White jeans rightfully hold a privileged place in the canon of summer fashion classics. Sunnier than blue jeans and chinos and more versatile than a sundress, a pair of white jeans makes a crisp substitute for all of the above—and one that can be worn well into autumn. Consider your go-to combination of blue jeans with a tee, blazer, button-down, or sweater. Then, swap in a white pair. Voila.
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Gap CEO Glenn Murphy already declared athletic clothing “the new denim” in February—a bold statement from the man running a company founded on the basic appeal of blue jeans. Now that gym clothes have undeniably become street clothes, brands at both end of the price spectrum are cashing in on the stretchy appeal of “soft dressing.”
New York-based eyewear company Warby Parker, which contributes a pair of glasses to someone in need for every pair it sells, announced last week that it had donated its millionth pair of eyeglasses. One million pairs donated means Warby Parker has sold as many pairs since its launch in 2010, and consumers bought half of those glasses in the last year.
Beyoncé and Jay-Z opened their “On the Run” tour in Miami this week. The concerts have been widely publicized with a star-studded trailer and the image above, in which the couple wears balaclavas—knitted hoods originally worn by soldiers in the late 1800s—like only Beyoncé and Jay-Z can. Bey gazes challengingly through the oval-shaped hole in hers, and Jay’s power is just implied.
Here in America’s northeast, tomatoes worth eating are finally starting to trickle into the farmers’ markets. Like all the greatest joys of summer, the pleasure of eating a ripe, in-season tomato is a simple one: a drizzle of olive oil and a scattering of salt is all it needs. (On crusty grilled bread, it’s borderline sublime.) But there is one really easy way to ruin these juicy, sweet, sun-kissed fruits, and that is to put them in the refrigerator.
Tell a Brazilian you’re hitting the beach in Recife, where the US and Germany are facing off in a World Cup match today, and they’ll probably tell you to stay out of the water. They know—and worry that World Cup tourists don’t—about the proliferation of shark attacks at city beaches such as Boa Viagem, where high-rise apartment buildings overlook the umbrella-spotted sand and turquoise water.
It’s easy to see why retail brands and the media outlets that cover them love fashion collaborations. These symbiotic licensing deals—whereby two companies overlap expertise, branding imagery, and audiences—provide flash-in-the-pan excitement, around-the-block lines, increased brand recognition, and the opportunity to sell products to people who may not have bought them otherwise.
The running joke of wearable technology is how pitifully unwearable it is. Even Diane von Furstenberg’s Midas touch couldn’t make Google Glass look cool.
Cocoa prices spiked to $3,118 per tonne ($3,437 per ton) last week—their highest point since 2011. As Quartz has reported, a growing taste for dark chocolate (which requires a higher concentration of cocoa) and China’s swelling appetite for chocolate are driving up cocoa’s price. Chocolate producers fear that a cocoa deficit may be in our future.
The numbers: Strong. Profits at the world’s second-largest clothing company (behind this one) leapt 25% in the second quarter to SEK 5.81 billion ($875 million)—the strongest growth in more than four years. Sales excluding VAT increased by 20% to SEK 37.83 billion from SEK $31.64 billion.
The illustrator and author Maira Kalman will guest-curate one of the first exhibitions when the newly renovated Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum reopens in Andrew Carnegie’s former mansion in Manhattan this December. And for her show, Maira Kalman Selects, she reached beyond the museum’s collections, and into her own.
Many of the World Cup teams in Brazil brought their own ingredients for pre-game meals—Italy packed their prosciutto and olive oil, the U.S. their peanut butter—but they may be wise to wash down those dishes with a couple of Brazil’s local drinks: açai and coconut water (known as agua de coco in Brazil). Due to recent spikes in popularity, beverages containing açai and coconut water may strike consumers as over-hyped, over-processed, sugary drinks disguised as natural beverages. But in Brazil, ordering an açai (pronounced “ah-sigh-ee”) or an agua de coco (just how it looks, but that de sounds like “jee”) can get you a pure, unadulterated natural sports drink that’s hydrating and healthy. Fun fact: both açai berries and coconuts are drupes—three-layered fruits with hard, stone-like seeds.
Like many of us, Noah Veltman found himself feeling uncomfortably covetous every time he read a glossy magazine.
Like many fashion designers, the creative teams behind the 2014 World Cup kits begin their process with “inspiration boards“—visual collages where they gather the concepts and colors for their clothing. And what was on team Mexico’s board? None other than the masked and caped crusaders of lucha libre—the colorful, high-flying form of Mexican wrestling that’s the nation’s second most popular sport (behind soccer).
The numbers: Dismal. Lululemon Athletica’s profits plummeted 60% to $19 million (paywall), and sales growth has slowed dramatically over the last year. The high-end yoga and athletic-wear company reported 11% growth in net sales over last year’s first quarter, reaching $384.6 million in the first quarter of this year.
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This week, the Business Insider declared the short men’s business suit ”mainstream,” much to the dismay of uptight, frail-calved traditionalists everywhere.
The numbers: Not so hot. Inditex’s profits fell 7.3% to €406 million ($550 million) in the first quarter—the sharpest drop since 2009. Sales grew by 4.3% to €3.75 billion. Still, investors didn’t seem too disappointed and shares rose.
Fashionable travel is tough. Trousers get wrinkled, temperatures are unpredictable, and for overnight international flights, comfort is of the essence. But Italy’s national soccer team still managed to pull off a stylish arrival in Rio de Janeiro last week.
Of all the party animals at February’s New York Fashion Week, the alpacas may have been the best-behaved. The lovable, long-lashed camelids mixed with the media at a party where the Peruvian Trade Commission promoted the use of their fiber.
The numbers: Gloomy, as expected. Prada’s profits fell 24% in the first quarter compared to the same quarter last year. Net income dropped €105.3 million ($143.3 million), down from €138.2 million. Sales slipped 0.6% to €777.7 million, compared to the prior year period.
The aesthetic qualities of Google Glass (or lack thereof) have been the source of hand-wringing among early stylish early adopters. “The worst kind of German architect nerd glasses,” is how T magazine editor Deborah Needleman described Google Glass last September at New York Fashion Week.
Since late 2012, luxury businesses in China have been hit hard by an anti-corruption crackdown. The campaign, which limits lavish gift-giving and spending amongst government officials, has hurt sales of items such as baiju “firewater,” smoother-drinking cognac, scotch whisky, and very expensive watches. In recent years, such items have played an outsized role in corruption within the country. Of course, this has been bad for luxury companies such as Richemont, for which China and Hong Kong account for more than a quarter of sales. Chinese sales are also a key to growth for Italian luxury giant Prada.
