Photo by Kimberlyfaye on Flickr

An open letter to clothing designers & retailers

Dear fashion folk,

I want to give you money. If only you would let me.

(Did that get your attention?)

Recently I went shopping for new clothes: I’d heard about some great jeans available on Main Street in Vancouver. Unfortunately, like so many other occasions, the store was out of stock in anything resembling a size large enough to fit me. In itself this is not so tragic of course. But, we’re talking fashion here, so please bear with me.

Main St., if you’re unfamiliar, has a stretch of stores selling wonderful indie designers’ fashions and vintage stuff. Stuff I really, really like in many cases.

Unfortunately, that store with the skinny-only jeans was not unique among it’s competitors. None of these stores had much in a size Large. Most had no designs in Extra Large. Don’t even get me started on how many of the designs were styled for twiggy bodies to begin with, as if flat-chested women with narrow hips are the only ones who want interesting clothes.

Did I mention that I want to give you money? I’m not alone.

According to a report on the plus-size apparel industry in Canada:

• roughly 30% of women in Canada wear size 14 and over, and
• we are one of the most under-served markets in the fashion industry.

My experience that day was, sadly, not unusual. At size 14 I am continually frustrated while seeking clothes that fit. Many “normal” lines do not go large enough, or are not cut to flatter a curvy figure. (Like, if I can get a shirt or jacket zipped up at all, it’s “Hello, monoboob!”)

Yet if I do find a section of “plus” sized clothes, these are typically too big or cut to hide figures more than I’d like.

So, I keep heading back to Reitmans who are in the minority of Canadian retailers who understand there’s both an underserved and (with the aging of the boomers) a growing market in plus-sized fashions. They have it so figured out, in fact, that their regular line has sizes large enough to accommodate me with room to spare. Their website is even useful (gasp!) with a sizing chart that goes so far as to include bicep measurements. (Since I’ve been lifting weights, biceps are another problem area for jackets. *sigh*)

There is a point, and that is this:

Get away from the runways. Leave your studios. SQUISH whatever it is that’s making you design as if women will look like teenagers throughout adulthood until they suddenly fit the grandmother niche (oh, excepting of course the profitable maternity phase of course). Have a look around. Notice all the beautiful, curvy women who want to give you money. Design cool, flattering clothes for us. Get ‘em out there. Then tell me about them. I’ll not only buy some, I will sing your praises from the rooftops and help you spread the word.

And I promise you, I’m not alone in that.

Thanks for reading.

- Tzaddi

Today I found the shift also happened in Firefox 3. Doh!

Fortunately a discussion of rounding errors in Firefox got me to wondering about the size of the background image. Well, it was an odd number of pixels wide. Increasing the width of the image by one pixel fixed the bug in both FF3 and Safari. Bye-bye hack! Dunno why I didn’t think to check that before.

It’s purpose is making saving fun and easy, so you can take that dream vacation without the guilt of maxing out your credit card. It’s like an online piggy-bank that you can contribute to automatically. Plus, your contacts can contribute to it, and some sponsors (related to the thing you’re saving up for) may also contribute. At least, that’s what I gleaned from a few minutes on their site.

Unfortunately, it’s only available in the U.S. I wonder if they have expansion plans or if someone could start a similar service for other countries? It’s patent-pending, so I don’t know if you could.

I noticed this in the testimonials:

We were going to take out a short-term home loan to tackle this new bathroom project when I got this e-mail from a friend telling me to ‘SmartyPig’ it

So I also wonder, will it become a verb, like “Google it” has?

We’ll have Colin’s other site in WordPress shortly — can’t wait to see what he does with that one!

…on the Web, most people are bozos and not worth listening to.

A snippet from Why Web 2.0 Can Be Dangerous.

One book I’ve looked at is Bulldog: Spirit of the New Entrepreneur by Ellie Rubin. It’s dated now, and so far it’s quite focused on the Bulldog company she formed in the 90′s, but there’s some bits which resonate with me.
Rubin says

The new entrepreneur is someone who creates personal brands that represent what they stand for, not what business they are in.

Works for me, considering that I plan to get up to a number of creative pursuits alongside my web design. I’ve considered whether each pursuit needs it’s own brand, but decided that could be confusing for people, including myself. I think should have one overall brand that fits all the things I might get into, even though there are downsides to this approach as well.

Rubin then describes the process that led to their Bulldog name. Firstly she said

When in doubt, take a look around. Go on a journey.
We looked at all kinds of logos and company names that created a simple but powerful mood and image, and in some ways told a story. We also looked at people who… reflected a brand, in other words, who… had branded themselves as personalities and created equity in their own personal brands.

Then they came up with a shortlist of attributes they wanted their brand to have:

• in the depths of recession, they needed something that would communicate strength, determination, and tenacity
• a humorous element, something visually whimsical, because you should never take yourself too seriously
• a name that would span multiple businesses as they anticipated the coming changes in their market space (design, technology, and communications)
• they narrowed down to one word they wanted to be remembered for: attitude
• they wanted a name that would allow them to create memorable icons and visual branding.

Once they came up with the name Bulldog their challenge was to foster the attributes they wanted associated with the company name.

Coming up with my company name

I’ve been playing with words for a while now. I have a long list of words describing web design, creative pursuits, etc. etc. I bounce around at thesaurus.com and dictionary.com adding to the list. So far I’ve come up with two names that I liked for a while, but after sitting with them I’ve rejected the first and probably the second. Believe me, I’m starting to understand why some branding and naming gurus cost so much!

Actually, I’ve come up with a lot more names than two, but most are used or the domain name is unavailable/unsuitable…

If you have any personal branding stories or ideas to share, I’d love to hear them in the comments. If only I had a giant audience maybe I could crowdsource my new name

• A personal story of need is heard, and inspires a t-shirt design.
• The design is printed on the outside of the t-shirt. On the inside, next to the heart, that personal story is printed.
• Proceeds from the sales go to meet that need.
• All the designs are limited editions, sold only until the goal of that mini-campaign is met.

I think this is a really inspirational grass-roots effort. What do you think?

I looked up Crumpler Canada and I have to say it is one of the most un-usable ecommerce sites I’ve seen lately. First, the landing page is done entirely in Flash. Fun aesthetic perhaps, but navigation labels that dangle and wave around when I’m trying to read them make me want to shoot them, not click on them. So, I chose a type of bag from the less-annoying lower navigation. This brought me to a Flash-html hybrid site where it’s not obvious how to switch the product category you’re viewing. You have to first recognize the cutesy drawings, without labels, that are done in Flash without any tooltip or cue at all about where they might lead to. I call this Mystery Meat navigation. Nobody trusts mystery meat.

Now about my surfing habits. I use Firefox with a plug-in that stops Flash from playing automatically. I have to click on each Flash object on the page in order to make it play. This is very handy given the crappy flashy advertising that takes over some sites. It means I can actually stand to read those sites. When viewing a site that uses flash for navigation and other bits and pieces that I might actually want to see, it’s not so handy. The thing is, if I’m not very interested in a site I won’t bother clicking that. I’ll just leave. I don’t know how popular this plugin is, but if you’re considering putting your site navigation or other important bits in Flash I think it’s worth further thought.

On a related note, Darren and Julie just released a Social Media Playbook and one of the things they mention is that ecommerce sites like this should make products easy to link to. I would tell you my favourite bag in the collection if I’d had the patience to find it and if I were able to actually link to it. Whoever built this site should read that book and a whole lot more on interaction design too.

Update: I only just realized that one of the examples they use in  the book is Crumpler. What can I say, except I was obviously skimming… and it’s strange to have the same company brought to my attention from such different means in the same day.

HO SPICE

And of course did a double take. “It’s nearing Christmas”, I thought. “Maybe it’s something to do with that…” It wasn’t. The sign actually said:

HOSPICE

This is why good typography matters, people. Don’t be the next ho hawking spice when you really mean to be fundraising for a good cause.