Archive for July, 2008
Hitwise has announced that www.polo-shirts.co.uk was a Hitwise Top 10 Award winner for the quarter April - June 2008.
During this period, www.polo-shirts.co.uk ranked in the top ten based on market share of visits among all United Kingdom websites in the Hitwise Shopping and Classifieds - Wholesale and Relationship Sales industry. The Hitwise Top 10 Award recognises websites from over 160 industries that are leaders in their industry. To learn more about Hitwise and the Top 10 awards visit http://www.hitwise.co.uk/contact-us/top-ten-awards.php
July 31st, 2008
The hutongs (alleys to you and me) of Beijing have a new police force – of sorts. They are called ‘Public Security Volunteers’ and there are more than 400,000 of them – arranged into neighbourhood groups that are serving the Olympic security forces which include a mixture of police, over 100,000 ‘counter-terror troops’ and more than 300,000 CCTV cameras. The PSVs patrol litter-dropping, inappropriate clothing and spitting in the street – but by the locals, not the expected foreign visitors! Despite the attempt to distinguish the new PSVs from the old ‘neighbourhood committee’ by giving the new volunteers a snazzy red and white striped polo-shirt to wear when ‘on duty’, there’s a lot of concern in the populace – the former committees were a mixture of spies and party members who reported on the irregular activities of their neighbours, and caused many a midnight arrest or disappearance for ‘re-education’.
The PSV polo-shirts are a big sign of changing China – they are sponsored by the Yanjing beer company, which would have been unthinkable a decade ago, and while every volunteer has been given one, less than half actually wear them. The other half have been put on the black market, still in their original wrappings, as part of the
Beijing Olympic memorabilia business. That too, would have been impossible (or an arrestable offence!) a few years ago.
The concern that the new volunteers have caused can be directly related to their entrepreneurial flair. Those who have flogged their
polo-shirts still need to distinguish themselves from ordinary citizens … so they’ve dug out Cultural Revolution-era red armbands to wear, and those armbands remind nervous Beijingers of the knock on the door in the middle of the night …
Beijing street cleaners in new uniforms
July 29th, 2008
It’s an important thing to do if you’re a Mormon! A practicing Mormon who created a calendar with pictures of shirtless (male) Mormon missionaries has been excommunicated after a disciplinary meeting with his local church leaders in Las Vegas.
The man with a calendar mission - Chad Hardy - bears no ill will towards the council of elders from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He’s an entrepreneur and he says ‘I spoke my truth …they still felt the calendar is inappropriate and not the image that the church wants to have.’ The calendar, called Men on a Mission had already sold over 10,000 copies and has now sold out as a result of the publicity, although Chad says there won’t be any more printed to meet the new demand. The dozen missionaries are all wearing their uniform of black trousers but lacked the Mormon trademark white shirts. In smaller supplementary pictures they were shown in their full missionary wear and talking about their religious beliefs.
It isn’t yet clear if action will be taken against the 12 modelling Mormons by their church elders.
July 17th, 2008
This is the question that www.nosymbolrequired.co.uk asked.
And the answer?
Well, it was http://www.saftag.com which was given an overall rating of 5 stars, another 5 stars for item quality, 4 stars for item value and 5 stars for item fit and sizing.
Mark Wallace, who conducted the review said, ‘I have had difficulty in the past sourcing good enough organic cotton t-shirts which will hold the reputation of my company. I used anvil organic tees for a while, which were in the correct price range, however they didn’t stand the test of time. SAF t-shirts are good quality, are not prone to misshaping after washing, and are easy to print on. The feel of the fabric is far superior to any other organic cotton tee I have managed to get my hands on. The sizes are acceptable and what you would expect. The colours are vibrant and also last well when washing.
His only quibble?
He wants to know when SAF will be bringing out a yellow tee!
White organic T-shirt courtesy of SAF
July 14th, 2008
A French court has ordered eBay to pay 40 million euros to LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton because the company didn’t do enough to stop sales of counterfeit goods on its site. The court decided that eBay had committed ‘serious errors’ in allowing the sales of fake LVMH goods, and had also violated the sales distribution network set up by Louis Vuitton and Christian Dior Couture and issued a cease and desist order, barring eBay from running advertisements for these perfume and cosmetic brands or risk a fine of 50.000 euros per day. The ruling also prohibits the sale of four perfume brands – Christian Dior, Kenzo, Givency and Guerlain.
eBay, the world’s largest online auctioneer, said it would lodge an appeal and said the decision was not a victory for copyright law. The appeal will be closely watched by a number of other brands including: Nike, Fred Perry, Lacoste, Burberry and Armani who all consider themselves to be victims of high volume counterfeit sales of their brands through eBay. The biggest area of counterfeiting, after perfumes and bags, is considered to be men’s casualwear, partly because men are not so good at spotting tiny differences in styling or logo that mark out knock-off goods.
Lacoste courtesy of mori chan
July 10th, 2008
There’s as much talk at Wimbledon about the fashion as the forehand smash. For the sports clothing and casual-wear designers, this is a testing ground for summer hits – one has already emerged: Roger Federer’s white cardigan with the F monogram was much commented on (not always politely) and is turning up in sports stores right now even though he didn’t win the final. Serena Williams didn’t fare so well in her white warm-up trench coat: it was pretty universally derided as a fashion faux pas and isn’t likely to become this year’s High street fashion hit. Maria Sharapova somewhat see-through bib top and shorts was popular with men, but her opponent Alla Kudryavtseva said after beating her, ‘… I don’t like her outfit. …It was one of my motivations to beat her.’
Venus Williams wore her own design, although the way she kept pulling at the top suggests it wasn’t entirely a tennis-designed garment. It appears in her clothing collection so we can expect to see plenty of those plaited front dresses on the beaches this year. The fascination of Wimbledon is its constraints - dress whites are still de rigueur and any woman wearing a low-cut top can be removed from the court. This means that the sportswear has to work within the confines of the rules and that makes for subtle alterations to sportswear that fast fashion outlets watch hungrily to be sure they don’t miss this year’s big hit.
Federer courtesy of toga
July 8th, 2008
As Andy Murray bows out, Wimbledon will be counting the profits. The All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club, which is responsible for staging the internationally famous tennis tournament, is actually a private club founded in 1868 as The All England Croquet Club. In 1875 lawn tennis, which was a game that had been introduced by Major Clopton Wingfield a year earlier and at that time was known as Sphairistike, (not quite so catchy, was it?) was added to the activities of the club. It was such a hit that in 1877 the Club was re-titled The All England Croquet and Lawn Tennis Club and instituted the first Lawn Tennis Championship. A new code of laws was drawn up. So comprehensive were they that there are virtually no changes in today’s rules except for details such as the height of the net and posts and the distance of the service line from the net.
And the Wimbledon shop (properly called the All England Croquet and Lawn Tennis Club shop) has a lucrative franchise - this year’s polo-shirts are a sweltering £30 each, but vintage Wimbledon polo-shirts are also selling on eBay so you might get a bargain if you’re lucky.
Andy Murray courtesy of Fimb
