WHERE

WHERE @ Need Supply

A little bit of press for us at WHERE coming from Need Supply, a really cool boutique in USA (Richmond, Virginia). They also have an online shop.

At Need Supply they sell brands like Jeffrey Campbell, Dolce Vita and Frye, which are amongst our favorite American brands, so nice to be next to them.

They say:

“We discovered WHERE during our last trip to the UK. Besides the amazing design, the companies ethics and fundamentals as a whole are what really attracted us to them. The pieces are hand made from very small producers and artisan communities around the globe. Everyone involved in the entire process of each piece receives a fair wage and is treated with the upmost respect, the way things should be. Designer Laura Villasenin is responsible for the footwear’s unique look. Laura graduated from London’s renowned school, Cordwainers, with a first class design degree in Product Design and development in the fashion industry.”

WHERE @ Need Supply's blog

Recently at WHERE we traveled to Philadelphia to visit URBAN OUTFITTERS’s head quarters (WHERE was completely amazed by how cool their offices are).

They are based inside a 132-year-old navy base.

Working with Minneapolis architect Jeffrey Scherer, UO has re-purposed the Navy’s war-making factories into a creative commune, made by 600 of Philadelphia’s most creative and fashionable people.

It is Urban Outfitter’s style to display the products they sell in their stores amongst antiques and vintage relics, and in their head quarters you can experience exactly the same, but on a much larger scale.

Apparently, the first time Hayne – the founder and owner – visited the Navy Yard, he realized he had found “a mother lode of industrial artifacts“.

The Navy simply locked the doors and walked away in 1996, leaving behind such treasures as Egyptian-style cast-iron columns, 2,000-pound overhead cranes, and walls decorated with the graffiti musings and naive paintings of Navy carpenters. Hayne picked it all up for $1–5 per building. His first impulse wasn’t to clean up the buildings but to keep them exactly as they were.

By mytoenailcameoff

More than 100 bases around the country have been decommissioned since the U.S. military began its post–Cold War contraction, but Philadelphia’s Navy Yard is among the most architecturally significant. Starting around 1874 with a single Georgian-style house, the Navy constructed a miniature city on a marshy spit of Delaware waterfront. It picked up the street grid that began in the Center City District (CCD), located 3.5 miles north on Broad Street. At the peak of World War II the yard employed 60,000 people and included almost 300 buildings.

It’s a nice irony that UO’s designers now manufacture frilly clothing in the same rooms where the Navy turned out implements of war. They even store their patterns in the same cubbies where Navy engineers kept their blueprints.

Were happy to say that our current winter collection will be stocked by Urban Outfitters USA. And also the upcoming S/S 2010. Very cool.

In this galerie bellow you can see the products that you will be able to find in selected URBAN OUTFITTERS stores in USA, including our multifunctional CADI boot.

[View with PicLens]

We wanted to show you how our brogues (other people called them Oxford shoes) look on the feet. Some people are a bit scared still about online shopping and it always helps when you see them on the feet.

These shoes have a very vintage look because of the stacked leather of the heels and soles, and they are completely handmade in India. The model in this picture is a good 37 size so this gives you an idea how they would look when you wear them.

We recomend wearing them both with ripped jeans and vintage T-shirt, with tailored trousers or with a girly dress to add contrast. Great also with Boyfriend’s jackets.

[View with PicLens]

CINTA, LIEFDE, DRAGOSTE and MILESTIBA have been so far our most successful designs for SS2009. For some of them we are already running very short of sizes in our online shop. But if you still want to buy them or try them and we don’t have them you may be able to find them at Terra Plana shops in London, at Shoon shops in London, or at  the Natural Store online, where we also just started retailing.

We just added these new WHERE products to our online shop. Please give us feedback. Hope you like them!

We at Where Fashions have been scouring the net for the most interesting and captivating blogs out there. Rummaging through different fashion magazines’ musings, we have collated our favourite top ten. Tell us what you think…

Style Bubble blog
Featured in Thursday’s Metro (28 May 2009), everyone now knows this one! So it was inevitable for Miss Susie’s blog to be on our top 10. This blog is extremely personal, an easy read, but not at all frivolous. It is inspiring to see the blogger herself style herself up in new designer gear while she writes about her musings. It is only set to get better and better.

The Cool Hunter
This one was a keeper! It focuses on fashion trends, as well as style within music, architecture, cultural movements, interior design and the like. And for a magazine that covers so much content, its page is surprisingly not ‘busy’ – it is bright and edgy, but very easy to navigate. This one with help you hunt out the cool factor!

Refinery29 blog
Refinery29 has a very individual, high fashion style. Its blog page is clear and elegant, set up quite similar to the New York Times and The Sartorialist. It features a list called ‘Tip Us Off’, their list of inspirational websites, which we also found very interesting. Do look at the rest of the magazine; they have a style section that breaks down a celeb’s look and shows you how you can get it. Definitely refined!

Hint Fashion magazine blog
How cool: “have an idea for the Hint blog – email us”. Talk about sticking to their name, and hinting at what you would like to read about. This magazine blog was less intimidating because of the way it was written and set up. Still covering high fashion, with edgy editorial photographs, this still felt quite personalised, making it an easy and informative read.

Fashion156 blog
This is a London based magazine featuring the latest goings-on in the fashion realm. Predominantly featuring extremely edgy photographs, we couldn’t help but stare at the pictures! They are awe-inspiring. This is definitely one to inspire avant-garde photo shoots!
V Magazine blog
V magazine has always been known for their underground stance in fashion and art. This is why their blog features less writing and more pictures – absolutely stunning; you actually feel like you are behind the scenes at these fashion shows. Very kooky and quirky! We like!

The Moment blog
As part of the New York Times Style magazine, this blog has a clean editorial feel. Just like The New York times itself. It covers men and women’s fashion, as well as design, food and travel. Its content is cultured and worldly – there are numerous interesting topics for everyone. This blog is a must!

Style Sightings
The best way to describe this is a picture blog. Run by some of the ladies at StyleSight, this blog illustrates trends happening at street level. Its striking pictures look like they were taken as part of a photo shoot, meaning the readers will then take these trends seriously. And the great thing is, StyleSightings reports from all the fashion hotspots around the globe: London, LA, New York. Great website for inspiration!

Shoewawa
A website dedicated to the coolest of shoes. The most recent blog post is ridiculously crazy – in a good way! A shoe with a 16cm heel and no middle? Wow. Large photos and a few brief writings make this website a breeze to read and check out the latest fashions (and where you can get them) within the footwear realm.

Street styles blog
Rather than a writing blog, this is a gallery blog. But the best part of it all…this one summarises a number of the best fashion blogs all on one page! And another nifty element, this blog lets the reader know when all these other fashion blogs were updated! So instead of trailing through a number of websites, go to this one first to find the photographs that inspire you the most! A photographic directory…nice one!

AW 09/10 INSPIRATION laces

Tall wedge with laces

Sorry we have been not very good this week with our updates on the blog. We’ve been very busy with the design of our Spring-Summer 2010 collection. When you are a small company, you do a bit of everything.

We mentioned before that we would start posting about our coming winter collection and the inspiration behind it.

Here is the first advance: A moodboard with our brainstorming of sketches and inspirational images. As you can see one of the elements that we played with the most for the AW09/10 collection has been shoe laces.

Tie me up tie me down

We like the new ways of using shoe laces (as for example using shoe laces as fringes and tassels), new ways of closing and opening using shoe laces, nets created with shoe laces, and millions of eyelets… we love eyelets, and we also tried to use them in different ways in this collection.

You will see it coming to the shops starting this August, and just a little advance: the collection will be selling in different countries around the world (UK, Japan, France, etc).

Thanks!

The strap line for the WHERE Spring Summer 2009 collection is “Love in its fibers”.

Why love in its fibers? Because we love the recycling of fabrics.

In this collection we love the recycling of film and music tapes, and in general we put lots of love in choosing the materials used in the products.

Film tape woven wedges

The materials are one of the most important elements to make this collection more sustainable.

Each product in the spring/summer 2009 collection is named “LOVE” but in a different language.

Society is changing, communities are strengthening. These communities are born out of love: the love of sharing ideas, sharing interests, sharing taste, sharing materials, sharing thoughts and interaction.

Our inspiration for this collection was from interaction with the communities of artisans and their skills they have developed over many years.

We hope our next collection will also involve more interaction with our costumers.

WHERE is at Micam

WHERE is currently at the yearly shoe event, Micam, in Milan Italy. We are showing our next Autum / Winter range which we think is by far our best collection yet.

The collection has been sourced and produced in Agra and Jaipur India.

If your at Micam do get in touch with us.

Fashion Tweets
WHERE now uses Twitter as well. It’s a great way to keep in touch with what we are up to. You can find us at http://twitter.com/WHEREitisAT

One of the new WHERE shoes

WHERE is launching both a blog and a shop. (And a Twitter account!)

We are very excited to announce the launch of our WHERE blog. And soon our shop will open as well. You can already browse the new WHERE Spring / Summer collection in it.

The shop will open at the end of the month.

Fashion Tweets
WHERE now uses Twitter as well. It’s a great way to keep in touch with what we are up to. You can find us at http://twitter.com/WHEREitisAT

WHERE uses leading designers to help create the WHERE ranges of footwear, bags & accessories. The Spring / Summer collection was produced in India.