The New York Times’ T Magazine Flows
A.MA.ZING.
Not only reputable in bringing some pretty compelling articles on Fashion, The New York Times have acknowledged and expanded their style section into the newly baptized “T“.
On the front cover: Natalie Portman
Combining the classic New York Times design with a serif font for text, and using the bold gothic lettering as its logo, T renders the online experience a little sassier than most online fashion magazines. It doesn’t use flipping pages, nor does it compact information in several columns, but flows horizontally echoing the scrolling headline ticker (!!) of their new blog “The Moment” on the bottom .
Ads are effectively placed where they are dominant as the single ad on the page you’re reading, like a full page ad in a magazine. This allows us to keep reading the article without being overwhelmed by a barrage of ads flanked left and right, in different sizes and disruptive of the reading flow.
Editorial photoshoots are transformed into a slide show, scrolling by hovering over the arrow on the right or left of the screen.
What’s fun about T Magazine is that each article is an experience in itself. The articles aren’t just confined to horizontal scrolling, some allow vertical, some allow viewings in all directions. Instead of telling you what you should be looking at, T lets you choose. You’re in control of what you want to read, how you want to read it and how fast. My biggest (and perhaps envious) pro of this site is the scrolling news ticker. Who doesn’t want to see constant headlines about fashion? I mean come on! It’s brilliant!
“The Moment” has earned a spot in the RSS Feed section. Enjoy and do check out the site!
From Black Friday to Cyber Monday
For Americans retailers, with the weak economy and slugging sales, they’ve successfully devised a way to pry open those tightly held purses and wallets.
Sales. Make them big and make them early.
That did the trick.
Look what happened on Black Friday.
With online shopping growing in popularity, reports of a “Cyber Monday” is floating around. It’s the internet’s version of having their own little sales day for shoppers who didn’t want to confront the 2,500 or so shoppers lined up outside stores on Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving). This year’s Cyber Monday sales are expected to jump 3 times than that of last year’s online sales to an astonishing US$700million, according to comScore.
In Montreal, you can already check out that stores are jumping into the early holiday sales with Holt Renfrew marking down their designer goods at 40%-50% off, and Browns shoe store is marking theirs off at least at 30% off.
Online shoe retailer Zappos.com is an excellent alternative in finding stylish less expensive shoes, fast delivery and return policy. I can’t recommend this site enough! Shoppers who have already bought from Zappos can review the shoes they bought based on fit, comfort and size and can base recommendations like Amazon.com. You can find a large range of brand names like Guess, Lacoste and even the likes of Marc Jacobs, DSquared and Guiseppe Zanotti. For Canadian shoppers, you’ll have to go to Zappos.ca, but will hold less of a choice selection, though it is ever expanding.
Here are a couple more of online shopping suggestions:
Etsy - Handcrafted items such as scarves, purses, trinkets, dolls, sweaters, pots, and more. Attractive, friendly, easy to use.
Tigerdirect.ca - Futureshop and Best Buy are grossly overpriced. My boyfriend always shops here for computer parts and other electronics.
Cafepresse - Get your designs or buy designs, printed on a bunch of paraphernalia like mugs, calendars, tshirts, clocks and whatnot, it’s a great way to personalize your gifts for an affordable price.
Non-online gift ideas
Futureshop - Though grossly overpriced for most electronics, for some reason they always have way cheaper DVDs. Why is that? You can find some really good combos for under $20.
MEC (Mountain Equipment Co-op) - For practical winter clothing, you have to go here. You know winter clothing isn’t as dorky and frumpy as you might think. Especially in our climate, there is little room for compromise with mother nature!
Gift Cards - Frankly, you can’t go wrong with gift cards.
Me (expensive) Lucky Charms
I tagged along with a friend to go shop for a birthday gift this past weekend, and he wanted to buy some sparkly little number for a not too expensive this-is-just-a-friend gift. I’m not very knowledgeable when it comes to fine jewelry, but it’s hard to resist the entrancing shine of a Swarovski crystal in the window.
Yet, I never understood the fascination with Swarovski. Sure they’re shiny, they look nice. But for that price? Though I love collectables, this is just something my mind can’t grasp on as to why would anyone want to buy a parrot made out of crystals for $1000.
My friend said he was looking to buy a cellphone keychain there.
“They sell keychains at Swarovski?”
Apparently so.
There in the pristine glass case lay a set of keychain charms obviously for women (in my sneaking suspicion, asian women). They were cute, set in silver (or platinum, you never know), and had various themes going on. One set was of a Disney theme with Tinkerbell and Mickey Mouse at $105 and $95 respectively. I found one that was cute with a seahorse and a starfish, but for $95, this keychain is best off sitting in a glass case than spending its days tangled and smothered in my purse (my Winnie The Aquarius is about to be sightless). The crystals used aren’t just clear crystals but also made of various precious stones like Amethyst and Aquamarine.
The butterfly motif and 2 bezel-set crystals in Aurora Borealis and Light Amethyst crystal. $70.
Still I fail to comprehend the point of having something so luxuriously shiny hanging from your cellphone.
So we left for The Bay.
Taking it On At The Flip-Zone
Traipsing across Facebook, among the many advertising “comments” in the Montreal Fashion group, one site caught my eye called “Flip-Zone,” a new online fashion magazine.
Based in Paris, this online fashion site opened is doors just last week. With over 250 collections to browse through, Flip-Zone has made considerable progress where other online fashion magazines may lack. True to its name, it’s a website full of “flippable” pages (it looks like there’s an epidemic of flipping websites), not only that, we’re also allowed to zoom in each image, send it to a friend, click on an ad page and brought to their landing page, you can even create your own flipbooks to share with friends.
Montreal’s high end swimwear brand Aqua Di Lara’s flipbook.
The magazine also focuses on numerous non-popular (but still posh) designers in a variety of different fashion arenas such as wedding dresses, lingerie, accessories, bathing suits and sportswear. With a brief fashion profile intro on the first page, each flipbook contains only editorials (many of them runway shots) available in high quality.
Flip-Zone is optimized truly for the websurfer’s confort and joy by making their website available in different screen resolutions. From 1024×768 to 1600×1050, this is what digital fashion should be all about. High resolution for high fashion, as it was meant to be.
Sorry English-natives, the site is French-only. But they’re still in Beta, so who knows, maybe they’ll be able to afford to translate it one day.
Buy Nothing Day: A Controversial Concept
For North Americans, shopping is all the rage for the holiday season. We are notably guilty for spending hundreds, thousands of dollars on items that we value as a necessity to have for social status, personal well being, and believe in the “gift of giving.” I’m not saying that I’ve been immune to all this, I’ve succumbed to it despite myself.
So how does “Buy Nothing Day” work? If you’ve never heard of this unofficial holiday, it’s probably because you’re too concerned in figuring out what to get for Uncle Larry, worrying about that huge family reunion, and wondering if you should have enough food to splurge for turkey, stuffings, corn, ham and pineapples. Wait, what was I talking about again?
Buy Nothing Day is a concept created by Canadian social activist magazine AdBusters. Aware since 1992 that the world is consuming too many resources for its own good, they’ve decided to launch a sort of awareness day that you should buy nothing on the day after Thanksgiving (US). This is because after Thanksgiving, it is the biggest shopping holidays of the season until Christmas. And what could be more encouraging than this year when the Canadian Dollar is on par with US dollar? Americans haven’t adjusted any kind of inflation and it’s mighty tempting to go over the border to get you some cheap goodies.
Well Adbuster’s aim is to counter all of the greed shoppers inhibit during the holiday season. There have been manifestations all over the world on Buy Nothing Day, people standing in the streets with self-made posters, banners and stunts to stop shoppers from buying anything (or at least educate them). In Montreal’s case, in 2005 there was an attempt of a coup to an American Apparel shop downtown to show how the business is exploiting women in their ads. However, the plan was thwarted when a mole had infiltrated into the group and alerted American Apparel of the plan.
Of course, though the concept seems simple enough to not buy anything a particular day, it doesn’t really stop people from buying anything from the other 364 days out of the year. Especially where fashion is concerned, we are propelled to consume our goods. There needs to be a more sound concept where everyone could bind together and help causes instead of hinder businesses. Like, “Donate Your Clothes Day” or “Help The Shelters Day”, or something that could help others. When you do nothing, you do nothing. How is this going to help the world to stop consuming?
