PETA Has a Plan

Some people talk about the choice to go vegan as if it’s a religious conversion. Christopher Merrow is not one of those people. Merrow went vegan to impress a girl, which maybe would have worked, except that she wasn’t actually vegan. The relationship didn’t go anywhere, but Merrow didn’t immediately drop veganism, and after doing a little research on the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals website, he committed himself to the lifestyle.

That decision eventually lead Merrow to apply for a job with PETA, which he got. In that job, he spent a great deal of time on the Warped Tour crisscrossing the country to man a PETA booth and tangentially made use of his degree in music entertainment. That was then parlayed into a gig at PETA’s Los Angeles office, where staffers are encouraged to take time outside of work to volunteer at “demos,” what they call the animal rights protests that have made PETA famous.

This is how Merrow ended up inside a giant, inflatable snow globe alongside another staffer, Heather Faraid, beating several fake skinned sheep for approximately one hour on ritzy Rodeo Drive in order to convince somebody — anybody — not to wear wool this winter.

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How Aldo Survives the Mall

I grew up in a small, rural town, the kind of place that would close school for the first day of deer hunting season. As is usually the case in this situation, there was a big, fancy mall an hour and a half’s drive away. It was an event to pack into the car and go back-to-school shopping at this faraway oasis. And in this giant mall, there was an Aldo shoe store.

Aldo was the only place to shop for shoes that wasn’t hidden deep in the musty depths of a department store or tied to an unfortunate name like Shoe Carnival or Payless. It was built like a boutique, but nothing was too expensive. I knew I could always find a pair or two that at least vaguely resembled what I saw in Seventeen.

This was before the explosion of H&M, Forever 21, and Zara; the teens were all wearing Abercrombie & Fitch, American Eagle, and Aeropostale. But Aldo was always there. And it's still there now.

In a retail industry marked by layoffs, store closures, and experimental upstarts, Aldo isn’t sweating it. There are still new shipments of shoes reaching Aldo stores anywhere from two to five times per week, the same way that it has been done "forever," according to the president of Aldo Group North America, David Bensadoun. It’s still the only shoe store in the mall that focuses on selling trendy, not-too-expensive shoes in a small, boutique-y environment, and while it has had to navigate the sea changes in retail just like everybody else, there’s not quite the same air of underlying panic among its leaders.

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These Kate Middleton Style Bloggers Are the Hardest Working Women on the Internet

It’s 8pm on a Wednesday night in early July and Kate Middleton, the world’s most talked about royal, was due to arrive at London’s Natural History Museum any minute. She was presenting the award for the Art Fund’s Museum of the Year 2016 and on the ground, the museum was gearing up for her arrival. The night’s award nominees lined up to greet her and The Sun’s resident royal reporter, Emily Andrews, snapped a picture of the menu for the evening.

Online, there was a different sort of crowd gathering. Like the royal reporters, these writers track Kate’s every move. They show up for her events and give context to the meaning of her various engagements. They rigorously cover Kate and her husband Prince William’s royal tours and know what it’s like to stay up all night waiting for her to emerge from the Lindo Wing after a royal birth. But these aren't British newspaper journalists. They’re Kate Middleton style bloggers, and most aren’t even located in Britain.

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Ralph Lauren’s American Dream

Entering the Rhinelander Mansion on New York's Upper East Side is like quietly opening a window into Ralph Lauren's mind. Many describe Lauren's superpower as his ability to turn his wildest dreams into reality, and inside that mansion, Ralph Lauren's original flagship location, his dreams are made real in every nook and cranny of the place.

Each room presents one lavish scene after the next, and it's not hard to imagine Lauren himself toiling at the displays to make sure everything sits just right. Spaces are small and illuminated with candles and the softest of lighting, beckoning shoppers to linger. A glass of water arrives on a small silver platter, garnished with a single slice of lemon, just for you.

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In Between Plus Size and Sample Size, There Are Millions of Women

When Bianca Vaccarini was constructing a few sentences to describe herself on the ‘About Me’ tab for her style blog, she didn’t talk about a hidden love for sprinkles or a burning desire to document all the beauty in the world. She talked about her size. "I am not cookie cutter shape, and the world was not made for my short legs, long torso, huge rack, small feet, unusually small forehead, and thick calves," she writes.

Vaccarini lives in that delightful valley between typical straight sizes and typical plus sizes, otherwise known as the in-between sizes. The average American woman has long been thought to be a size 14 (it’s actually probably a little higher now) which lands right in that weird spot of nearly sizing out of standard retailers, which typically run from sizes 0 to 12 (or 8 to 10 for high-end retailers), but not quite sizing into plus-size retailers, which typically start at a size 16. The in-betweeners live in a world occupied by many but represented by few, especially when it comes to fashion advertising and media depiction.

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Fashion Magazines Want to Be Bigger, Literally

If you weren't paying $5.99 for Vogue’s mighty September issue last year, would you pay $9.99 for this year’s issue? That's the hope behind part of Vogue’s new publishing strategy, as laid out in Business of Fashion in mid-April. The May issue is a physical inch wider than past issues, $1 more expensive on the newsstand, and select pages are printed on a heavier paper stock. The summer issues will shrink back down to standard sizing, but in September, Vogue will again increase its size and nearly double its price on the newsstand.

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Disney’s Stylish Minnie Mouse Is Coming for Your Closet

There are a four key steps to achieving peak #MinnieStyle, according to Disney. A signature bow is a necessity, as is a polka dot print. The look should ideally be topped of with a set of ears (sparkles encouraged) and bonus points if everything falls under an entirely red and white color scheme.

These were the guidelines laid out in one of Minnie's first big promotions around #MinnieStyle, a branding move that is tying Minnie and fashion together in as many ways as possible. The promotion awarded two people who concocted the most stylish Minnie-themed outfits with tickets to three days worth of New York Fashion Week in September 2015. At NYFW, Refinery 29 collaborated with Disney on a Minnie-themed installation and the @MinnieStyle Instagram account was born. Seven months later, the account has over 63,000 followers.

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Remote Year Promised to Combine Work and Travel. Was It Too Good to Be True?

When Nissa Szabo, a 27-year-old tech industry lobbyist from Denver, Colorado, was notified of her acceptance into the inaugural class of Remote Year, she didn’t tell a single soul for ten days. None of her friends. Neither of her parents.

She had known from the minute she read about the program in Fast Company that Remote Year was the kind of experience she had been searching for, but now she had to tell everyone else in her life that she was about to spend the next year traveling and working remotely across the world with 72 people she had never met, in the hands of a company that had only existed for about nine months at the time.

“I wasn’t going back and forth on the decision,” Szabo says. “But how do I communicate this to my family and friends? Because it really is a crazy idea.”

Read more at Atlas Obscura >>

Can American Retailers Kick Their Discounts Addiction?

Over the past month, American specialty retailer J.Crew has run at least one sales promotion every single day. Last weekend, it was 40 percent off, both in-store and online. In mid-April, it was a 30 percent discount, plus free shipping for online orders. At the beginning of the month, it was an additional 50 percent off final sale items. Indeed, J.Crew’s promotions have become so ubiquitous that, last year, one shopper made headlines for creating Threadstats, a website built solely to track the retailer’s sales promotions and help consumers score the best deal.

In March, J.Crew’s discounting strategy was back in the news when the company was sued in New York federal court for allegedly deceiving customers in a “systematic scheme of false and misleading advertising, marketing and sales practices” on its J.Crew Factory website, according to the complaint. The plaintiff, Joesph D’Aversa, maintains that the “valued at” price displayed alongside each item — which supposedly indicates the true retail price of a product — was misleading given that J.Crew Factory’s merchandise was always on sale.

Read more at Business of Fashion >>

How Old Navy Got Everyone to Fall in Love With $19 Dresses

You know something’s up when Gwyneth Paltrow, fine purveyor of $200 breakfast smoothies and a $1,652 beauty routine, will halt her regularly scheduled Goop programming to devote an entire newsletter to the treasure trove that is Old Navy. Last August, the newsletter gasped its way through the brand’s back-to-school offerings (skinny denim overalls for $49.94! faux-patent leather slip-ons for $22.94!) by pairing up three “moms-from-the-web” and their daughters with complete Old Navy outfits.

Paltrow may be an unlikely Old Navy devotee, but then again, everyone’s been singing Old Navy’s praises these days. “Important: Old Navy’s Spring Activewear Is Ridiculously Cute (and Affordable)!” read a recent Popsugar headline. The Huffington Post rounded up “7 Items From Old Navy That Surprisingly Look Like a Million Bucks” last fall, and Who What Wear found “11 Chic Pieces You Won’t Believe Are From Old Navy.”

Read more at Racked >>

Has Gap Finally Figured Out What Its Customers Want?

It’s springtime at Gap, which means it’s time to sell some denim.

In spring 2010, top model Isabeli Fontana did her best to sell Gap’s patchwork straight-leg jeans. In 2011, it was Anja Rubik in dark-wash flares. For the next two years, it was a whole host of models wearing skinny jeans in as many neon colors as the design team could dream up. In 2014, the brand eased back into a relaxed "Lived-In" look and brought celebrities like Theophilus London and RJ Mitte on board for the campaign. In 2015, there was Jenny Slate and Paul Dano and a #SpringIsWeird Instagram campaign. In 2016, top model Julia van Os is doing her best to sell Gap’s patchwork straight-leg jeans.

At its heart, Gap is a basics company. You know when you walk into the store that there’s going to be a wall of v-neck tees and a table of crewneck sweaters and a whole array of jeans on sale.

Even though the ad campaign faces may rotate out, the message is always some version of the same easygoing, dependable, not-too-flashy style that tends to repeat itself year after year. When it sells, the message works. But, outside of a couple hopeful years, Gap has yet to sell that message well after its khaki-clad, swing dancing days in the mid-nineties, and it’s locking the brand in a perpetual turnaround phase.

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What Happened When Banana Republic Went Trendy

When you close your eyes and think of Banana Republic, what do you see? Brand president Andi Owen hopes you see tailored pants, sweaters that fit just right, and classic outerwear that brings the whole outfit together. These are Banana’s bread-and-butter products, but if you’ve walked into a Banana Republic anytime in the past year, you’re more likely to have found denim culottes, floral rompers, drop-waist dresses, and a sales rack stuffed to the brim.

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Why Amazon, Birchbox, and The Outnet Launched Their Own Labels

Remember the days when Amazon was knocking down the doors of luxury brands in an attempt to convince the likes of Ralph Lauren and Michael Kors that it wasn’t just a place to buy kooky iPhone covers and used textbooks, only to have fashion people like Yoox founder Federico Marchetti scoff at its ambitions?

Those days are gone. Not only does Amazon not care about courting luxury brands, but it has gone ahead and made itself designer of its own labels: Franklin & Freeman, Franklin Tailored, James & Erin, Lark & Ro, North Eleven, Scout + Ro, and Society New York. (Yes, those names all follow the same formula for a reason.)

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Instantly-Shoppable Runways Are Here, But Do They Work?

"I just thought of the craziest idea of all," Kanye West proclaimed this week, "I'm going to sell winter coats in the winter!!!"

We're not sure if Kanye is out of the loop or effectively trolling the fashion industry, but his declaraction is timed with a sudden surge towards in-season fashion shows. The immediately-shoppable fashion shows model being adopted by brands like Rebecca Minkoff and Michael Kors is the biggest schedule shake-up since since, well, Kanye.

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This Might Be Why You Get Teen Vogue Without Subscribing

"Who signed me up for a subscription of glamour? This is the last thing I want," a not-so-pleased Glamour subscriber tweeted last month. Another irate subscriber filmed herself throwing her unwanted copy of Glamour in the trash. Someone else recently launched this question out into the ether: "why did i all of a sudden start getting a subscription of teen vogue without subscribing to one HMM????" Within seconds, other women were replying with their own tales of Teen Vogue issues popping up in their mail out of nowhere.

When magazines drop on your doorstep without warning, it probably has to do with where you’ve been shopping recently. Mainstream magazines — especially those owned by Conde Nast — have been really stepping up their efforts lately to slip in free magazines with orders at popular women’s retailers, and while they technically have to alert customers that the free magazine is coming, not everyone is getting a warning.

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Analyzing the Zoolander 2 Hype Machine

Did you know Zoolander 2 is coming out today? Oh, you did? What gave it away? Was it the Derek Zoolander Center for People Who Don’t Age Good, on display in New York City? Was it the Derek Zoolander Gas Station Memorial For Models Who Died In A Freak Gasoline Fight, set up in Los Angeles? Was it Ben Stiller in character as Zoolander on the cover of Vogue?

Was it the Guinness World Record that Stiller was awarded for wielding the world’s longest selfie stick? Was it the Snapchat Live coverage of the Zoolander fashion show that Skrillex deejayed, Gigi Hadid walked in, and MC Hammer attended? Or maybe it was the event that put this marketing blitz in motion — when Stiller and Owen Wilson performed a walkoff at the end of Valentino’s FW16 show 11 months ago.

Read more at Racked >>

Why Can’t Fitness Magazines Cash In on the Wellness Craze?

Neghar Fonooni started lifting when she was 17, at a time when magazines like Women’s Health, Fitness, Self, and Shape were the go-to sources of information on women’s fitness. There were no bloggers, no social media, no online communities for fitness obsessives. "I used to cut the little workouts out of the magazine and take them with me to the gym," Fonooni says. "That was my exposure to what women’s fitness was."

A little more than a decade and a half later, interest in health and wellness is at an all-time high. The Global Wellness Institute’s most recent economic report values wellness tourism as a $494 billion industry, up 12.7% from the previous year. In the Yoga Alliance and Yoga Journal’s 2016 Yoga in America study, surveyors found that the number of Americans practicing yoga has increased by over 50% in the past four years.

And yet, fitness magazines — like the ones Fonooni clipped and toted to the gym — are falling left and right.

Read more at Racked >>