Q: What do these stores have in common? A: “Vertically integrated manufacturing”

Imagine you’re in a boutique trying on some jeans that almost fit. What if they actually offered to make a pair tailored your measurements at their factory at India, in two weeks? That’s the case at JF & SON, which works with hand-weavers throughout India to develop custom fabrics–for clients and their own clothes–that are sent to the vertically integrated JF & SON studio in New Delhi. This system of production allows them to make constantly make unique products, in small quantities that are responsive to what their customers want.

Pushing this notion to its extreme is a new line of denim, Prison Blues, made by prisoners in Pendleton, Oregon out of a 47,000 square foot facility devoted to making jeans. Each pair features a tag resembling a license plate saying that each pair is “made on the Inside to be worn on the Outside.”

The idea that a company controls every step of its production process–vertical integration–has started to take on greater appeal as consumers demand ever greater quality control and customization options. It has long been front and center in all of American Apparel’s advertising and even on their storefronts, and allows them to showcase new products in development and respond to feedback regarding new colors, fit, and fabrics quickly. LVMH also claims to be vertically integrated in that they control every step of the supply chain–from sunglasses to clothing to watches–produced in their own specialized workshops.

Part of the appeal of vertical integration—across all levels of retail, from everyday basics, boutiques, to luxury stores—is that consumers are responding to brands that stand for a particular way of making and using, that produces a system of meaning or validation. There seems to be an affinity for brands to operate more as ateliers or workshops than as mass production companies where materials are outsourced, costs are mercilessly pared down, and production is standardized. By acknowledging, exposing and controlling their manufacturing process, these brands make consumers feel a deeper connection to them by creating a new mythology around how their products are made.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, as the years sandwiched between the dot-com boom and the late 00’s ushered in an unprecedented ballooning and democratization of luxury. The base price for  “It” handbags (and now shoes) rose to over a grand, fashion houses long past were resurrected with new talent (a low point being Lindsay Lohan’s short-lived appointment at Ungaro), and brands expanded into ever far-flung categories.

Meanwhile, a backlash to this state of affairs was emerging. “Slow fashion,” a cousin to its more well known kin slow food, embraced like-minded principles such as locally sourced materials and manufacturing, ethical production practices, and environmentally responsible choices. Think Anya Hindmarch’s iconic and endlessly knocked off “I’m not a plastic bag” dating from 2007, or Ali Hewson and Bono’s ’organically sourced clothing line Edun. Cue 2008 and the luxury market that had overperformed since the early 2000’s took a nosedive. The age of ubiquitous luxury and overvaluation had ended.

At Columbia’s GSB’s Retail and Luxury Goods Club’s conference a few months ago, it became clear that fashion houses and luxury conglomerates had begun to tout slow fashion principles to justify their relevance in the “new normal” and search for a more substantial notion of authenticity.

As Daniel Lalonde, CEO of Louis Vuitton NA put it, “The new luxury value equation has shifted, how do consumers construct the ‘value’ of a luxury item and rationalize its purchase? I’ve found that customers respond to creativity, craftsmanship, and value.” Some brands are starting to communicate this “value,” as tied to authenticity, by establishing provenance and, on the flip side, promoting transparency in manufacturing.

One of the cornerstones of this “luxury value equation” is the nature of heritage and craftsmanship. A marquee name is no longer enough, it has to be demonstrated by a tradition of craftsmanship, sourcing, and provenance. Nowadays, status items might be designed in the United States, sewn in China, and then finished in Italy, creating tension for brands in how they portray their production processes. As clothing production has shifted to computerized systems, artisanal and basic technical skills are being shifted to other countries, mainly China. These pressures have led brands such as Louis Vuitton and Gucci with a built-in heritage story to rediscover their legacy and make it the centerpiece of their 2010 campaigns.

It should be pointed out that the groundwork for luxury’s current fixation on provenance has been accelerated by social media, such as tastemaker fashion bloggers and their readership, resulting in increasingly savvy consumers. We’ve entered an era where bespoke details are becoming more mainstream, which was not the case even five years ago. By popularizing the notion that it’s cool to know how clothes are made and finished, social media has effectively shifted the needle towards slow fashion.

LVMH recently joined forces with Parsons to launch a new initiative, “The Art of Craftsmanship Revisited: New York” in which designers are paired with local master artisans to create original fashion ensembles and short documentary films. Their commitment to heritage spans not just years but generations into the future—a wise investment at a time, as NYT fashion critic Cathy Horyn put it, when “many aspects of contemporary life feel unreliable, [so] heritage brands offer a degree of security.”

To be continued next week…

Born out of a homesickness for the yogurt of his native Iceland, Siggi Hilmarsson started to make his own batches at home, founding Siggi’s in 2005. After many, many batches, he was able to create a nonfat skyr with three times the amount of protein compared to standard yogurts.

It has the cleanest taste (and thickest texture!) of any dairy product I’ve ever tasted, and quickly developed a cult following among foodies and healthy eaters. Now distributed nationally by Whole Foods, I sat down with Siggi to discuss his perspectives on American tastebuds and approach to eating.

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What was the inspiration for you behind founding your own yogurt company?
I missed skyr the yogurt of Iceland, which is much thicker than regular yogurt from being strained– you strain about 75% of the whey weight out so you have a much more concentrated mass of milk solids. Skyr is traditionally made from skim milk, because it’s a byproduct of butter. So back in Iceland in the old days, you would start by skimming off the cream to make butter, then take the skim and make the skyr, after straining the whey from the skyr you would use the whey to drink or pickle various sheep’s parts usually or other food items to store over the winter.

Although I missed skyr the reason why I founded Siggi’s as a particular brand of skyr in the US has more to do with food here than with yogurt per se—I’m pretty averse to eating a lot of sweet stuff and I wanted to make the product not very sweet. I wanted to make a yogurt that was not excessively sweet and didn’t have this explosive sweet flavor.

I don’t like eating a lot of sugar. And when I came to the States, I was shocked by not just candy, but whole wheat bread (with high fructose corn syrup) and everything in between has sugar.  In particular even natural yogurt had 25 to 30 grams of sugar a cup. And then you see some that use aspartame, or artificial sweeteners, which I absolutely abhor. I don’t think they are good for you, they taste terrible, and they are part of this engineered food that I’m not really into.

How did you educate yourself in the process of making skyr?
I started just reading about it. My mom went to a couple local libraries back home in Iceland and got me some really old articles. I read some books, I read online, learned about yogurt in general. And then I started experimenting. All in all, from the time I made my first batch to when I started selling it, it was probably a year and a half. I went through many batches that failed first.

As a company, what are your guiding principles?
We don’t want any of our foods to be overly or excessively sweet, so we use a low amount of any sort of sugar substance. And the sugar we do put in there, we decided to use agave, which is a low glycemic carbohydrate, it takes the body longer to break down so basically you don’t get as much of a rush as you would if you just pump yourself up with sugar.

The other principles are general subtlety—we don’t use flavorings or try to avoid them, we use real fruit, don’t use any colorings, no artificial ingredients, try to keep ingredient style clear and short.

Even things that are unnecessary we just don’t include—for example people will often add beet juice for color, which is still natural and it’s pretty tasteless in small amounts, but we’ve skipped that. We don’t try to exaggerate the colors of things. Also with our sourcing we try to be transparent and traceable. We have certain criteria for the farms that they give their cows access to pasture, grass feed them, don’t use any hormones, we are against tail docking which is a rather unpleasant practice in some industrial dairies. We endorse sustainability–for the lack of a better word -and humane animal treatment, no factory farming. .                     .

In 2005, Ian Kizu-Blair, Sam Lavigne, and Sean Mahan created SFZero: a “collaborative production game” or alternate reality game (ARG), that sets out to take game players from being passive consumers behind a screen to interacting with the real world and with each other. SFZero is currently played in at least 30 cities around the world, from Minneapolis to Baghdad.

They’ve collaborated with Jane McGonigal on Flashback!, an educational kids TV show for PBS, been written up in the San Francisco Chronicle, spoken and hosted events at Institute for the Future, and created Ghosts of a Chance, a game for the Smithsonian American Art Museum, where gameplay involves creating art objects and mailing them to the museum for an exhibition/event. .                     .

Paris. London. Hong Kong. Milwaukee?  Recently Craig, Kat, and I had the pleasure of staying at the Iron Horse Hotel, which we agreed was one of the best hotels we’ve spent a night in. Opened in October last year, the Iron Horse was founded by real estate developer Tim Dixon and is the first upscale hotel geared for business travelers and motorcycle enthusiasts alike, which makes sense given that Milwaukee hosts many conventions and is home to Harley-Davidson. Its name comes from the term Native Americans used for the train as it crossed the prairies, and today the Iron Horse is located alongside a historic yet active railroad.

Once a mattress factory, the architecture (lofted industrial beams, reclaimed woods) amenities (motorcycle rentals!), and food offerings (a fancy restaurant as well as more casual pub fare) are executed perfectly within the realm of Ralph Lauren Americana meets Restoration Hardware meets high-end biker. The overall effect was unexpected (a bedside bench upholstered in cowhide), luxurious (bathrooms half the size of my apartment), and thoroughly embodied a new notion of biker-chic luxury that could only be at home in Milwaukee.

What I find particularly compelling about the Iron Horse is how it manages to cater to two unexpected segments (bikers and business travelers) and addresses the frequent traveler’s fatigue with cookie cutter “stylish” business hotels. It feels like a return to place/locality and the specific things that make a city special and authentic.  For example, look no further than the Ace Hotel whose bottom-up spread from Seattle, Portland, Palm Springs, and finally New York, is grounded in expressing a quirky aesthetic particular to each of those cities. The Ace Hotel’s expansion contrasts with the generic chic of thousands of boutique chain lobbies playing light house music across the country (W Hoboken, anyone?).

In a city not known for design innovation, the creativity of the Iron Horse hinted at the larger landscape of things to do in Milwaukee. “Gateway” experiences like these can shape one’s experience and expectations of a city—earlier this year I went to Detroit and loved it; the success of my entire visit hinged upon an extremely detailed Design Sponge-authored guide by local blogger Sweet Juniper that recommended furniture stores and historical architecture sites unfamiliar to most locals.

DESIRES (don’t laugh), the hotel management company that manages the Iron Horse, just opened Moonrise, a sister hotel in St Louis, with a retro-modern mid century decorating theme so it will be interesting to see if their formula of bringing local flavor/heritage will be as successful there as the Iron Horse has been for Milwaukee.

That is how long we have gazed out of our window at the High Line, dreaming of the day when we might have morning meetings amidst greenery.

IT’S OPEN. Once forlorn, it is now resplendent, and we had a chance to take a stroll on the park’s opening day yesterday. The pictures speak for themselves, but in a nutshell, we thought it was fabulous and well worth the wait.

Huge congratulations go to Joshua David and Richard Hammond, who conceived the idea and formed Friends of the High Line in 1999. Designed by Field Operations (Jame’s Corner’s landscaping design firm) and Diller Scofidio+Renfro, beautiful renderings of the High Line have graced the pages of NY publications for years. Since then, budgets have been slashed and snazzy features have been sacrificed. Nevertheless, the creative juices kept flowing, and there are many elements (undulating and pronged paving, oversized rolling lounge chairs, water features, plants you have never seen before) that will surprise and delight. We particularly love the re-introduction of wild grasses that were found on the High Line when it was deserted.

Come and see for yourself!

I recently got the chance to peek at the Milk and Honey Service Manual, authored by patron-saint-of-cocktails Sasha Petraske and his staff. A pioneer in the fancy cocktail scene, M&H is especially known for 1. Quality: Extreme attention to detail in every aspect of drink making, especially in regards to ingredients (Bartender Magazine ranks it the #2 bar in the world, below its London location) and 2. Mystery: Hidden behind a door on an otherwise unremarkable stretch of Eldridge St; strict call in advance reservations only policy; and an (until recently) unpublished phone number.

To my surprise and delight, in spite of their venerated position, M&H’s manual describes a “Remains of the Day”-level dedication to pursuing virtue through humility and service. From unobtrusively keeping the table clean, to maintaining  a dry napkin under each cocktail, to minimizing the overall interruption of the customer’s experience, Petraske views his bartenders not as mixologists or Bar Chefs, but instead as craftsmen whose everyday standard should be “offhand excellence.” To that end, the service manual suggests bartenders “pass through the customer’s field of vision regularly, making yourself available to her signal, be it by eye contact or gesture.”   The manual emphasizes the idea of “touch” as it relates to the experience, encompassing the height of a counter, the flick of a wrist, the tone of a voice, the weight of an especially plush napkin. All these tiny things, physical and immaterial, produce a signification of being taken care of, that makes me want to come back.

Open since 2001, Milk and Honey recently decided to simultaneously reveal its phone number and turn itself into a members only club. Out of the seven tables available, five will be reserved for members who pay a $300 annual fee to receive priority reservations and reduced-price cocktails. It will be interesting to see how this policy evolves and how they maintain their commitment to service—I consider this development a respectful tip of the hat to M&H’s devoted following, who have long had issues with the hype and slavish phone number mongering M&H has generated for so much of its history.

Spring is in the air and purple patches have blossomed on the High Line. Katie from Friends of the High Line tells us that these are “Rhapsody in Blue” flowers, from the Salvia family. While we’re enjoying our office view, we can’t wait to admire them up close, and eagerly await the High Line’s official opening, rumored to be some time in June. As always, daily updates are available on the official High Line blog.

Before checking out for the weekend, we thought we’d share something silly and wonderful with you. A Flickr user going by the name of “Bishopia” has sparked a new viral trend with his “CD Cover Meme,” a challenge to create your own randomly generated album cover. Don’t have a drop of musical talent? Who cares!

First, click the random article button on Wikipedia. Voila! There’s your band’s name. Second, select the last line of the last quote on QuotationPage’s random option. Bam! There’s your album title. Finally, choose the third picture off Flickr’s “Explore the Last Seven Days” page. Ta da! You have a (fake) band, a (fake) album and (fake) cover art.

This meme immediately reminded me of my colleague Kat’s recent “random delight” post, only now, by inviting people to design and submit original artwork, the randomness phenomena has matured into something new: a call to creative action. Judging from the thousands of impressive submissions, people are taking this silly challenge quite seriously.

– Johnny

Click through for People Are Amazing’s CD art… .                     .

Last week, my colleagues and I noticed the addition of an oddly imposing structure atop the High Line. Upon closer inspection, it appears that workers have installed a security fence on the section directly above 20th Street. While I couldn’t find any information addressing the fence specifically, the High Line’s website informed me that, “the first section of the High Line (Gansevoort Street to 20th Street) is currently on budget, and is projected to open in the spring of 2009.” Using my cunning deductive abilities, I’ve concluded that this is a temporary border fence to keep this spring’s visitors from stumbling onto the construction of the second section.

Other progress since our last update includes new park benches (one is pictured above, covered for winter) and, in the background, the emergent shell of Cary Tamarkin’s 456 West 19th St. building. We’ll be sure to update you with any new progress!