A professor of ornithology at Yale has penned a fantastic book which I plan on writing a bit about. The book is by Richard Prum and is called The Evolution of Beauty (Doubleday, 2017). The book argues that beauty is sui generis and an independent driver of evolution unable to be reduced to natural selection.…
A most interesting article about pre-historic Britons (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2017/08/09/ancient-britons-ate-dead-carved-mysterious-markings-bones/). Evidence has been found that about 15,000 years ago early Britons ate their dead but then ritually marked the bones. Scarring the bones, researchers speculate, may have been a way to memorialize the dead and even perhaps tell the story of their lives. It is a strange…
Is there a moral obligation to buy the more expensive offering on the American Apparel website? A Canadian clothing company purchased AA when it failed. Gildan is soon to launch a fresh AA website with the novel idea of offering two near-identical options: buy cheaper AA clothing derived from the savings that come from…
Brunello Cucinelli tops the list for Best Dressed Company Award. Regular readers know this is my on-going effort to list those companies which do best and worst on ethical business practice in the fashion industry. The list is incomplete, of course, but inspired mostly by whether a company models itself on the estate, Scheler’s theory…
A new memoir of Andy Warhol is out written by Natasha Fraser-Cavassoni (http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/features/andy-warhol-natasha-fraser-cavassoni-memoir-captures-catholic-side-w495433). Fraser-Cavassoni was with Warhol in his last years and her memoir stresses the role Catholicism played in his life and art. I will be reading this and saying more. For now, merely passing on the good news! Update: finally got a…
What sort of business issue is it when a company has lost its `cool’? A recent WSJ article gives us a tantalizing scenario of executives meeting to discuss how their firm can regain its `cool.’ The article chronicles the troubled leadership of Frederic Cumenal, recently fired as CEO of Tiffany & Co. (https://www.wsj.com/articles/tiffany-hunts-for-path-to-regain-cool-1499621248). Attention…
One year ago today V&R went active as a website with the monograph posted! Pictures in the text and blog followed just a few days later and since then V&R has been getting about 300 visitors a month. I know that is not a huge number remotely by internet standards but for a website about…
This weekend I was in Philadelphia and visited an excellent British gastropub in the city. The graphic above is the cover of the pub’s menu. As per my previous post, such a visual and play on words is possible because of the long standing ideal of the English gentleman. A similar play on the Dutch…
Ever since Brexit there has been a constant drumbeat in fashion commentary about the pernicious character of national consciousness. I have delayed writing about the topic, yet in over a year I have not come across a thoughtful reflection on fashion and nation. Though undeveloped, a recent Chinese graduate of Central Saint Martin’s makes a…
In a very charming article on the role flowers play in fashion, someone observes, “flowers and fashion seem effortlessly entwined; the perfect fit; an obvious match” (https://www.businessoffashion.com/articles/intelligence/how-floristry-became-a-fashion-business?utm_source=Subscribers&utm_campaign=861a23aef9-sat-nl-draft&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_d2191372b3-861a23aef9-417297929). There is no industry where more flowers are exchanged amongst parties than fashion. The claim above says more, though: fashion and flowers are “the perfect fit.” The article…