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…

The past few months have been a whirlwind of moving boxes and ethernet cords as we bid farewell to Chelsea and hello to our new home in the as yet unnamed nebulous area between Soho and Tribeca.

We now find ourselves wedged between the old and new- to the east, the glossy Trump Soho towers (at the least, a reliable cab stand), and to the west, the Ear Inn, built in 1817 and formerly frequented by sailors and longshoresmen.

And for anyone with a month’s rent to spare on deconstructed, hybrid slouchy/droopy pants, there’s always Atelier NY around the corner. Looking forward to kicking off the summer season with lunches at Hudson River Park!

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.

Why is this principle of not adding more important to you?
I think there is a certain way you should eat, and we’ve trailed away from it by creating this exaggerated feeling of what a food is. My ideal situation is that I make yogurt with fruit and that’s pretty much it, I don’t try to make it anything that it is not. A lot of yogurt products have something like “wild fruit berry blast” and the ingredients are just sugar and artificial flavor. And then you would give people real raspberries and blueberries and then they would say, this is tasteless.
In some ways, the exaggeration of flavor destroys the palate…

It’s funny when you can buy a pack of chewing gum and ironically enjoy it. But when children or something think this is the way blueberries actually taste you’re skewing the whole system. Don’t take it as though I’m against flavor. I’m all for flavor when it’s real.

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Historically American tastes have run less yogurty, do you feel this is changing?
Yes, I would say so. One indicator is the reception of our yogurt, the consumer feedback we get—appreciation that there’s a yogurt that is not so sweet, that doesn’t have artificial sweeteners. The reception has been way better than I ever anticipated when we first started.

In general, since I moved here 7 years ago, people are more aware of how food is made, and even if there’s a recession now I don’t think people are going to be turning back. I am not a fan of the word “holistic” but the move into a more knowledge about food, not just reading the label but knowing the ingredients, the source of the ingredients, caring about the way in which the food was made, caring about the ethics of animals, just the whole package. I think awareness is growing phenomenally.

Yogurt has been around for all civilization, but only recently has become a healthy food. Why is this so?
Well, this is only in America. Yogurt has always been around in Europe. The consumption of yogurt there is 4 to 5 times greater per person than it is here. It’s more a traditional part of the diet, like yogurt and cereal for breakfast. It has only recently begun to catch up in the US in the past 15 or 20 years, as Americans started to view it as part of eating “healthy.” One reason is probiotics, or friendly bacteria. Number two is calcium—yogurt is easier to digest than drinking milk, which has also become a popular source of protein in the diet, people are realizing the importance of having enough protein.

Personally you’re a healthy eater–what are some foods or routines you’re into?
I try to stay from very processed foods….I eat a lot of dark chocolate but never candy bars…I’m really into fish—I’m from Iceland, it’s like a big fishing village! I was brought up on fish, maybe as a teenager you rebel against it a little. You just want to order pizza, and then you come back to it.

I eat a lot of spinach, I like whole grain stuff, whole grain couscous, quinoa…a very basic meal I eat all the time is a fried fish with a bit a butter, salt and pepper, whole grain couscous, and spinach and avocado. For breakfast, I love the Ezekiel cereal…it just makes me feel good. I’ve been eating it for two or three years, add a little bit of milk and raisins, maybe some dried fruit.

Do you view Siggi’s as a luxury product, and do you have plans to introduce more affordable products in the future?
I don’t view it as a luxury, it is what it is for a reason. It’s a way of eating that includes ingredients that are more expensive. In particular there’s the straining process which uses three to four times the amount of milk used in regular yogurt. You would never complain if you got this much espresso versus this much drip coffee—It’s not the same product. If you wanted to get the same amount of protein from a regular yogurt as a strained yogurt like skyr, you would have to eat three of the regular yogurts and then you would have close to the same cost.

We are still small but and my hope is that as we grow a bit more efficient our products can become more approachable price wise, but not so if it means compromising on our values. A McDonalds hamburger is very cheap relatively, but I don’t share the same value system that might be needed to get our yogurt that cheap.

Any other interesting applications of skyr that you’ve tried out or heard of?
One of my favorites things is Mexican food, using it as a substitute for sour cream—fantastic! Or as a substitute when making a hearty soup, great for making healthy pancakes. You make pancakes and fill them with skyr and some dried fruit. One favorite I’ve done is with Bellinis, where I put a little bit of fish roll on top with skyr, topped with red onion and capers.

Do you think food is going to become more engineered in the future or go the other direction?
I think foods are going to go the other way [less pharmaceutical in nature] maybe not the other way but I think people will seek real food, they might eat it for a certain benefit. But people will want to eat an apple, or a bag nuts, or a salad. 

There will always be a market for convenience food, but I think we’re going to move more into eating yogurt, having cheese, having fish, having bread…Just the notion that people want to start eating food that is grown and made as food, not an unidentifiable mass that is shaped like something that was stuff that is supposed to taste like something.

If this was some sort of art, it’s a move to minimalism and realism.

Thanks Siggi! Photo credit by Ruvan Wijesooriya.

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.

What inspired SF0? Why did you first start the game and what are some of your guiding principles in doing so?
I first heard about alternate reality gaming when I read an article by Jane McGonigal about Microsoft’s “Beast” game that was made for as the movie A.I. I had a really visceral reaction that there were these new kinds of games coming into existence being played in the real world that were using new technologies to make games that straddled the line between reality and “fiction.” At the time I thought that Microsoft was developing these games to test the future of work or decentralized labor networks, like using unpaid labor for complex problems, like cracking the Enigma code. My reaction was that Microsoft was trying to engineer a new kind of Fordism, and trying to use these games to subjugate these workers to a new form of domination. Based on that reaction, I decided that a game had to be made that was free for everyone and that would free people from their current labor social relations.

The first game we did was based in Chicago, about the disappearance of an Art Institute student named Helen Chanam. There were fewer than 10 players, but we personally had such a powerful experience making it, that’s what we wanted to give to players, the experience that we had making that game.

After finishing work on that game and moving to San Francisco,  we knew that they wanted to make a game that many people could play and furthermore, that the players should make the game in large part, that it should liberate them from the existing social relations. By creating a character that is you but is not you, that you’re free to go beyond your own personal fears and anxieties, and social constraints, that would prevent you from doing the things you want to do. Not like going outside and running around naked, in a psychoanalytic sense, but the things that are freeing you from what you want to do, more in a Marxist sense, like living life to the fullest.

You’ve described SF0 before as a “collaborative production game”—what does that mean?
In many other games you’re passively consuming the content from the game—for example, video games are a lot like interactive movies. SF0 asks you to create the game itself, and within the game to create public installation art pieces. One such task is Things we bury for our friends, and one player buries something, and then we give another player instructions to find and dig up that object. Then they show what they did to by posting images to the SF0 website. That’s creating the game for someone else, the production aspect of the game. In order to play SF0 you have to be part of the SF0 community, it’s fundamental that the players create the game by creating the tasks that other players do. Almost all the tasks in the game are created by players, and then approved by Sam, Sean, or me.

Can you tell me more about SF0’s experience collaborating with the Smithsonian on a real world game, what were your expectations?

I was really surprised at how open the people at the Smithsonian, including the higher ups, were to doing something different they had never tried before. For example, they let us hide things in different places all over the museum and manipulate images on their website, even though there is a lot of crazy shit that goes into running a museum that I wasn’t aware of. They were really incredibly flexible in working with us.

Everyone has responded really positively to being part of a game in a museum. Kids were really driven to do it. We made it a lot harder than I think other people would have because we wanted it to be really difficult to finish. That turned out to be good because it took them three or four hours to complete all the tasks, there was a lot of content, and the game took them to all the different wings of the museum. Right now they’re running a repeatable instance of the game that classrooms can sign up for, so they have a game for them to play when they visit.

How do you see SF0 developing, what is the next phase of it?
At a certain point we started to look at SF0 as part of a greater narrative of real world games, just like video games when they started off, which were so primitive. Like SF0 is the most primitive form of real world game, and that we have to keep pushing forward.

A game like World of Warcraft didn’t just come out of a void, it’s part of a development cycle that started fifteen years ago, that includes Diablo, Diablo II, and then the Warcraft series of games, before WoW waseven a possible idea and before there was even such a thing as multi player online games.

When my parents moved, I found my old manual for Warcraft I from 1995 and started looking through it. And all this content in that manual that looks ridiculously quaint is in World of Warcraft in lush 3D color. But it’s all the same stuff—the characters, the motivational and character improvement cycle of the game, the backstory, the world that’s it’s set in.

Basically we’re going to take the idea from SF0 that the players make up the game tasks and extend that to create a system where the players really can make the entire game. We want to allow people to author their own real world games without our intervention, so they can make whatever they want.

What are some games or game-like things you like right now?
I’m playing World of Warcraft extremely slowly with my girlfriend. I don’t have TV, so we play for an hour at a time, as a mage and a shaman, We do our little missions together, twice a week. It’s nice that I’m able to play a video game with my girlfriend, and fun to make progress in it together and to teach her the rules.

What’s on your nightstand right now?
Actually I’ve been reading a really good book,The Man Without Qualities. [Musil] wrote it in the 30’s or 40’s but if you were reading it without knowing what time it’s from, the way that it describes the world and historical forces of change, like technology, social change it’s incredibly contemporary sounding.

Thanks Ian! You can participate in SF0’s latest event in San Francisco this Halloween.

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.

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.