Last week, Diesel paid its tribute to summer by hosting one of the largest parties in New York City down by the South Street Seaport. But first, Diesel got a little intimate with some of the guests by hosting a pre-party at the Diesel Denim Gallery in NYC’s trendy SoHo neighborhood. Hot tracks spun while guests partied and “got stupid” with temporary tattoos and Diesel Dollars in hand. The real party followed the day after in which guests of all ages spent the Saturday afternoon listening to live music (from the likes of Maluca, Max Glazer & Friends, and PO PO, to name a few) munching on great snacks, and just simply enjoying the company of one another.
Many wouldn’t consider leaving their jobs during a recession, but brothers Mike and Dave Radparvar did, and then student, Fabian Pfortmueller, contributed time to the building of a company that sought to do more than just sell clothing. With consumer, producer, and Earth in mind, Holstee delivers socially conscious designs to the public, as well as donates 10% of all revenue to empower third world entrepreneurs through micro lending.
I caught up with Dave at the Holstee office to get an exclusive on the company and its endeavors. Check out the video below:
Today I checked out all the shows that was happening in New York city this week, Project Show, Blue Collective, and Capsule Show. The Project show is the denim and streetwear show, started out in New York but now it happens in New York and Las Vegas and now is owned by Magic. Blue and Collective show is operated by ENK which is the closest competitor to Magic. Blue is their denim and casual wear section and Collective are the more formal lines are. Capsule is the new cool kid on the block. More hipster and underground lines, it’s all the new stuff the cool kids are wearing. Don’t get it mistaken, it’s not as underground as you might think, these are top lines in all the big important retailers, they are just less commercial than the competitors at the other shows.
The economy sucks. As I was talking to a close friend in the industry who’s ear is on the street all times tells me that everyone is having trouble paying. Even the big shops are asking for extensions and will only take consignments from any new designers. All the shops in LA are doing horrible. New York is not that great either. One of the top shops here in New York, Lounge has closed down. But they opened a new store but it’s a discount place now. He tells me this new game the retailers are playing. Changing company names but keeping their shop and ignoring the accounts payable. It’s a difficult time for all. But he’s optimistic about the international market, for extending his line anyways.
He’s in the premium streetwear market and he tells me the spending of $100+ on tees are long gone. Everyone is lowering their price points.
What does this mean for brands and buyers. They are cutting back on their trips and tradeshows. As everyone know the Vegas shows are the essential shows many brands have elected not to do New York shows. As this have been happening for a while now even before the meltdown. And the buyers are cutting back and not attending New York shows either since they have go to Las Vegas to see all the lines. It was my first time at the ENK Blue Collective show. It has a nice set up, at Pier 94, quite a distance away from the subway so it was hard to get to. It was very small and traffic wasn’t that good. A rep I spoke to told me that by far Project is much better. Saw a couple of interesting lines, it was my first time seeing Desigual from Spain. A very colourful line that just entered the US market for a couple of seasons and have been in Canada for a few seasons now. However it’s quite big in Europe and opened a store on Broadway downtown Manhatten this past April.
Project New York was next. They moved from the Javitz convention centre to the Lexington Armory, which was really not close to anything. I went in and after a little while I figured it out. It’s about half the size of last year which was already very small. People just wasn’t getting the value in paying for a booth and not enough buyer’s were coming to the event. Saw a couple of cool lines of jeans which has crazy washes and detailing, Red Pepper and Vintage Laundry. Check them out. They are kind of unknown so it’s going to be hard to find them. Jumped in the shuttle taxi which Project New York offers and headed to Capsule down at the church. It was pretty packed last year, see photos and blog. It was still pretty packed this year. Looks like things are getting better for this show. This is a show that everyone talks about. Very hipster underground New York kind of things. Met the guys behind Naked and Famous which is my favourite line of denim. Also saw this pretty cool line right before I left down in the basement, Shades of Greige.
I know last year they had a waiting list for Capsule and that’s why this show is packed. This year Capsule is going to Vegas, interesting to see how they will compete there. I see Capsule as a New York style kind of show, it definitely has it’s own niche.
You might think that with the bad economy there will be less lines and stores attending Las Vegas but I predict otherwise, it will be just as big as all the previous seasons. There’s a new show called Premium at Magic. The popular Project Las Vegas will be cut in half and the half it cut will be at Premium. Heard that the buyers are more diverse and have higher price points at this show. I think that’s where JUZD will end up being. But even with the bad economy it won’t slow down the show, this is once in the year where the lines meet to get orders from their buyers, no way they will miss out on that.
Who really dictates the fashion trends, buyers or consumers?
I was in New York City last week and met with a lot of buyers, showrooms, buying services, and designers and was quite enlighten about the trends coming up for the season. Pretty much all of it is affected by the recession.
1. Lower price points. From online shops to brick and mortar stores everyone is lowering their price point. $100 tees or even $60 tees aren’t doing so good. I was told by a couple of big online stores that their lower priced tees are flying out but having difficulties pushing the higher price tag ones. This sentiment was also given to me from a big department store in the US. They are lowering the price points on tees but they are still carrying the big names like Affliction and Ed Hardy but just lower price point.
2. Out with the bling bling. “No one wants to look like they have money,” I was told. People feel guilty when they shop and buy flashy clothing. So the trend is for more subdue and subtle aesthetics. This is not good for Juzd as we are all about the heavy graphics and bling bling. It’s funny, last year before the recession hit I showed the Juzd original to Holt Renfrew and they loved it and it turned out to be their best selling Juzd shirts. Now I design more of those pieces and they are like, “we are moving away from that now.”
3. Cleaner aesthetics. There will always be a demand for graphic shirts, buyers are going for a cleaner aesthetics. Compare to other lines Juzd is is not as busy but buyers still put it in that category. As I have been trying to move to more of a busier all over prints, I am not moving back to the clean stuff.
4. People still want to go shopping. Shopping is like a drug for most women and in our capitalist society there is a sense of gratification when we own something new. Ever notice how complete you feel when you go out shopping and come back with something, anything! It makes you feel like your time wasn’t wasted. Well people are still shopping and still want to shop, that’s one of the reasons American Apparel is so successful in recent years. Their items are inexpensive and you can easily buy several of the same items in different colours. This makes shopping easy so you’ll feel more productive.
5. Mix of high end and low end. People are piecing high and low end pieces together. People are pairing up thousand dollar leather jackets with $300 dollar jeans and $18 American Apparel tee. This may not be caused by the recession and have been happening before the recession but with what is happening, it is surely accelerating the trend.
Inexpensive American Apparel black t-shirt and tie-die tights combined with leather jacket and boots
On my trip to New York I’ve learned about several of these trends. But the buyers tell me that they don’t know for sure but that’s what they think and they can be wrong. All of us in the fashion industry have been screaming and yelling that the busy gothic and graphic heavy shirts of Ed Hardy and Affliction are going out for as long as they’ve been in yet their sales are still expanding. I guess the diplomatic answer is that it’s a combination of both and like anything in culture it’s interdependent and organic.
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