NYC Inspiration

Inspiration is everywhere we all see it in different ways, process it differently, and then create things that somehow are related but different, it's an amazing process. Below is a sampling of images from my trip to NYC, pardon the quality of some of them, I had to sneak some with my iPhone sometimes yielding not the best quality.



Kid Robot has a cult following amongst some of the the hippest streetwear crowd, their Soho store had some great pieces and the website is totally worth checking out, I especially liked the zipper that you can see on the backpack here (It stands out more in person), a colored coil zipper tape, with approx. #8 size Shiny Silver Coil teeth, they also had this on a down puffy jacket and it looked really sweet.



This sweatshirt had some nice details, my dressing room photo didn't really do it justice, but another notable trend was the use of many different fabrics to create a wide band around the openings of hooded sweatshirts. I say this trend everywhere, and there were some really fun different types of fabrics used, and lots of different widths of bands.



Also loved these zippers on a Burton AK women's style. Waterproof Vislon with a black sparkly tape.


Snapped this quick in ABC Carpet and Home, the colors in the artwork and the style were both inspiring to me.



Also at ABC, check out the great color and shape, and the contrast to the surroundings.



Found this amazing chair in Williamsburg, the whole thing is made with pieces of webbing in various colored that are tension set over a metal frame to create this chair. I found the idea intriguing for some of the product design that I do, and the colors are great!



This use of newsprint in a store window on 5th Avenue was inspiring too.



It also reminded me of this newsprint denim swatch that I saw at fabric vendor meeting with a Japanese supplier during the Outdoor Retailer show this summer, it looks a little "sleepy" here but the idea is intriguing if used in combination with some other techniques.



Check out this expensive chair from a sweet boutique in Williamsburg, THE FUTURE PERFECT, the duct tape use is actually a feature of the style. The this store has a lot of great pieces that are inspirational and totally worth checking out.



Still waiting for the temperatures to drop so more snow can fly here, I'm dying for a trip to Whistler for some mountain time and great people watching. Think Snow!

More From Paragon Sports

In continuation from yesterday...
I also heard from Paragon that Patagonia is seeing a lot more action this season than it has for several years. She attributed it to stronger design that looked much better and was getting noticed by the customer. In NYC, and Paragon, I also believe it has a lot to do with the sales people on the floor. In my experience when the staff there gets "behind" something they sell the hell out of it. You don't have to listen in on too many conversations between the customer and the staff, to realize that a good majority of people who shop at Paragon rely very heavily on the staff to guide them in their purchases.

One of the stand out styles for me from Patagonia on their floor was the Women's Powder Bowl at $400.


The fit of this jacket is super sleek, when I put it on it was by far my favorite of all the ones that I tried on, I did find the fit much larger than most brands though so I had to size down to an X-Small for it to fit properly. The collar and hood were comfortable and very functional, A+++. I checked out more about this one on the internet and found out that it is a "green" jacket, the outershell is a stretch 2.5 Layer using a recycled 150 Denier 100% poly with their H2No Waterproof Breathable Barrier.
The jacket is then lined with a 100% recycled stretch polyester taffeta (now I know why it still felt so good even when I bent my arms and wrapped them around my shoulders) and....it is insulated with their light and compressible Thermogreen (90% recycled) insulation. This is a dreamy combination! 

There were plenty of other good pieces on the floor but the final standout for me was a style from Icebreaker, the Women's Chelsea Hood 340 for $249.00, youch, that's a lot for a long sleeve wool sweater type of piece!

Part of what appealed to me was the length, so many brands in the outdoor industry are way too short in their layering for women, the trend in sportswear is long lengths, and somehow it's been slow to catch on for outdoors. (This by the way was very evident at Marmot, almost every women's layering piece looked so short, and therefore to me instantly dated them.) I was shopping with another design friend and we both agreed the Chelsea Hooded was very nice but the one deal breaker was the waistband. For some reason they designed in a waistband with partial drawcord, we couldn't see any advantage to this with all the amazing stretch in the fabric, but there was a major disadvantage, the band was very bulky and looked like they had a hard time keeping the curves in it from stretching out during production. We loved the entire style, but this one thing was enough for most women to put this style back on the rack, at $249.00 you sort of expect perfection.

After such a long time upstairs it was great to head downstairs to see the ski/snowboard stuff, and my patience for taking such tedious notes was wearing a little thin. The first thing I noticed was that the front snowboard section was a little lighter in product than I remembered in seasons past. The snowboard brands represented the most were Burton, some Bonfire, and Volcom. Down on the "ski" area of the sales floor there was a familiar sea of product and the one piece that stood out in a huge way was the Kjus Women's Val Down Jacket, there were only 2 of them left on the floor!
In fact this is one of my very favorite pieces since I first saw it as ISPO. But it has a Kjus price tag that puts it above $450.00...darn it. There's not much to say except it's amazingly cute, great style, amazing fit, and great colors, something like this for less $$$ would be fantastic!

On a distracted side note, while searching for a photo of the Val on the internet I also found this cute down style from Peak Performance, haven't seen anything more than this photo, but it looks interesting.  Still more to come from NYC soon!

Paragon Sports, The East Coast Outdoor Barometer (post 1)

For the outdoor industry Paragon is always a good barometer of what's going on. I haven't been to New York in a couple years and a trip to Paragon is always a couple of hours of time for me. The thing I noticed first when I climbed the stairs to the outdoor floor, is that TNF now accounts for at least 1/3 of the entire assortment if not a little more. There was rack after rack of in my eyes, very generic looking styles, that are sold largely on the name brand (my assumption). I also noticed that the outdoor outerwear section has grown to be even larger than before so the increase in TNF product is even more significant.

I also noticed that Columbia Sportswear no longer has any outerwear on this floor where they once had an entire shop, a sign of the times?

There is a lot more Isis product everywhere this Fall, and Paragon was no exception, I found about three 4-ways of Isis product, not too far from the front of the floor amidst the sea of TNF product. It's great to see some of the smaller brands seeing growth too!

I talked with one of the key sales people on the floor who has been there for 10 years and the first thing that she mentioned was that they have had a lot of interest in Scapegoat this year. There was a nice area of the floor dedicated to Scapegoat probably 10-12 styles or so of urban meets outdoor. After hearing that, I had to try a few on because they were alluring to me, a nice mix of style and function, for more casual use, though I probably wouldn't have considered these styles for anything more than apres' use on the mountain.
I really liked "The Standard Jacket" for $275.00. It featured a YKK metal zipper at the front that they call out on their website as being special, I liked the look, but on the jackets that I tried, it was a little rickety especially for the lightweight fabric the zipper kept catching in the zipper guard. But even with that I liked the look of the jacket so much. It had Primaloft Eco insulation and a great use of a rib knit trim and some Bemis adhesive throughout the group that made them unique. I tried the Medium and it fit very nice almost tempting me into buying it.

I also really liked the look of the Flux, but the horizontal stitching with the lightweight fabric must have been hard for the factory to make because the front of the jackets were sort of "wonky" and uneven and this style did not fit as nicely when I tried it on. A, for the idea, but execution needs improvement to support that $275.00 price tag.


Overall, the Scapegoat line was refreshing because they have done a decent job of using some muted soft colors that are very street friendly but fresh feeling. And the subtle differences with the unique use of Bemis adhesive and their sumptuous rib trim make it stand out from the sea of sameness out there.  

Since this posting is already larger than I thought, I'll have to do another posting about the rest of what I saw and heard at Paragon.....soon!  Be sure to get out and vote today!

Re-Shirt, used T-Shirts with a History...

I was planning to post some trends today but then a friend sent me this last night and I thought you might want to check it out too. Re-Shirt is a simple concept,

re-search
every Re-Shirt tells a unique story about its owner:
e.g. career step, a journey, an unforgettable concert. we collect those shirts with a story and give them a new life with a registered Re-Shirt label.
re-use
if you become a Re-Shirt user, type in your shirt code and keep on writing the story. the longer your shirt is in use the more it helps to keep existing cotton resources in circulation.
re-think
10,000 liters of water are needed to produce a new cotton shirt. Re-Shirts save resources in a completely new way. every Re-Shirt story makes a difference.

I visited their site and found T-shirts from around the world, each with a story from the user, and each priced at 25 Euros. (You can purchase on-line from anywhere in the world with a paypal account) Below is an example of just one of the shirt stories:

This T-shirt is from the legendary xxx parties. You got a phone number you had to call and then you got the info where the party would take place the same night. In 1991 I moved to Vienna and I heard about this parties. I had to be there. Today I am married with one of the organizers of the xxx events and this T-shirt is the souvenier I keep for all those years.
men/large/white
shirt story provided by Bea, Austria

More trends tomorrow!

new york, new york!

Just back in PDX from a sweet, week long trip to NYC, where it's more obvious than ever that the economy is suffering, but still there is shopping to be done and people on the streets doing what they do best. Thought I'd start out with this teaser so that I'm committed to the rest of the details sooner rather than later.

It's no secret that the late 70's and mid-late 80's are a key influence for trends out there right now, but I don't think it has reached it's peak just yet. In Saks there was just one rack of neon bright jeans, but lots of other influences that are so 80's!

Another thing that reminded me of this was this neighborhood showing of ghostbusters in a park in the Hell's Kitchen area of the city that I went to with my friend who lives in the city.

While watching this for the first time in it's entirety, I was reminded of how much time has gone by since this was filmed, the fact that both of the other times I went to see it were at drive-in theaters, and the classic gentleman's look that is often seen on Dan Aykroyd and Bill Murray in this film are another one of the key trends out there in the market right now.

One of my client's is Filson, and I can't tell you how many times I saw their bags in some of the hippest boutiques, a guy at Jean Shop in Soho told me that were excited about a new collection from Filson that includes wool bags too.

Stay tuned over the next few days for news from Paragon, the Burton Store, Williamsburg, and the streets of Soho. Happy Halloween!

the Designers Accord

As a designer and creator of "stuff" I have become acutely aware of the "things" that I am creating and what they exponentially become long after leaving my desk as a crude pencil sketch. In the last year I find myself asking how I can make a difference as a designer to help affect change for my clients. For every project that take I try to make at least one suggestion to help reduce, recycle, reuse, or suggest a material that might have less impact. I was excited when I recently read an article in Fast Company magazine about the Designers Accord

The Designers Accord is a global coalition of designers, educators, researchers, engineers, and corporate leaders, working together to create positive environmental and social impact.
The Designers Accord is made up of over 100,000 members of the creative community, representing 100 countries, and each design discipline.

the Designers Accord was created by Valerie Casey, of Ideo, she originally dubbed it the "Kyoto treaty" of design. If you'd like to learn more about Valerie and the Designers Accord, read the article from Fast Company, and in the meantime think about ways that you too can make a change to benefit the future of design.

Below is one of mine, the Retread Doggy for a client in the pet industry. Dog toys are most literally throw away items, their life span often isn't all that long, so I came up with Retread toys, they utilize recycled poly fleece, recycled stuffing, and excess leftover overstock prints from the open market or local factories that would likely eventually be discarded. Every dog has his own unique sweater no two are alike. I also suggested using a PLA(corn fiber) squeaker inside instead of the traditional plastic ones, and each toy comes complete with the retread toys label.


Change comes little by little and if we all pledge to be part of the solution the end result will be huge.

New York Times Article, "Fall Picks From Those Who've Seen It All"

Found this today on Design Public's blog "Hatch", it's a short article from the 'Times, listing some of the best design blogs, there were even a few that were new to me, definitely worth checking out for some "divine inspiration"! And speaking of great design blog's be sure to check out Hatch too!

Wordle

You can file this under random things that waste time but are seemingly addictive to try out anyway. I read about Wordle and before I knew it I had created my own, give it a try it's fun to see what you get. MIne was randomly generated from my blog content, sort of funny that Horny got separated from Toad, I guess nothing works exactly as you plan. Have a great weekend!

All in a Days Work

This past week had me thinking about just how much fun I have with SY Design, there aren't many jobs where all in one week you can work on Earth Day graphics for gDiapers



the hippest stuff you can come up with for Orage's Fall/Winter 2010 collection



really fun print and pattern design for Outward Hound pet products, and next wave of fly fishing gear for Cloudveil's Spring 2010 line.




What even makes it better was capping it all off with a tax deductible "R&D" trip to Jackson, Wyoming... self employment does have it's perks.



Hope you all are just as happy doing whatever it is that brought here to read this. Get outside and enjoy the last of summer while you still can, there was snow in the mountains in Jackson this past weekend, and it's been raining a ton back home in PDX, looks like winter might come early! Fall/Winter trend updates coming soon... in the meantime check out this prehistoric looking creature that we found on the way to Crystal Creek in Jackson... keep in mind that he is sitting on top of a horse turd, so you know that he is giant in size, can you imagine having him fly into you on the trail?

Cool Stuff Cheap

If you are a fan of good design then get on the list at undrgrnd.com, it's an online store from San Francisco, with no frills customer service, but steep deals on cool design.  One deal event every weekday.....

Doing it 80's Style

You know you aren't as young as you once used to be when something you wore in High School is now considered trendy with the "hipster" crowd in vintage stores, yikes, it's happening to me! Today, I stumbled upon Nasty Gal, for the discerning fashionista, and was sent back in time when I saw these sweet vintage styles, certainly inspirational and fun to look at too!

Doing it 80's Style

You know you aren't as young as you once used to be when something you wore in High School is now considered trendy with the "hipster" crowd in vintage stores, yikes, it's happening to me! Today, I stumbled upon Nasty Gal, for the discerning fashionista, and was sent back in time when I saw these sweet vintage styles, certainly inspirational and fun to look at too!

This ski jacket from Ossi, is selling for $64.00, probably the same or more than it cost in the 80's, look at that piecey chopped up color blocking, and what about those colors!

A few years ago I too had a leather jacket just like this....

Great color inspiration for boarding, or maybe a more adventurous outdoor brand?

First Thursday, and P Town Outdoor Style

I have to admit it has been awhile since I've made it out to a first Thursday, but today (forgot to finish posting this until just now) was a perfect one, 75 degrees with a nice breeze blowing, and people everywhere.  I had a little monkey on my back, (my daughter) but still managed to get around the Pearl to see what was happening tonight.

If you haven't been to Portland recently, it's become quite the great place for outdoor inspiration, we've got just about everything you need to see to get a good "left" coast outdoor vibe, with big guys like The North Face, Patagonia, Columbia, and Mountain Hardwear all with freestanding flagship stores here, and a good mix of smaller brands including Lucy, Lululemon, Title Nine, Ice Breaker, and Nau.  Not to mention some great specialty stores too, U.S. Outdoor Store, REI, and The Mountain Shop.

In addition to these, there are some other great newer places that are must sees as well.  One of them is Lizard Lounge, by Horny Toad, this is a hip "lounge" where streetwear and outdoor come together blended with random Horny Toad styles throughout to create a great mix.

Another place worth visiting any time of year is Signal Sports not far from REI in the Pearl District. This is an outdoor specialty store entirely focused on women. Skiing, snowboarding, streetwear, and outdoor lifestyle. If you are in town it's definitely worth checking out, they carry tons of great brands, have great customer service, and it is always fun to see what product assortment they have.