The Lure of Vintage Couture – Shareen Vintage
If you are looking to fall in to a Wonderland of vintage things, look no further than Shareen Vintage in Downtown LA.
Hollywoodmay be a baby by European standards, bur she is rich in history when it comes to coining a cinematic saying, establishing a smooth dance move or an iconic look. Be it the Audrey Hepburn slack, the Jimmy Dean T or the Marilyn white halter dress; it all started in Hollywood before the trend went worldwide.
It’s no news, that be it cocktail or couture, that today’s trendsetters are all about looking back for that vintage influence, then bringing things forward in a fresh and innovative way with just the right signature and twist, which is exactly what Shareen does brilliantly.
As you pull up to Shareen Vintage’s sprawling fashion warehouse in downtown LA and walk past a chalkboard sign that says “No Boys! No Joke!” you’ll know you’ve reached feminine nirvana.
For any vintage diva, it takes a minute or two to catch your fashion breath and take in the scale of the warehouse/shop. Alice would be clicking her fashion savvy heels if she fell in to this wonderland of cutting edge threads.
There are stacked racks placed whimsically around the lofty room amidst a wrought iron bed, a couch, a table filled with teen savvy snacks (Twizzlers, M&M’s, pretzels, soda and water) and a bevy of fashion magazines. Women are dressing and undressing randomly around the room and commenting to one and other about individual fashion choices while Shareen, a commanding statuesque blonde and former actress directs the production center stage.
With the precision and eye of a savvy celerity stylist she can tell you from a distance what will work for you. She is futzing over the girl’s choices, pinning in, making suggestions and completing looks left and right. She is flawless with her finishes.
Her business is a mix of many vintage pieces sourced from every era imaginable inclusive of the recent 90s. Her own line Shareen is on hiatus while her restructured pieces are the stars of her salon.
“My girls want one of a kind pieces,” says Shareen. “They’re stand out ladies who want to turn every head at an event. They’re not afraid to wear something truly bold and unique.”
If you are privy to the back-of-house tour, you will see the piles of ethnic fabrics, brocades of all colors and unrealized pieces. They are the paint, her reconstructed vision is the brush and her customers the canvas.
Behind the piles are a few racks called “The Perfect Dresses” for perfect bodies. These dresses are for tip-top design teams and international fashion houses and their eyes only. She can’t say the names, but I’ll give you a minute to do the math.
Her celebrity stylist’s clientele that have come to pull have alerted the many fashion houses in Milan, Paris and NY of her racks. They now slip in on a regular basis, scheduling appointments to pull inspiration pieces that will then influence their next season.
Holding up one of her trendsetting threads, Shareen surveys an orange floor length vintage halter dress that was once wrapped around the slim hips of Christina Ricci. She says wistfully, “I can’t let this piece get in the hands of just one girl who wears it to the prom. I can’t do that to this piece. If this gets in the hands of a designer, it could end up on hundreds of women.”
If you’re looking for something to wear that will caue a stir in the room and an opportunity for you to stand out at your next summer soiree, then this is the direction to head in. Be forewarned, you must brave the back alleys of downtown LA to find this hidden gem. Fear not vintage kittens, its well worth the urban adventure in. Go forth in fashion.
Shareen Vintage is open to the public on Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays only. Every Saturday her regulars drop in to get first dibs on the three racks of 300 new vintage pieces each week. Dresses can range anywhere from $38 to several hundred dollars.
Net-a-Porter Launches Site for Men
Net-a-Porter has been a favorite luxury goods purveyor since its online debut 10 years ago. Now the e-commerce site is preparing a new launch, just for men.
The new menswear site isn’t just a new category for Net-a-Porter. Instead, it will be an entirely new site devoted to the very special needs of male shoppers.
“I am completely fired up,” said Natalie Massenet, the founder and chairwoman of Net-a-Porter. Menswear is not a subcategory of women’s men have different needs and we will be using new techniques to address the way a man shops online.
Dubbed Mr Porter, the new site is already set to feature luxury brands Lanvin, YSL, Ralph Lauren and Burberry. Just like Net-a-Porter, in addition to clothing, the site will also offer editorial content, style advice and same-day delivery in London and New York.
“This may be exactly the way men really would like to shop,” Ms. Massenet said. “No hassle, great service, and a better experience that what they find in stores.”Source: New York Times
No 6 Store Opens Doors Online
Vintage collector Morgan Yakus and stylist Karin Bereson’s Little Italy shop, No 6 Store, has moved its collection of unique finds online to the delight of luxury lovers everywhere.
Morgan Yakus is a former stylist who specialized in “vintage inspiration” for a number of prestigious designers, while stylist Karin Bereson often used her love of vintage for clients that included Bill Blass, Saks Fifth Avenue and L’Oreal. The No 6 Store both online and the physical location reflect the vintage flair, with items ranging from the 30s to the 80s, including accessories.
Although still in the new phases, and thus understandably limited, the accessories collection still houses an impressive array of jewelry items. The amber-hued Aesa necklaces work as well with a cocktail dress as with jeans and tees. The stud earrings are made all the more stunning by being asymmetrical and including a diamond on only one stud, although bling-less versions are also available. There are also some worn-leather handbags to round out the collection.
Although newish, No 6 store has already become a favorite for fashionable vintage lovers as well as a favorite mention for fashion publications including Nylon, New York Times Magazine and others.
Risks in international trade
The risks that exist in international trade can be divided into two major groups:
Economic risks
- Risk of insolvency of the buyer,
- Risk of protracted default – the failure of the buyer to pay the amount due within six months after the due date
- Risk of non-acceptance
- Surrendering economic sovereignty
Political risks
- Risk of cancellation or non-renewal of export or import licences
- War risks
- Risk of expropriation or confiscation of the importer’s company
- Risk of the imposition of an import ban after the shipment of the goods
- Transfer risk – imposition of exchange controls by the importer’s country or foreign currency shortages
- Surrendering political sovereignty
How to win international market
Now, the international marketing is more and more important for every enterprise who want to develop their own business greatly!
How to win international market?
I think there are three key points are needed.
1. International management: If you want to control every market from the all over the world, you must learn international managing skills, it can help you to cooperate with league from different nations.
2. Individualiy products: every customer from various countries like various products. You should provide the most appropriate products to different persons.
3. Focusing on internet messages: Now, the “international” is almost equal to the “internet”! We can get lost of business messages from internet easily. But most of them is forgot by us. You know your customers are also same to you. How to give your customers a favourable impression of your products? I think “Video” is a good way.
China’s Mobile Phone Users Exceeds 600 Mln
China has more than 600 million mobile phones users by June this year, which means every one in five mobile phone users is Chinese, an senior official said on Sunday.
The number included 80 million personal handy phone (PHS) users, said Xie Feibo, vice director of the Radio Administration Bureau of the Ministry of Information Industry (MII) at a forum on Chinese small and medium-sized enterprises held in Guangzhou of south China’s Guangdong province.
Official figures showed that the nation’s cell phone users increased by 40.56 million from the end of last year, 6.76 million a month on average.
Meanwhile, fixed-phone users had only grown by 4.86 million to 372 million.
In 1987, when China introduced its first mobile telecommunications equipment, there were little more than 700 users. In 2001, its cell phone users passed the 100-million mark, the largest in the world, and the figure turned to 300 million in May 2004, 400 million in January 2006.
The trend shows no sign of stopping as China still has a vast rural market to tap and city dwellers’ appetite for more vogue, media-rich and web-accessible handsets continues to boom.
Adding SEO Power to Your Blog
Many of the other items that Matt Cutts talked about will be familiar to SEOs. When you put together a blog entry, for example, think about what keywords web surfers might type into the search engines to find your content. One example he gave was “lol kittens,” which one person used as a tag for some of their Flickr photos. You want to slip the keywords into your posts as naturally as you can; synonyms are your friends. Use keywords not only in your tags and your content, but also in your category names. Oh, and for your posts, swap the title and the blog name.
This is great advice for someone who is just starting to set up a blog. But what should you do if you already have one that you’ve been building up for a while? Matt advises you to not completely mess up your URLs just to change things. Leave the old entries as they are, and make things better going forward.
If you have images in your blog – and let’s face it, some of us really love to post pictures – use ALT tags. Search engine indexing bots can’t “see” images. Limit yourself to no more than three or four relevant words. Adding ALT tags will also make your site easier to crawl, which is very important to getting listed.
You shouldn’t forget your human visitors, of course. Some of them may be coming in on a mobile phone, especially since Apple’s iPhone has a screen that is large enough for mobile browsing. Cutts said that you should use a different style sheet for mobile visitors, not a different site. Such style sheets are not particularly difficult to construct; they were covered in a book I reviewed on Dev Articles several months ago.
Matt also went a little bit into the attitude with which you should approach getting people to your site. “Get traffic from Google, then get noticed”? Not by a long shot; it should be the other way around: “Get noticed, then get traffic from Google.” And how do you do that? You create link bait. Cutts gave several examples: a lolcat builder, selling your moustache on eBay, a free hugs campaign, putting up tutorials, analyzing someone else’s blog, liveblogging an interesting event…and these were just a few. A directory of something very popular (like iPhone applications) or lists of reasons why something rocks or sucks also attract visitors.
