Flip Flopping: Style over substance makes sense when it comes to this beach basic.

Welcome to the season of the flip flop. While the ability to change one’s mind gets political watchers steamed up, the ability to change out of your socks and enjoy the warmer days just makes good sense. For some, summer is all about the wedge, or even the gladiator, but for most of us – we’ll admit it – we’ll spend May thru September wearing our flip flops.

The Japanese Zori that inspired the modern flip flop style.

The simplest of footwear designs, just a flat footbed attached to a Y-shaped thong, the modern rubber flip flop is thought to have originated from a Japanese style called the zori. After soldiers returning from World War II brought them home from Japan as souvenirs, they were marketed towards women as slippers to be worn with their housecoats. They were named “jandals,” blending the words “Japanese” and “sandal.”  When John Cowie, a Hong Kong based businessmen began manufacturing cheap rubber versions, the style quickly caught on with beach goers in the 1950s and 1960s.

Brazilian flip-flop designers Havaianas have collaborated  with Missoni on a collection of eco-friendly styles for 2012 inspired by the Italian fashion house’s signature zigzag motif.

Brazilian company Havaianas became the rubber flip-flop fashion brand of choice after launching in 1962 with a secret rubber formula free of toxic EVA and PVC. Interpreting the traditional rice straw soled Zori, the sole of havianas have a textured rice pattern, one of the brands signature features.

Jackie Kennedy Onassis wearing her flip flops while shopping in Capri in the 70s.

Celebrities captured wearing flip flop styles include Jackie Kennedy Onassis in Capri in the 70s, the essence of vacation chic in her fitted tee, Canfora thongs, head scarf and oversized sunglasses. Jennifer Aniston, poster girl for a casual beach-loving style is often photographed wearing her Havaianas with papparazi in tow.

Jennifer Aniston suits flip flops’ free-wheelin’ style.

Want to catch up on some more fashion history?

Now & Then: The History of the Fedora

Now & Then: the History of the Ballet Flat

Now & Then: The History of Shorts

Now & Then: Met Ball’s Most Memorable Dresses

Now & Then: The History of the Breton Shirt

Now & Then: The History of the Platform Shoe

Now & Then: The History of Fitness Wear

Now & Then: The History of the Pencil Skirt

Now & Then: The History of the Cocktail Dress

Now & Then: The History of Skinny Jeans

Read more Now & Then articles here.

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Editor’s Note: This four-part series from a leading industry insider is authored under the pseudonym “Louise Lagosi” for the individual’s protection. The series addresses our engagement with consumer culture and how marketing and advertising can manipulate us – and society as a whole.

Whether or not you are aware of it, this image of celebrity Jennifer Aniston is embedded with psychological material. Her honey-blond hair and softly-lit, Photoshopped face is childlike and dewy. Her intense attention to the money in her hand while clutching her designer bag loaded with more cash oozes power, sex, wealth, and control. The photograph even uses markers to pinpoint these little features while at the same time promoting the items you might want to buy if you wish to look like this. Celebrity, eternal youth, power, wealth, sex: That’s what this carefully articulated image has to offer up for sale.

But at face value, what is it really giving you?

Now, look at these photographs. What do you see? Realize that any previously presented Anistonian aspirations are absolute nonsense. She’s an attractive woman to be sure, but she’s only human. Even Jennifer Aniston doesn’t live the life that Jennifer Aniston leads in the above glossy magazine image.

Presenting Jennifer looking average or even shabby is playing up the competitive side of our human natures, getting us to compare ourselves to her, picking her apart, and at the same time picking ourselves apart through the comparison. We’re being primed to react defensively to the first image: Go shopping. But, at the end of the day, what does Jennifer Aniston have to do with our personal lives, and why do we find ourselves looking at her and other celebrity personalities with the obsession that we do?

Stuck In An Advertising Ambush

Are we truly tired of the messages that ads and the media are sending us? If you’re falling out of love with your relationship to fashion and shopping in general, join the club. It’s still a small one, but it is rapidly growing as our living spaces and surroundings are cluttered with stuff while our credit cards are maxed out. We need very little and yet we seem to want so much. And everywhere we look we see both evasive and aggressive marketing campaigns which bombard us with advertisements on a daily basis, suggesting that we need to buy more to gain beauty, glamor and fabulosity. In fact, if fashion were a drug, it would be almost impossible to kick the habit; there are pushers on every corner.

President of the Marketing Firm Yankelovich, Jay Walker-Smith, stated in a CBS news article, “It’s a non-stop blitz of advertising messages. Everywhere we turn we’re saturated with advertising messages trying to get our attention. It seems like the goal of most marketers and advertisers nowadays is to cover every blank space with some kind of brand logo or a promotion or an advertisement.”

Research from the late 1950s to the 1970s has shown that the average person 40 to 50 years ago was exposed to somewhere between 78-500 ads a day. Walker Smith points out that today we’re exposed to as many as 5,000.

NYC The Blog reports on the first NYC subway train completely wrapped in advertising

The tipping point is coming. Do-not-call. Adblock. “We have to screen it out because we simply can’t absorb that much information. We can’t process that much data,” Walker-Smith notes, “and no surprise, consumers are reacting negatively to the kind of marketing blitz; the kind of super saturation of advertising that they’re exposed to on a daily basis.”

There’s even an advertising company, cleverly called Wizmark, that’s putting advertisements in urinals. “You can’t look left. You can’t look right. You have to look at the ad and listen to it,” Richard Deutch, CEO of Wizmark brags with tongue firmly set in cheek.

Buying Into Luxury Brand Ads

Over the last 20 years, the fashion industry has employed numerous marketing tactics to drive consumers into a shopping frenzy, making industry giants enormously rich. Investing in “brand strengthening,” companies cultivate consumer loyalty which equates to high numbers in sales, quite often, from returning customers who have bought into the message that the brand’s advertisements are selling.

Take, for example, one of the most competitive luxury brands in the world: Louis Vuitton. In 2010, Louis Vuitton spent some $14 million on advertising during the first quarter. Their ad campaign appeared all over the pages of luxury lifestyle magazines, news publications, and across the internet where affluent shoppers would see them while shopping. Surprisingly, it was not enough to stimulate their consumer demand because in 2011, during the same quarter, they increased their budget to $22 million ( a 57% budget increase). The steep increase in ad spend could hardly be considered a coincidence.

The above ads were just about everywhere you looked in New York City during the spring of 2011. Louis Vuitton employed a small army of campaign advertisements to seduce luxury consumers back after the Great Recession.

In 2010, Consumer Reports revealed a noticeable trend that consumers were changing their habits: Shopping less, saving more, and choosing products that they equate with craftsmanship, practicality, and social values (think TOMS shoes) rather than luxury status “bling”. Bling is out. The reports also revealed that this new trend was not likely to go away anytime soon; it wasn’t merely a reaction to economic pressure, this new consumer was an entirely different beast living by a new set of rules. All of those advertisements were the velvet-gloved iron fist of Louis Vuitton attempting to coax the mass of luxury and aspirational consumers back into their former position of brand submission.

If you took eight LV samples and stuck them in a trash compactor, out would pop this expensive little piece of “limited edition” baggage called the LV Tribute Patchwork Bag. This particular bag might have cost approximately $3000 to make, but was sold exclusively to only 20 customers (worldwide) for $42,000 a pop in select stores.

What’s $36 million in advertising? Chump change to a company like Louis Vuitton that wants to ensure a dominant market position doesn’t erode. (In 2011, LVMH, the company that owns LV, boasted in their company quarterly report net profits of over $2 billion in fashion and leather goods sales alone.)

If you’re selling logo-covered, luxury-status, vinyl-canvas handbags with the words “Louis Vuitton” stamped on them, you can charge consumers a premium. The price tag we see can be anywhere between 250-1400% of the expense of making even a very well-made bag. The more expensive price tags (in the $1000+ range) subsidize the basic vinyl tote bags Louis Vuitton offers in the hundreds, allowing the company to lure the aspirational middle class with “affordable” luxury.

To the luxury fashion consumer, the primary value is not in the the design, the materials, or even the quality of labor that goes into the bag – it’s in the social status that the advertisements and exclusive products offer to customers. And over the past 20 years, while there have been many consumers that have bought right into the dream, there are those conscious customers who have simply walked away. After all, who really needs another logo-plastered tote when there are already so many of them out there?

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ColumnWhere celebrity becomes conscious.

Before her death in 1967, Dorothy Parker had perfected the art of satire. With her wit and wisecracks, this poet-turned-screenwriter cut into the heart of modern day foibles – and then she served it up with a nice scotch. Born in 1893, she sold her first poem to Vanity Fair in 1914 and grabbed her first desk job at Vogue. A few years later, she’s shared the Algonquin Round and had developed a national reputation for satire.

And then, in the 1930s, Parker moved to Hollywood and became a screenwriter. She made her mark with films such as A Star Is Born (1937), The Little Foxes (1941), and Alfred Hitchcock’s The Saboteur (1942). Here, she brought to life strong, smart, and even sinister women of the screen embodied in the likes of Bette Davis. You did not mess with Dorothy Parker’s heroines, lest you end up crumbled on the staircase, reaching for you medication while she stood watching you die. Parker’s screen heroines were, at times, Badassus Extremis women. One would think they would have set the stage for Hollywood’s Modern Career Woman, a pinnacle of strength and conviction and an easy seductress when it suits her own terms.

Right?

Yeah, not so much. Flash forward several decades and the likes of Katherine Heigl, Kate Hudson, and Jennifer Aniston reign as Rom Com Queens over a landscape of neurotic relationships and quests for bridal glory. Career women are cold and prudish, begging to be undone by an obnoxious playboy who has to help Ms. Icy Pants loosen up just a little to find love. With him, of course.

And so, we ask: What Would Dorothy Parker Do? What would the famed wittiest witch of the west have to say about the whining, preening, marriage-obsessed screen heroines dotting the early twenty-first century landscape? Naturally, we had to find out. Putting the space-time continuum aside for a moment (there’s nothing we won’t do for you), we asked Ms. Parker to share her thoughts on the modern movie heroine.

What do you think of the modern screen heroine?
She’s a lady with all the poise of the Sphinx but little of her mystery. I’d call her Dumb Dora, a skirt looking for a Sugar Daddy to make things nice. Take the characters played by this Jennifer Aniston doll and mush her into one big choice bit of woman. I’d like to take this woman out, get her properly ossified on some good scotch, and make her vow she’ll never do another sad-sack thing as long as she lives. That Aniston seems like a swell girl, got gams up to here. I don’t know why she doesn’t take a stand and stop acting like such a dowd. He’s Just Not That Into You? How about he’s not worth your time. Love Happens? Not when you’re mealy-mouthed. Face it, sister. The cure for boredom is curiosity, and there’s no cure for curiosity. The modern film heroine needs to smarten up and take charge of her own destiny.

But you’ve also mentioned that “Men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses.” So doesn’t that enforce the role of the modern screen heroine in that a girl’s gotta play dumb to get her man?
(At this question, Miss Parker blew a steam of Chesterfield smoke straight at me, stubbing out her cigarette in my saucer.) I also said that brevity is the soul of lingerie, darling. A gal can play any game she wants to catch a fellow, but in the end she’s just going to end up with her marbles and jacks spilled all over the floor. She needs to smarten up nicely and put herself before any boy. Happiness doesn’t come from a trip down the aisle. It comes from burning up the aisle and sitting out the flames with a good martini.

So how does a modern woman balance work and love on film?
Ha! Love. See this manacle on my finger? (She points to her wedding ring.) I was married three times, twice to the same lollygagger who was just after my money. We need tough cookies who put themselves first. So what if some man wants to get his wiggle on with her? She can have her nookie, a career, and her man.

Do you think your flouting of society’s conventions contributed to the FBI-compiled 1,000 page dossier in the 1950s? After all, you were blacklisted for Communist sympathies during the McCarthy era.
Probably, darling. Joe McCarthy just didn’t like any woman who could hold her liquor better than he.

Are there any women in Hollywood today you can get behind?
(“Butt me,” she said, and I held out a lighter for her next cigarette and our waiter winced. Ms. Parker thoughtfully brought her Chesterfield to her lips.) That Cate Blanchette, she’s the cat’s pajamas, the real McCoy. I just saw her in Hanna, she reminded me of that scorcher Bette Davis in The Little Foxes. A real bright-eyed murderess with a plan.

What’s the solution for the modern women of the screen?
Look here, doll, this is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly, but thrown with great force. Take no prisoners, I say. Ban Kate Hudson from ever playing another broad. The world didn’t need a Streisand remake of A Star is Born and it doesn’t need a Bride Wars 2. Let that brass Heigl girl have a say in her characters – she’s not afraid to speak up off-screen, so why do her girls on film seem too quick to cut out for a gigolo? And for the love of Jeepers Creepers, give us a dame who sees past a wedding gown as a happy ending.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to go see a man about a dog. (And at that, Miss Parker snapped two fingers at the waiter, who quickly hurried over to empty her ash tray and refill her glass with scotch.)

*Answers guided by Dorothy Parker’s long list of enviable quotations.

This is another installment in Katherine Butler’s column, Shade Grown Hollywood, where celebrity becomes conscious. “Shade grown” refers literally to shade grown coffee, a farming method that “incorporates principles of natural ecology to promote natural ecological relationships.” Shade grown is our sustainable twist on Hollywood.

The post Shade Grown Hollywood: Dorothy Parker on the Modern Movie Heroine appeared first on EcoSalon.

Recently, a vortex opened up in the space-time continuum as it was announced that Jennifer Aniston was voted by “60 Minutes” and Vanity Fair to be the most eligible single woman in the world. Nothing against Ms. Jen – my theory is that the vortex happened because she was in a news item that didn’t instantly compare her to Angelina Jolie. (Hopes are this post might restore the tabloids to their proper order.)

The secret to Ms. Aniston’s popularity? Anyone familiar with the “Rachel” of 1990s hair fame knows Jen leads by her locks. And her recent hair style of choice has been a Brazilian Blowout. This is an uber-expensive method of hair straightening that gives clients super shiny, sheeny, and straight hair. The price of this beauty treatment? A few hundred clams. The physical price? Nose bleeds, eye irritation, and trouble breathing – all courtesy of a large dose of formaldehyde.

As ABC News reports, a public health alert was recently issued about Brazilian Blowouts by the Oregon Health and Science University. Researchers found that two formulations of the product contained 4.85 percent to 10.6 percent formaldehyde. The Center for Disease Control reports that even small amounts of formaldehyde can cause physical irritations. Larger amounts can cause cancer.

This is not news to organic hair experts. I called Melissa Tornay at Primrose Organics Salon in Los Feliz, California, to get her reaction to the scandal o’ Brazilian Blowouts. According to Melissa, “We have been trying to warn clients that there is something wrong [with treatments like the Brazilian Blowout] when they are being asked to wear goggles, when the stylists are wearing masks, and when salons are doing the treatment in separate rooms and installing new ventilation systems. It is odd to us that no one seems concerned when we warn them about the ingredients in these types of treatments.”

Further, Melissa informed me that they refuse to carry the chemicals required in a Brazilian. As per Melissa, “We would never put our stylists in the position of using something that may be detrimental to their health.” And yet, Brazilian Blowout stands by their product, even claiming it to be formaldehyde-free. Further, they claim that the test finding 4.85 percent formaldehyde content was invalid because they did not supply the products directly to researchers.

Ultimately, has the news stopped customers? ABC News interviewed Krystal Mansour of Long Island, who was eager to test the product for her frizzled hair. Even though the process “made her eyes water,” she was thrilled with her results and called her hair treatment life changing. According to Mansour, “Now I can show it to the world. I’m just so excited. This product is really awesome.”

Image: pimkie_fotos

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