Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Urban Flowerhouse

Dashing past the Myer windows along Little Bourke Street last night my attention was captured by a miniature living green oasis.

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Thursday, April 12, 2012

Boy Moments

Ladies beware. The territories we once deemed our own – high streets, shopping malls and fashion sites are now no longer strictly our domain. Males are diluting the undivided attention once lavished upon us by fashion brands. The male consumer has a wallet (or should I say ‘murse’) full of cash and he’s just dying to spend it on looking good.

Blokes like Beckham, Kanye and JT have paved the way for a generation of boys to realise that looking good doesn’t mean your sexuality’s in question. Last year we met Mr Porter, partner to online retail giant Net-A-Porter. His arrival is no accident - in 2010 men’s online apparel sales in the US rose 7% to $4.5 billion (compared with an 11% rise to $10.5 billion for women), according to NPD Group. There’s a myriad of male lifestyle boutiques like Mr Simple Captain’s of Industry, Incu and Brooksfield which have sprung open in Melbourne to cater solely for men, successfully retailing apparel alongside shoes, accessories, books and music. The chain stores have been getting in on the act – look at Witchery Man and Topman. They’re even taking over the catwalks with their own dedicated fashion week’s in Paris and London this year.

Elwood are riding the wave with a window campaign promoting male fashion bloggers. To coincide with the launch of their men’s collection into Myer, they asked four male bloggers to customise the anorak style Shadowlands Military Jacket and display it in their Chapel Street, Melbourne Central and Chadstone stores.
As a fully integrated campaign, photos of the customised jackets were posted on the Elwood Facebook page where followers were invited to vote on their favourite and go in the draw for a $500 voucher. The brand/blogger alignment generated over 300 comments on their page and drove readers of the blogs including Ravishing Retail, Spencer not Spencer and Front Row Suit to the Elwood site.

Boy Moments, who’s jacket is on display in the Chapel St window wrote of the collaboration, “It's great that the Melbourne based youth fashion brand that associates with music and street have also involved bloggers in their brand now as well! This is definitely a start of many men's bloggers collabs to come hopefully!”
This signifies the influence of the male blogger and presumably his followers and their interest in fashion. I think will be seeing more boy moments in future!

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