant clothes, like the line Miss Rose Sister Violet, makes unique baby items Hutchinson describes as pieces that can be passed down through the family.

“I really like heirloom gifts,” she said, holding up a tiny dusty pink baby onesie with lacy frills. “I think they’re really special to be able to gift someone something that could be passed down for generations. I think that’s really cool, and this is one of those products.”

Some of the most popular items in the store for women, according to Hutchinson, is a line of lacy bralettes often worn by young women to events and on nights out. The styles carried in the store are similar to a line of bralettes from Free People, and indeed bear a striking resemblance to the product sold by the popular brand

“They’re from a brand called Wishlist,” she said. “I like them better because they’re padded and adjustable, unlike the Free People ones, so they really can just make you feel very beautiful, even if it doesn’t show.”

While only a month old, business at Lark and Meadow is doing well, the boutique owner said. Owning and operating a business like hers has its challenges in a town of 8,000, she added, but Hutchinson’s customers appreciate having a store like hers in town.

“I want to bring the community something really great we haven’t had in a long time,” she said. “A lot of big stores have squashed little stores, and I think we’re coming back. We’re coming back with a vengeance.”

SAO PAULO – According to multiple international news sources, including The Associated Press, 26-year-old model Tales Soares died after falling during Sao Paulo Fashion Week on Saturday.

The young man was presumably ill, although attendees in the audience at the Ocksa fashion show appeared to think he tripped on a shoelace before falling face-down on the runway, which was believed to be part of the performance. Medical responders rushed to Soares on the runway before he was transported to a nearby hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Representatives of the South American city’s fashion week released a statement expressing shock.

“SPFW has just received the news of the death of model Tales Soares,” the organizers said in a statement. “We offer our sincere condolences to the Soares’ family.”

Soares was signed to the modeling agency Base MGT, according to Agence France-Presse, and no cause of death was available as of April 27 at 8:30 p.m. Pacific Standard Time.

On the cover of the latest issue of French Vogue, a female model is dressed in a long-sleeved pullover sweater and a straw hat with visibly no garment covering the model’s lower half. The pants-less look, while artistic and fashionable, also made waves with how controversial it seemed to many social media users, particularly on Facebook.

While most readers responded with mocking or jokey responses on the post, many readers voiced support for the cover photo, pointing to the artistic nature of the image and the magazine itself. Some, however, called it vulgar or mocked the image.

“Cheapest vulgarity and bad influence to the youth,” read one comment from a Facebook user, Nery Ginylalerlu.

“Did a dingo eat her pants?” read another comment from a different user, Soleil Tamturk.

“She donald ducking it,” read another comment.

Still other readers asked thoughtful, critical questions about the image, with one reader commenting, “I thought this was a joke. What is the artistic meaning behind this?”

While some readers commented on the post with simply memes or gifs, a majority of the comments were from those making a joke and poking fun at the image of the half-dressed woman sitting in a car. Despite the apparent nonsense of the photo, since it’s unusual to see anyone in such a state of undress in a car outdoors, some appreciated the artistry of the image itself.

The mixed responses seemed to be by and large juvenile, with seemingly grown adults expressing discomfort to some degree over the woman’s lack of pants. While some felt the photo to be inappropriate, it could very well be said the responses on social media to the photo were inappropriate themselves.

In this instance, there seems to be no strategy that could be employed without resorting to censorship, trolling or fraud. Any photographer or editor to cover up a model because of this type of reader feedback would be resorting to censorship, and anyone intimidating critics on social media into silence would be engaging in intimidation.

Similarly, if someone were to create a fake social media profile simply to express support for a post of this nature and drown out the naysayers, that user could very well be engaging in fraudulent or unintended use of social media. In a case such as this, staying the course and listening to both critics and supporters is the only thing a creator of this image could do.

Jane Aldridge, of Sea of Shoes fame, successfully made the jump from utilizing the blogging platform to communicate fashion information to using social media to further engage her readers and entice new ones — her Instagram profile, in particular, attracted 206,000 followers, while her Sea of Shoes Facebook page attracted almost 38,000 fans.

The Texas native started the fashion blog at the age of 15, telling Fashionista in 2017 she thought it would last for two weeks. The blog, which celebrated vintage fashion, quickly hooked readers and took off, eventually evolving into a business that brought Aldridge collaboration opportunities, private dinners with the late Karl Lagerfeld and an appearance at the prestigious Crillon Ball in Paris, where she was inimitably dressed in a one-of-a-kind Chanel gown.

“When something that crazy happens to you, you don’t know how to take it,” Aldridge told reporter Fashionista’s Tyler McCall about her rise to fashion blogging fame. “It was all so surreal to me, but I was like, ‘I guess I’ll run with this opportunity.’”

Since Aldridge made the blog her career in lieu of attending college, a collaboration with Coach’s executive creative director Reed Krakoff, a forging of close working relationships with the likes of Nicolas Kirkwood and modeling gigs with Barneys New York have all made her and her blog all the more prolific. Teen Vogue’s fashion news director Jane Keltner de Valle told Texas Monthly’s Jason Sheeler in 2012, “Jane was an early pioneer, and now there are a bunch of imitators. She doesn’t follow trends — part of that comes from being in Texas and being isolated.”

Among the content Aldridge regularly posts on social media to engage and attract followers, her shots of modeling vintage clothes and posts containing industry-fueled headlines seem to remain the most popular. Photos of recent buys, old favorites, her work environment, romantic shots of her and her husband and an image of the recently deceased Karl Lagerfeld are some of the most recent images Aldridge posted to her Instagram account, pulling in readers who follow her for the clothes themselves but also informing followers about recent happening in the fashion industry.

“I have no words,” she said in an Instagram post dated Feb. 19 in which she posted an old photo of Lagerfeld. “Karl, what will fashion be without you? Truly the end of an era.”

Perhaps in a fitting tribute to the man who encouraged her on her path to fashion blogger fame, Aldridge, just days later, uploaded an image of herself walking down a paved walkway in a black and white woven Chanel jacket, paired with a black striped crop top, ripped jeans and ivory-and-black Chanel pumps.

“Another favorite look with a black @chanelofficial jacket @chanelofficial pumps given to me when Chanel had their incredible pre-fall 2014 collection here in Dallas,” she wrote on Instagram. “Maybe most special things I own.”

While Aldridge curates an appreciation of vintage fashion in her followers by developing a career out of documenting vintage fashion and the recent work of fashion’s most notable designers, she is by no means the only fashion influencer to publish valuable material about fashion or the fashion industry. BryanBoy, who Aldridge credits as an influential fashion blogger, also forged a career documenting and appreciating fashion from an outsider’s perspective and was instrumental in making fashion accessible to the masses via the blogging platform. The fashion “insiders,” too, hold considerable value in communicating fashion information. Hamish Bowles, with a decades-long career in fashion and a long tenure as International Editor-at-Large for Vogue, brings a great sense of history to his work, posting content on social media about anything from old Hollywood costume design to the work of couturier Charles James to fashion events staged by the some of the fashion industry’s most influential personalities. Suzy Menkes, too, is a prolific fashion journalist who brings great perspective and context to her fashion reporting. Despite there being numerous designers, models, photographers, journalists, brand managers and other fashion influencers to follow to know everything about fashion, a mix of fashion journalists and bloggers is often a good place to start to develop perspective of and knowledge about fashion, much like Aldridge has in her work developing content for Sea of Shoes.

Bibliography

1. McCall, Tyler. “A Decade in Digital: Jane Aldridge is Grateful Sea of Shoes Has Never Changed.” Fashionista. Sept. 4, 2017.  https://fashionista.com/2017/09/jane-aldridge-sea-of-shoes-interview. Accessed Feb. 23, 2019.
2. Sheeler, Jason. “The World At Her Feet.” Texas Monthly. April 2012. https://www.texasmonthly.com/articles/the-world-at-her-feet/. Accessed Feb. 23, 2019.
3. Aldridge, Jane. Untitled. Instagram. Feb. 19. 2019. Accessed Feb. 23, 2019.
4. Aldridge, Jane. Untitled. Instagram. Feb. 20, 2019. Accessed Feb. 23, 2019.

Levi Strauss & Co. became a publicly-traded entity for the second time in the company’s history, according to The New York Times, something the stock market celebrated by allowing traders to wear denim on the trading floor.

The jeans-filled floor, set against a backdrop that included a sign reading “No Blue Jeans Permitted On Trading Floor,” was an ironic sight in an institution that usually sees financial and business professionals don black, gray and blue suits. The ensuing social media posts, which ran the gamut from amused to strictly informational, lent some perspective into what must have been an interesting sight.

“I guess there are exceptions for everything,” read one tweet from Aman Patel, a finance professional who was present for the proceedings Thursday.

“Amazing week for the NYSE,” read another tweet from another financier, listed on Twitter only as Mike P. “IPOs are back in 2019 and it started with a bang.”

Sapna Maheshwari of The New York Times priced Levi’s shares at $17 at the onset of trading Thursday, which rose 32 percent by the end of the day to $22.41 a share. The surge brought the value of the company up to $8.5 billion.

The Associated Press traces the denim company’s history back to the 1850s, when Levi Strauss himself started a dry goods business. Two decades later, the AP’s Anne D’Innocenzio writes, Strauss and Jacob Davis, a tailor, received a patent to create jeans with metal rivets to make the pants stronger.

The company went public for the first time a century later, but the Haas family, Strauss’s descendents, took the company private in 1985, according to D’Innocenzio. The decision to open up the company to the public again, Levi’s chief executive told The New York Times, was made to take advantage of the brand’s renewed strength and expand in categories like women’s apparel and international markets.

“The job is not done,” Charles V. Bergh, Levi Strauss’s chief executive, told The New York Times on Thursday. “But this is a big step forward and an acknowledgment of the progress that we’ve made.”

The surge in the company’s valuation was met with enthusiasm by those inside the company. Levi’s on Friday posted to Instagram with a photo of the front of the New York Stock Exchange, with the caption “Today, the NYSE lives in Levi’s.”

The company also promoted the latest development on Friday on LinkedIn, with a post that read, “See more from yesterday’s first day of public trading for our company!”

Bibliography

1. Maheshwari, Sapna. “Levi’s Goes Public, With Jeans On The Trading Floor.” The New York Times. March 21, 2019. Web. Accessed March 23, 2019.
2. Patel, Aman. “I guess there are exceptions for everything.” Twitter. March 21, 2019. Web. Accessed March 23, 2019.
3. P., Mike. “Another amazing week for the NYSE.” Twitter. March 23, 2019. Web. Accessed March 23, 2019.
4. D’Innocenzio, Anne. “Levi’s Soars in Return to Public Markets.” Associated Press. March 21, 2019, Web. Accessed March 23, 2019.
5. Levi Strauss & Co. “Today the NYSE Lives in Levis.” Instagram. March 22, 2019. Web. Accessed March 23, 2019.
6. Levi Strauss & Co. “See more from yesterday’s first day of public trading for our company.” LinkedIn. March 22, 2019. Web. Accessed March 23, 2019.

Vogue writer Emily Farra’s take on designer Stella McCartney’s role in the fashion industry takes McCartney’s long-standing perspective on animal-free design and presents it to the reader through the lens of information the writer gleans from the designer herself.  Farra details McCartney’s latest work in her Feb. 15 piece, “‘I Need A Few More Colleagues Linking My Arm’ — Stella McCartney Sounds Off On Sustainability, Faux Leather, And The Lack Of Honesty Around Both.”

McCartney’s view, as told to Farra, is that despite the claims leather and other animal materials are better for the environment because they’re natural materials, the chemicals used to treat those animal skins to wear is just as bad, or worse, than the chemicals used to produce synthetic leathers and other materials. As Farra writes in her Vogue piece, “Chances are you hadn’t thought about it that way, because I hadn’t, either. It felt like nothing short of an epiphany.”

This take on the production of faux materials and the waste inherent in the production of these fabrics, while not exactly new to McCartney’s design approach, moves the story of McCartney’s vegan fashion further along and ties her attitudes on design to one of her latest creative endeavors. This effort, which saw the cruelty-free designer partner with The RealReal, is in line with McCartney’s perspective on the waste inherent in fashion production, especially that of fast fashion. Reusing and recycling garments, McCartney said, contributes to what she called the “circular economy.” Given McCartney’s past efforts to support the upcycling of fashion, this partnership is consistent with the designer’s business approach.

The profile serves to be an informative piece containing information the reader will likely already know about McCartney and her business, and offers new insight into her perspective on sustainable design and consumer ethics. Considering the writer approaches the piece knowing criticism exists over the production of faux materials, Farra considers McCartney’s point in a balanced light. With so many designers continuing to use leather, exotic skins and other animal-derived fabrics, McCartney is one designer who stands alone in her approach to design and to the fashion business—something Farra reports with great fair-mindedness.

PACIFIC CITY — Nancy Horning, owner and manager of Lucky Beach Boutique in Pacific City, Oregon, is new to town, but that didn’t stop her from displaying her clothes in a women’s club fashion show in February.

“We want to look good, but we don’t want to be [sexualized],” she said of her and her customers’ style. “My tagline is ‘My shop is for the women who don’t want to shop at Buckle, but are too young to shop at Chico’s.”

The new Pacific City resident got to display a few of the items she sells in her store at the Nesko Women’s Club monthly meeting on Feb. 15, roping in a few of the women’s club members into being models during the fashion show she staged for the women in the organization.

The opportunity to let women in the area know she’s there and open for business, she said, is challenging in the rural coastal community.

“It’s hard to advertise here,” she said after the women’s club meeting. “There’s a little newspaper and there’s Facebook, but a lot of people don’t know that I’m here even though I’ve lived here for eight months.”

She added, “I wanted to take this opportunity to let the locals know that I’m here.”

Horning opened the boutique in June 2018 after relocating to the Oregon coast from Mill City, just east of Salem, hoping to settle in a rural coastal community and open up a little boutique catering to the region’s women. So far, she’s attracted numerous women from the Tillamook County area, selling garments, jewelry and accessories popular with women in the community.

“I like to say it’s casual clothes,” Horning said. “You can dress it up or play it down, so I would say that’s more what I carry. I have more classic things.”

The aesthetic of Horning’s shop embraces an updated take on traditional wardrobe staples, with Horning looking for pieces inspired by looks worn by famous women in fashion history.

“I tend to like classic Jackie. O, sixties-ish things, so that’s what my eye is drawn towards,” Horning said.

The Oregon resident buys pieces for her shop from places as far away as New York, Los Angeles and Las Vegas, but sticks to styles she knows will sell in her shop.

“I like to find things that, when you go to Pacific City, you go to Lucky Beach and you’re going to get something that may not be everywhere,” she said.

Being from the Pacific Northwest and having lived in other parts of the United States, Horning sees the main difference between Pacific Northwestern fashion staples as a lot more casual than what women wear in the southern states or on the east coast, two regions of the country in which she’s lived.

“In the Pacific Northwest, it’s more outerwear, more activewear, which is great because that’s what we do here,” she said. “But in the south, it’s more about dressing up, going out for wine or going out with friends. It’s just a different lifestyle.”

East Coast styles, too, vary from Pacific Northwestern styles to some degree. Blazers, polo tops, and ties, among other items, are more popular on the Atlantic than they are on the Pacific.

“I miss a man in a tie,” she said. “It’s more dressed-up. We’re very casual over here. We have hoodies, sweatpants, leggings, so it’s just more stylish over there.”

The clothes Horning sells at Lucky Beach, she said, hopefully are items her customers both feel and look good in in an environment where casual wear is so prevalent.

“In the Pacific Northwest, a lot of women hide behind their hoodies and don’t dress up,” she said. “I would like to see style come back. I’d like people to dress up more than what they do.”