In march 2023 Levi Strauss & Co. turns 170 years old. It’s a milestone marked by the date, March 1853, when 24-year-old Levi Strauss arrived in San Francisco and founded his namesake business. For the first 90 years or so of the company’s history, the tagline “Since 1853” could be found on company letterhead and in catalogs. But sometime around World War II, the line was changed to “Since 1850.” What prompted this date change and why did it endure for almost five decades? How this happened is still a mystery. A timeline Once Levi established his dry goods wholesale business in San Francisco in 1853, he spent years building up his company by connecting with retailers across the American West and the...
Sune Ehlers is a graphic artist and painter based in Hørsholm, on the outskirts of Copenhagen. He has absorbed an eclectic visual aesthetic with influences from both classical and contemporary artists and invented his own language. Sunes own visual translation of everything from Disney to Miro, makes the observer stop and reflect, which we love. Working in graphics, animation, paintings as well as on illustrating objects and furniture, Sune has the rare gift of making his work very accessible by simplifying this language, using elegant line drawings and paint. His work can be “read” by everyone, as he invites the viewer to participate. He refers to his work as a mental stimulus, Imagery that speaks to our senses providing us...
The single stitch construction shows a single row of stitching securing the hem edges and sleeve cuffs of the garment. On most modern t-shirts the standard double row of stitching is now used. Of course, many double-stitch t-shirts are both vintage and valuable. And many single stitch t-shirts are contemporary and common—many brands, from Ralph Lauren to Aeropostale, use an exaggerated single stitch construction to replicate a vintage look. Brands and designers nowadays use the single stitch construction to replicate the Vintage aesthetic. Their thick lines of stitching secure slightly firmer and rigid fabric highlighting the difference in the original paper thin tee’s. The single stitch construction was the most common method of t-shirt manufacturing during the 1980s and 1990s...
“Unhappy, darling?” asks Gomez Addams. “Oh yes. Yes, completely,” answers Morticia, glancing at her husband and smoothing the glistening black of a corseted gown with a vampire’s collar. Black is to the Addams family what red shorts are to Mickey Mouse – a uniform that signals an identity, a perspective on the world and a way of occupying it. Black – serious black, gothic black, seductive black, restrained black, sculptural black – is back in fashion. When designers were preparing their 2020 & 2021 collections, the chic noncolour appeared an elegant proposal, suited to the growing taste for restraint and simplicity as we counted the environmental cost of overconsumption and grew weary of ricocheting trends. Who knew a global pandemic,...
Try looking up “American Gothic parodies.” You’ll get hundreds and hundreds of pages full of satirical replicas of American Painter Grant Wood’s most famous work. These comical copies of Wood’s original, are some sort of mockery of American pop culture meant to provoke laughter on people. In these parodies, we can find the replacement of the Iowan farmers for movie characters, animals, politicians, and cartoon figures, such as the Minions. American Gothic has to be the most parodied piece of artwork out there, there is even a website called americangothicparodies.com with a mass collection of parodies of this painting. But why? This iconic painting, created in 1930, depicts a gothic house with two farmers (a man and a woman) in...
