Indigo Clothing Blog - News from inside Indigo, the promotional clothing industry and cool t-shirt sites reviewed.
London nervously awaits the results of the Mayoral elections 2008, wondering which clown won. Indigo Clothing screen printed the t-shirts for the ‘London Elects‘ staff, the organisation running the election. Last night the polls were very close, with second choice votes looking important for both Boris and Ken.
I am not going to add to the millions of words that have been wasted on this subject already and simply want to wish everyone a lovely bank holiday weekend!
I used the British Library for the first time last Thursday. An incredible building not far from the Indigo Clothing offices and near Kings Cross train station. Did you know they receive a copy of every publication produced in the UK and Ireland and the collection includes 150 million items, in most known languages?
Trying to get a card to access one of the many reading rooms seemed harder than renewing my UK passport, so if you are tempted to use the facility make sure you have all the ID they demand, before they begin the lengthy process of taking a digital photo and checking your reading list. Then, even if you cross your fingers, join the cloakroom queue to hand in your bag and pens (only pencils allowed!), you’ll be told there are in fact no seats left in the reading room and books take over an hour to be fetched from the basement. Next time I go, I am going to arrive early and better prepared!
The BL has an excellent Business and IP Centre which is well worth using too and in the past Indigo has helped members of this department with their research. Last year we also produced t-shirts for one of their excellent exhibitions, Sacred; so it is worth visiting even if you are not going to seek a book or publication.
The countdown is on, 2 days until the American brand Banana Republic opens its first ever European flagship store. The store is opening on the 20th March on one of London’s most prestigious shopping streets - 224 Regent Street, London. Gap Inc. describes this part of the group: ‘Banana Republic is an accessible luxury brand, offering high-quality apparel and accessories collections for men and women.’There will no doubt be queues, so I have decided to investigate what exciting surprises to expect in store…
In my opinion, my initial perception of the garment designs are that they are very conservative! The clothing designs reflect the age group they are aimed at, this would appear to be for the middle aged. The designs are extremely smart, simplistic and clean cut which would appeal to professionals.The garments are relatively reasonably priced and there is a variety of different styles available. The styles could be described as a mixture between Zara and French Connection because of their sophistication.
I predict that this shift dress could be a good seller. It incorporates chic sophistication with bold floral. Floral prints are extremely popular on the catwalk at the moment and the empire - cut waist is a particularly flattering design. Monotones are especially ‘hot’ at the moment, black and white is a must. This dress can also be dressed up or dressed down.
I expect with reasonable prices and sophisticated styles Banana Republic is a brand to watch!
London School of Economics (LSE), where our very own Ed Mitala (Indigo accounts guru) studies, has a t-shirt design competition and the winning design wins a £100 and gets to see their design sold in the Union shop. I assume the competition is only open to LSE students but this is a great idea and makes for more interesting merchandise in uni shops compared to the traditional hoodie, with college crest, which is often the default offering on most campuses.
My pet hate at the moment is scrapping the pizza delivery flyers out of our mailbox. Hackney (a London borough) households receive approximately 35 million pieces of unwanted mail each year, which weighs 900 tonnes and takes 6,000 trees to create. They produce a pack (pictured) which can help cutting it down including stickers and advice. Signing onto the Mail Preference Service (MPS) also is a good start. The pack is free (Hackney residents call 020 8356 6688) and most councils across the UK have an equivalent.
The Light is a great bar & restaurant between Liverpool Street Station and Shoreditch in London. It is walking distance from the Indigo office and a popular watering hole for our staff. This big, old building with high ceilings, built in 1893 and a former power station is an historic landmark. It is the first building that you see in Hackney when you approach from the City and as such it separates two very different areas. Now a 53 storey tower block is proposed – threatening 233 Shoreditch High Street with demolition.
A campaign has been set up to save the place called “Save the Light” and you can sign the online petition. OPEN Shoreditch also has a blog which explains more about the proposed developments.
Indigo recently completed a rush job for Kensington Palace (part of Historic Royal Palaces) consisting of Fruit of the Loom Long sleeve Valueweight t-shirts with a one colour front and one colour back screen print as part of their ‘Kids go free‘ campaign. It seems the client was very happy with our service too:
To: Jo Myronidis
Subject: Re: Client approval attachedSuper Turnaround. They look the business. We will definitely call on you in the future. Hopefully not in such a rush…
Happy St. Valentine’s day!
Maureen
Historic Royal Palaces
A foggy, cold Monday morning in London today and the Waterloo and City line was packed with Gore-Tex ski-jackets. A tourist may have been forgiven for thinking he/she was in Chamonix rather than on a commuter train full of people in the financial services industry!
Today is start of London Fashion Week. Maybe some of the colours on the catwalk this week will filter down into the promotional clothing world in the next few years!
Also today, Matt Attlee, our inhouse web developer leaves Indigo to travel to Japan and Australia. We wish him all the best and we are left to admire his fantastic contribution to the WordPress merchandise store and to Indigo-2’s various clients. Rob Allen from Unearth Travel joins us for a month to lead development on our internal web-application, codenamed ICOMS.
CityAM, the free London financial newspaper, that is jammed in ones face most mornings by an over-zealous, anoraked vendor at every tube and rail station in this city, has a good article about bespoke suits. I agree with the author that these are special items and once you have had a bespoke suit, going back to off-the-peg is tough!
It made me think though that the same applies to staff uniform. Make sure you don’t just give you staff matching gear (for example, many bar staff wear plain black t-shirts or blouses), make sure it is bespoke to your company, over-branded with screen printing or embroidery to best present your brand or promotion.
Also, if you are interested in bespoke suits, check out our friends at English Cut.
The tee shirt “I Listen To Bands…” has been reprinted at Threadless.com:
http://www.threadless.com/product/917/I_Listen_To_Bands
Perfect Christmas present for all you ‘indie boys’ that walk around Camden (London district) with your trousers pulled down so low we can see your Homer Simpson boxer shorts!
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