Pink is suddenly the color in kitchens. It all started in 2001 with a pink KitchenAid stand mixer ($300; right). Each purchase included a donation to Susan G. Komen for the Cure, launching KitchenAid’s Cook for the Cure initiative, which has raised more than $5 million. Now there’s a whole line of Cook for the Cure products, including:
You may already know that Nike created the shoes for the U.S. Olympians (and also China’s Olympic team). A visit to the part of the Nike Web site about these shoes is a veritable encyclopedia/laboratory of custom shoe-making. They offer close-up views and detailed explanations of the design process for every sport’s footwear. Not just running and basketball, but field hockey, BMX, archery, wrestling, badminton, weightlifting and all 28 sports in the summer games. They first show off their “flywire” technology, which uses cable to function as “synthetic tendons” that wrap around the foot. The development has reduced the shoe’s weight by 50 percent, they say. A click over to their “lab” profiles the way every shoe was made for each sport. The Ballestra, for example, is for fencers. It has a traction pattern on a flat sole for balance, and extra foam because fencers put seven times their weight onto their front foot with every lunge. The Grigorios for kayakers are sleek water shoes with split toes that are as close to being barefoot as possible. Equestrians wear the Ippeas, black boots modernized with zippers , lighter heels and a small titanium spur. You can even watch a video conversation with the designer of each shoe. But the best part is that you can buy some. Even if you don’t play badminton, you can check out the shoe and get a pair for $90, or grab a pair of the wildly patterned BMX shoes for $220 (pictured). You can’t buy the custom footwear for every sport, but there are plenty to pick from.
Ever heard of Zara? Good, then you heard it here first. If you haven’t heard of it, you’re probably not much of a world traveler. Zara is a hot brand that has just become the world’s largest clothing retailer. That honor was given to Gap until this week. A slumping U.S. consumer sales market has dropped Gap’s revenues by 10 percent in the first quarter of their fiscal year. For your edification: Zara clothing is trendy , chic, inexpensive, you can’t buy it online and there are 3,900 Zara stores in the world, compared to 3,100 Gap outlets. There are five Zara stores in New York City and surrounding areas. The retail giant was born in Spain (in the bedroom of 72-year-old founder and chairman Amancio Ortega, who made bathrobes) and the first store opened in 1975. Now you can shop in Zara stores in Bahrain, Croatia and Iceland. British Vogue says the Zara philosophy is fast fashion: they quickly take (more…)
Thank goodness for the Web. How else would you be able to score handmade home goods from around the world? (Unless of course you’re going to pull a Phileas Fogg?) Enter Poppytalk Handmade, an online “street market” showcasing handmade goods from artisans worldwide. The key differentiator from other craft sites like Etsy.com is that Poppytalk Handmade features a monthly theme. July’s market is themed “Home Sweet Home!” and features goods to make a house a home. August’s theme is “School Days!” appropriately enough. Much like an antiques emporium, the site features a limited number of screened “sellers,” who rent their space by the month. We were drawn to artist Michelle Brusegaard’s unique take on formalwear, which includes striking, signed digital prints of gowns hanging on clotheslines ($15 each). Also nifty: Domestic Construction’s pendant lighting made entirely of tea cups ($58). Beehive Kitchenware’s bird measuring spoons ($88; pictured) and other kitchen goods are the antithesis of standard issue culinary wares. The same can be said for Flappergirl Creations’ sexy aprons and coffee cup cozys ($28, $12).
James Brown’s relatives may have tried to stop it, but like the sweat-drenched singer known for pretending to be near collapse on stage, it went right ahead: This week Christie’s auctioned off a motherlode of memorabilia owned by the Godfather of Soul himself. Scrolling through the auction results, fans may be surprised that not all the mementos were astronomically priced. For just a few hundred dollars, devotees snagged a “best wishes” note on hotel stationery ($313) or even one of his jumpsuits ($375). The latter’s lowball price may have been due to the large amount of clothing available: When you can get a flashy red number with “Sex” emblazoned on it ($7,500), a silver fox coat ($2,500), or the very GFOS suit worn onstage at the famous Ali/Forman bout in Zaire ($25,000; pictured), why waste your auction dollars on a plain white outfit? Other noteworthy items included a personal passport ($7,500), Brown’s Hammond organ ($10,000), and an old-fashioned dome/chair hair dryer, complete with a small arsenal of styling products ($10,625). A suite of red-leather furniture came close to being the star of the show, fetching $40,000, but it was upstaged by a comparatively plain black cape ($47,500) that the new owner should definitely wear every Halloween from now on. Those of us who missed the sale would do better to invest our cash in on James Brown: The Singles,a series of $30 two-disc sets that aim to collect every single the singer put out — currently up to Volume 5, the series still hasn’t reached the funky ’70s.
It’s no news that everyone from retailers to movie studios and electronics manufacturers wants you to buy a Blu-ray DVD player. They hit early adopters with “be the first on your block” ad campaigns, and now that the format war is over they’re still offering the kind of incentives usually seen when a technology is new: Just recently, Amazon started offering buyers of select Blu-ray players an $80 add-on bundle that would get their movie collection jump-started. (The titles included are a mixed bag, pictured, but $10 per film is quite a price.) Some of the incentives are a bit more thoughtful than usual. Martin Scorsese lovers who already own the standard DVD version of Gangs of New York, for instance, can ease the pain of buying a second version for Blu-ray by mailing in a coupon for a $10 rebate (other titles are eligible as well). A better development — financially and practically — is the new trend of “digital copy” bundling. Some movie studios are bundling second discs with certain Blu-ray titles that contain a digital file users can install on iPods for mobile viewing. Fox’s Juno was a prominent early example, but other companies — like Warner Brothers, with 10,000 B.C. and Lionsgate with the latest Rambo flick — are getting into the game. Hopefully, it will soon become an industry standard to let buyers own portable digital versions of the DVD movies they buy.
Friday’s release of the “3G” version of Apple’s iPhone ($200) was a sensation, drawing a wave of eager customers that, despite lessons learned last year, actually dragged the activation procees to a halt for some folks. Still, the speedier, more fully featured phone arrived not a moment too soon, as other cell-phone manufacturers are desperate to ride Apple’s design coattails. This is nothing new, of course: Months before the first generation was released, there was already enough imitation going on for Apple to take legal action. Some trend followers beat the original iPhone onto the market while others appeared to vanish before they got beyond the design phase; still others were clumsy enough to get tech journalists snickering, and have stayed in China to date. Today, the big hit in the non-iPhone iPhone arena appears to be Samsung’s Instinct (which starts at around $500, but with “instant savings” and rebates, the price drops to $130) comfortable , a familiar-looking little candybar that leapfrogs the new iPhone’s GPS capabilities by boasting actual turn-by-turn directions. (The iPhone will simply find your location on a map; the rest is up to you.) Then there’s LG’s Voyager, around $200, which combines touchscreen input with a slide-out QWERTY keyboard. Nokia’s N800 ($300 online, but they’re out of stock on their website and at Amazon.com) takes a different design road, grafting its wide-format screen onto a case resembling a vintage electric shaver. None of these are cheap, and prices vary widely because of discounts and rebates, but the new HTC Touch Diamond (which the FCC just approved but is not yet on the U.S. market) and Samsung’s i900 (pictured), which also hasn’t hit the market yet, thoroughly compared here, buck trends by having a base cost, expected to be around $600, which is far higher than the iPhone’s slashed price. At least with those two, you wouldn’t be committed to using AT&T, as you are with Apple’s product. And what of that smartphone titan, the Blackberry? While their upcoming “Thunder 9500,” which will be tied to Verizon and is expected to hit store shelves in September, may eventually rock users’ worlds, gossip on the Internet (some of which is chronicled here) suggests it’s far from ready for prime time. However, if you want a sneak peek at it, tech blogger Boy Genius claims to have found the first picture of one and boasts about it on his blog.
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