Michelle Lamb: Connecting the Dots

Color & Life Teen Furniture

Just when your eyes begin to glaze over from seeing so much me-too product at a trade show, just when you are certain that creativity has been forever lost, something wonderful shows up. My assistant, Laura Colón, and I had just that sort of experience in Las Vegas, where a few diamonds in the rough made our day.

Innovation deserves recognition. At the Las Vegas Convention Center, we saw some of the most innovative furniture for kids and teens in memory. It comes from a company called Color & Life, based in San Diego, CA.

It isn’t color that makes their product innovative, although they have plenty of good options (one of the top sellers with White: Lime Green). Nor is it the fact that this company uses environmentally friendly materials and non-toxic paint. Those features are really not apparent to the casual observer.

The showstopper innovation is how they have utilized space. For example, in one configuration, a bunk bed has a trundle under the bottom bunk, so three can sleep in the space of two. Access the top bunk—not with a ladder—but with steps that are also cubbies for storage (each has a door).

In another set-up, perfect for a dorm room (I can’t help but think about dorm rooms since our daughter, Biz, starts her freshman year of college in just a few weeks), the bed is hidden in a drawer that rests on the floor. It becomes a platform upon which a desk can be placed. Or a book shelf. Or a beanbag chair.

I hope these people are wildly successful. They certainly deserve to be.

Las Vegas Mix

I have been attending markets and trade shows for a very long time. Over the course of those years I have seen lots of evolutions. Today, at the Las Vegas home furnishings market, I saw the addition of a product category that made me stop dead in my tracks: acupuncture products.

At Creation Therapy in the Las Vegas Convention Center, Mr. J.K. Choi, an acupuncturist, demonstrated how a small, hand-held electronic device emits tiny shocks that stimulate pressure points. This device is sold for use on both people and animals. After I tried it, I knew that my dog, Winston, would never sit still for it.

The micro shocks came fast on my shoulders and back. They didn’t actually hurt, although I would not characterize the demonstration as relaxing by any means. But here is the crazy thing: when Mr. Choi was finished and I stood up, all of the achy feelings that I always get from carrying a heavy brief case over my shoulder while walking on hard floors was GONE. That was pretty amazing.

So I actually considered whether I might buy such an item and maybe sometime I will. But was that the goal of this company? Did they really buy booth space at the Las Vegas Convention Center to show an alternative healing device to people who might want to buy one for themselves? I don’t think so. I believe that alternative healing, massage, homeopathy and the like, are now so mainstream that many gift and decorative accessory stores can and do sell these products and sell them well.

When I think about things that way, Creation Therapy fit right into the mix in Las Vegas.

Navigating Thru Chaos

I had coffee a couple of weeks ago with a woman I met almost 20 years ago. Mary Rizer was working for one of the top rep agencies at that time—an agency owned by one of the two people who encouraged me to create The Trend Curve™. Mary was detailed and competent. Even then I was struck by how organized she was and how she never really seemed to miss anything, not matter what was thrown at her.

When we got together for coffee last month I learned that Mary has crafted a business around those organizational skills. She has done so with a clever concept that I think is not only right in step with the needs of today’s far-too-busy executives, but also a perfect answer to the demands being made on the “sandwich” generation.

Navigating Thru Chaos helps people to organize. This is more than getting personalized help to de-clutter a closet or a pantry, although Mary is happy to do that for anyone. And if you are ready to finish the basement but first you have to clean it out, Mary’s company also takes the stress away by spending the time you don’t have to organize and box up what is there right now. But here are situations where I think Mary offers a more important service that keys into moving and moving on.

Maybe you are a Boomer that is leaving the suburban home behind in favor of a condo in the city—a condo that can accommodate only a fraction of your current cache of stuff. Perhaps someone needs to pour through Mom’s every possession so she can move to a smaller space. Maybe Dad has passed away, leaving 80 years of possessions for you to deal with. But you live in another city and do not have the time to sort through everything, coordinate the donations/recycling/movers, shippers. 

Mary’s company steps in to do the work with you or for you.

Mary’s vision for the future told her that Boomers taking care of kids and parents while juggling their careers need` this kind of help right now.  I think she was right. She also believes that as the working population ages, consumers who have hired out everything from grocery delivery to lawn services will not think twice about using a service like hers. I think she is right there, too.

I plan to sit back and watch Navigating Thru Chaos grow.

Florals Look Right for Men in St. Tropez

When Carole D'Arconte talks about her forecasts for color, fabrication, silhouette and motif, the apparel industry sits up and takes notice. Expertise like hers has been informing trend-setting apparel manufacturers and retailers for more than two decades.

The Trend Curve™ has been fortunate enough to form an alliance with Carole. At key points during the year, she tells us about apparel trends that have crossover potential into home interiors. We sit up and take notice, too.

This summer, her topic is trends from St. Tropez. You can discover her best picks for women and kids in the August issue of The Trend Curve (you can subscribe by following this live link to the Trend Catalog on our web site). Her tips on trends for men begin in posts below and continue in today's edition of our Connecting The Dots blog.

Tropical florals are not subsiding for men. But while the typical styles of the past, featuring silhouetted blossoms or flat color outlines, continue, newer interpretations are stealing the show.

Layering is directional. Watch for abstract geometrics (see the post below for more on abstracts) forming a loose foundation for blossoms, or illustrative motifs layered on top of a packed, all over outlined pattern, bringing an established look into the future.

BTW, notice the girl lounging over the Blue and White floral in the far right image from today, then jump down to the T-shirt in the far left shot in yesterday's post. Notice the similarity? I can't help but think of mud flaps on 18-wheelers....

More from St. Tropez

Carole D'Arconte has some of the best trend eyes in the apparel business. If you want to see her top picks for women and kids from St. Tropez, be sure to pour over the August issue of The Trend Curve™. If it's men you want to know about, read yesterday's post as well as today's.

Abstract imagery is just emerging in home décor, especially in a range of completely new geometrics. Carole points out an apparel trend for men, emerging in the summer heat of St. Tropez, that provides a different take on the abstract theme:

St. Tropez Men

Trends no longer follow the same predictable routes of emergence that they did even five years ago. That makes it harder to find a single best locale that works for trend spotting. But St. Tropez is still one of the top places to glean forward fashion information about color and design. That's why The Trend Curve™ continues to monitor the colors, silhouettes and surface designs that crop up each summer in St. Tropez—trends that have potential to impact home décor in the future.

Carole D'Arconte, one of the nation's top apparel trend forecasters, put her color and design savvy to work for The Trend Curve™, revealing key women's and kids trends for The Trend Curve™ (subscribers can read about them and see the details in the August issue). Now she turns her focus to men.

Top looks included t-shirt messages that ran the gamut from Goth to Zen to love directed sentiments:

Seeing Red

Now that I am back from London I can't stop thinking about all the Reds I have seen there this year When I visited in May, the shops were covered in White, White, White with Red as the punctuation mark that really stood out. Those Reds were ultra-warm, pushing up to the edge of Orange.

By July, however, Reds had changed. Sure, there were still plenty of warm ones in both apparel and home products. But even more were darker and, while not overwhelmingly Blue-cast, are still much cooler than those I saw in the Spring. All of this suggests that Reds will not only have a larger role in the two years ahead, but will have a broader range than Reds have had in the past.

Here are a couple of  Reds from my July trip, followed by Reds from my May visit.

 

Two Minutes of Silence

With so much to see and do in London—and our vacation coming too soon to an end—my family and I felt certain that we should pour as much as possible into today. And we did. But none of it felt more important than a two minute event spent at the magnificent St. George's Chapel within Windsor Castle. That is where we happened to be when the entire country stopped in silence to remember the victims of the July 7, 2005 attack in London. Most of our fellow tourists chose to stand along the edges of the chapel for the two minutes of silent prayer or contemplation. We stood with them. And for two minutes, no matter where each of us came from, we were all united in our hopes for peace and reconciliation.

SALES Are On In London!

It is difficult to judge any retail environment too harshly during the early part of July, the time when nearly everyone is clearing their summer merchandise to make way for the new fall assortments. London's Oxford Street was in full SALE mode today, with just a couple of exceptions (like Monsoon, which showed a full price assortment both of the two stores we stopped in today). This makes it a weak time to shop for lots of newness (color,fabrication, style, etc.) but a great time to shop for your closet. That is exactly what Biz and I spent our day at today.

(Note: Steve and Alex were happy enough to leave Biz and I to our shopping. They went to Madame Tussaud's wax museum—which we had no earthly interest in seeing—and spent several hours there taking pictures and critiquing the figures...Morgan Freeman and Johnny Depp were more realistic than John Travolta, for example. Who cares about that when there are sales in the shops?)

The four of us split up for our gender-specific day after a late breakfast together. Biz and I arrived at the Urban Outfitters at Oxford Circus around 11:00. This store did not look fresh and I am not sure this had anything to do with their clearance sale. In fact, I'm sorry to say that on my last visit in May I had the same impression. Once innovators in visual display, their windows, mannequins and tables have seemed to be stuck in the past this year. Still, a couple of pieces stood out in the visual muddle.

The first was a display of Red candles overprinted with silver metallic. This was a great example of the foil trend that is ripping through apparel being interpreted appropriately for home.

The second was an array of Minty Greens. We also saw this type of Green at Monsoon and Selfridges, as well as at Zara. At left is one of my favorites. Next to it, notice the Gray top. Even in the midst of clearance it was easy to see that Grays were getting warmer as they grew in importance for the fall season.

Zara and Mexx were both big hits with Biz; I like the point of view from both of these chains too. Not a big fan of foils, Biz instead gravitated to metallic thread used for visible stitching. The example here is from Zara. You will have to look closely around the letters to see it, but it's there acting like a hint of bling that really makes the piece special.

I am, in some ways, afraid of what I have exposed Biz to here in London. She loves the shops. Having received generous cash gifts for her recent graduation, she is also under the impression that she can but with abandon. But with an exchange rate of nearly two dollars to the pound (we exchanged at $1.94 today!), I had to keep reminding her to double the price of anything she saw in pounds.

In spite of my admonishments to do the math, Biz bought some great jeans that had floral applicqué, embroidery and bleached-out effects all together on the legs. I must admit that I wanted a pair of them, too. I bought a fabulous example of a pale Mint Green to show Laura Colón, my assistant, when I get back next week.

The sale shelves at Zara were filled with bright Yellow tops and sweaters that did not sell, causing me to wonder if the buyer was overly enthusiastic in their summer buy of that color, or if consumers simply resisted no matter how much of it they saw. Even reduced to a more-than-reasonable five pounds apiece there were still many unsold.

At Therapy, a more subdued Yellow looked great in a T-shirt decorated with one of the several heraldic designs that Biz and I saw in apparel this trip. An unexpected update: graffiti splatters in Purple. You can see the shirt at left.

Tourist Class

After spending all day yesterday, the fourth of July, in London with my family going from site to site, I now feel convinced that I could be perfectly happy spending the rest of my life as a tourist. Yesterday's itinerary took us to Westminster Abbey (always a remarkable experience) and the Cabinet War Rooms and Churchill Museum.

A lot of time and money has been spent on these attractions. The technology in the Museum, open only since 2005, is not only well done, but also fun. It was better than that at the Imperial War Museum, which we visited today, but both stops were more than worth while.

We also toured the Sherlock Holmes museum at 221B Baker Street. Authentic in period details yet inauthentic in fact (since Holmes never existed) it was still a hit with all of us. As my family looked at the wax figures from various episodes and stories, I was busy looking at the textiles, furniture and wall papers. It occurred to me, as it has in the past, that the decorating dilemmas faced by today's McMansion owners (how to decorate above the 8 or 9 foot mark) was solved in many ways during Victoria's reign. Paint above wallpaper and decorated draperies, for example. I couldn't help but notice the floral details on Sherlock Holmes' windows.

The last part of the day was spent shopping retail. Actually, only my daughter shopped with me while Steve and Alex, who had not interest whatsoever in new color, stopped at an arcade to play video games.

Biz loved Top Shop, the only store we had time to see before closing time. Among the best things to see there was a new fashion color: Mustard. Muddier than Gold and sporting a tint of Green, it looked great alone, combined with Gray and White or combined with Gray and Burgundy.

More Shopping Tomorrow!