New Balance has decided to enter into the skateboarding sneaker and lifestyle apparel market with their recent announcement of the launch of the New Balance Numeric or NB#. West-coast based Black Box distribution will produce and market the sneaker brand and apparel via skateboarding channels. “New Balance is proud to partner with Black Box on […]
Smack in the middle of an economic landscape that has torn retailers apart and sunk galleries into oblivion, up pops Swiv Tackle Circus in Oceanside, CA, a gritty little beach community on the northern edge of San Diego and an outpost for skaters, surfers, and artists. As original as its name, Swiv Tackle Circus has redefined what it means to be a retail store, gallery, and community gathering space. Known as a “gallertique” as in part boutique and part gallery, the 3,500 square-foot space owned by Shaney Jo Darden and Jeff Black, and managed with partners Desiree Dawn Kuhn and Kirsten Kuhn, gives new meaning and hope to the concept of having a business and artistic gathering space that pushes forward creativity and new ideas, rather than constricts life based on outside forces of bad economics. The concept is the epitome of DIY in that it’s so CYOO (create your own oasis).
Ever-alert to the taxonomy of the risible, those of us at Label Networks absolutely love it when we discover the climate change of a new trend. This is clearly the case in the wake of Miyavi, a self-described “visual kei rocker” that is changing up even this concept of original Japanese visual kei J-rock bands into, as Miyavi describes it, “my own sense of visual kei, which is influenced from Japan, kabuki, but many cultures into its own show, sound, fashion.”
The differences with fashion in youth culture markets vs. older markets (those 26 ) is that trends often come from the bottom-up, rather than from the 26 top-down. What we mean is that young people tend to pick up their ideas for fashion from each other, from utilitarian means, out of necessity, from the streets, grassroots word-of-mouth awareness, or their surroundings in general, rather than from the latest trends dictated by fashion houses, advertising, or marketing efforts on TV as a prime example.
GenArt traditionally starts off the LA Fashion Week events by hosting their show on the first Friday kick-off, usually choosing a fresh location that sets the mood of what to expect during the next week. On Friday night March 7th for their 5th Anniversary of the “The New Garde” show, GenArt had again chosen a surprising location -The Hotel Park Plaza in downtown Los Angeles.
Often what takes place in major Japanese retailers is an indication of where things are changing and how U.S. retailers may need to react in the future. With the expansion and revamp now of the popular Shibuya-2 store for young men, two whole new floors have been revamped to offer up high-end street fashion styles for the growing marketplace of rock-inspired men’s styles.