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LIFEMIX, THE MAGAZINE
Summer, 2008 Issue
A magazine blog? A blog magazine?
Whatever, just chill here to get some inside track on
fashion, trend, life, and anything else mixed in between.
Check back for updates on store specials and promos too!
last modified Jan 21, 2008 at 19:47
Art and fashion have always operated on pretty much the same revolving principals of creativity. When it comes to creation, artists and fashion designers either strive to produce something entirely new, or take a spin on something of the past to give it a fresh new take.
When art translates into fashion, it is usually called a 'crossover', which means you take two different disciplines, and jumble it up to create something new, , something fresh, and something very marketable like a Louis Vuitton handbag.
Prior to the crossover between LV, the powerful fashion corporation, Marc Jacob, the icon of a fashion designer, and Murakami, an artist, Louis Vuitton was struggling to find a modern identity. Everybody identifies LV with its signature look of brownish color leather handbags with tiled logos, but at the time, it was a tired look in the midst of all the fresh labels competiting in the handbag business.
So LV decided to try something different by getting Marc Jacobs to put a fresh spin on their line. Marc Jacob, sensing the ever growing popularity of Japanese art, hooked up with Murakami to add some spice to the line.
Murakami was an up-and-coming Japanese artist on the international scene before his collaboration with Marc Jacobs. Basing his art on popular Japanese animations and comics, Murakami coined the art movement as 'Superflat', referring to the 2D medium it is mimicking. The Superflat movement had a pretty positive response with its exibitions around the world, and with the recognition it gained, so did its popularity, which made it a great starting point for a crossover effort.
The crossover resulted in a handbag line that became one of Louis Vuitton's top selling lines ever, meanwhile successfully turning an aged fashion iconic brand, into something every affluent, modern young lady craved for, and why not? When you're buying a Murakami LV purse, you're buying not only the perfectly made leather handbag, but you get the art to go with it too!
Shopping malls are essentially a place that provides an indoor, multi-stores environment for people to shop in. The idea has been around for centuries, but the first sign of an organized constructed effort was probably around early eighteen hundreds in London, and then the idea was intorduced first in the United States, in Providence, Rhode Island with a joint called The Arcade.
In the mid-20th century, the idea of the mall really exploded when suburbs and automobiles became a common thing, malls were able to move away from city centers, and into suburbia where land is plenty and consumers didn't want to travel afar for their shopping fix. The rest as we know it, is pretty much what we have today - malls have pretty much infiltrated most suburbs, and in them, are chain stores after chain stores of cookie cutter retail concepts across the entire nation.
We won't be the first and the last to say that it's pretty boring to shop in a mall nowadays, if you go to a mall in California, it is pretty much the exact same experience as if you would to goto one in upstate New York; you have your Gaps, and you have your Macy's. The repetition is efficient and effective, but it does make a dull shopping experience when you're craving for something 'different'.
In a way, we as consumers created our own evil; we want things to be good, and we want things to be cheap. It is this exact desire that drove the growth of malls and chain stores, but the thing with us human beings is, once we get something we want, all of a sudden, that's not good enough for us anymore. So we whine and complain that the shopping experience in the US is bland and uninteresting.
It is really not the malls fault that they do what they do, it is not the chain store's fault either, because both of these guys, are really only doing what we ask of them. So if we want things to change, if we want more interesting stuff in our stores, then quite simply, we have to change the way we buy things.
In Europe, people don't buy 20 bargain shirts a year, they buy 3 high quality ones and treat them with care. If we were to chart out how many of one thing we buy, and how often we throw them away after they fall a part, the result would be interesting - It will probably just show that, it's worth the money to get something that's slightly more expensive, but higher quality.
We don't go out to buy a car with the thought that it'll be temporary and we'll change it next season, so why do we do it with our clothes? Why do we do it with our accessories? When we buy a car, we know exactly what we're getting because we took the time to understand what we're buying, if only we apply the same effort to the rest of the stuff we buy, we will make a statement that quality matters, and buying the look is simply not enough anymore. When we make these types of buying decisions, we are telling the people who sell them, we waant better stuff! Only then, would retailers understand that we are willing to pay the price for quality, so they will respond over time, and bring in higher quality products.
So no, the mall will probably stick around. As for the stores, they have to change, and they have to risk changing in order to serve the next generation of quality shoppers.
Lifemix began its life with a simple purpose in mind, to collect the trendiest, most innovative and affordable lifestyle accessories about, and gather them in one small corner of the globe for people to enjoy.
What does lifestyle accessories mean? And why should you, the reader, care?
Lifestyle accessories can be interpreted as anything that you use to accessorize your life with. From necklaces to bracelets, belts to scarfs, handbags to wallets, even things you use at home, the watch or clock you tell time with - Collectively, every piece of the accessories you surround yourself with says a bit about who you are, and how you choose to exist. Lifemix has the objective to equip you with as many selections of these items as we possibly can, since your individuality, is as important to us as it is to you.
The purpose of this blogazine, if you can call it that, is to go beyond that, to provide you with information, ideas and resources that we utilize day in and day out to bring you the best of what trends has to offer, and to give you a more in depth look at the world of fashion as a whole, what defines style, how style comes about, and where it collectively leads us.
We hope you enjoy this journey with us, for us, it is simply not enough to just peddle you products, you can get that at any other retailer. Though we may not always succeed, but we do strive to be different; we regard ourselves as in the business of selling ideas, because only then the world will change little by little, bit by bit, so everyone can appreciate what the rest of the world has to offer.
Check back here to read, discuss, and contribute ideas with your peers. Let us know what you think too! Your thoughts are invaluable to us as a tool to help us constantly grow and improve!
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