Robert Tagliapietra (Left) & Jeffrey Costello (Right)

We just had a quick Q&A with Robert Tagliapietra of Costello Tagliapietra as they are doing their fittings in our NYC showroom for their show at Milk Studios (September 10th @ 3 pm/EST)

Q: What is the inspiration of your new line?

A: It’s really about bringing elegance back into daytime dressing.  Wearing jeans & t-shirts to work has become very common place these days and there is an assumed individuality in wearing jeans, but that isn’t the case if everyone is wearing them.  We wanted to return to a time when people took pride in what they wore to work.

Q: What kind of music inspired the collection? The show?

A: We work really closely with the Misshapes. We love Ariel Pink’s new album and the Age of Consent right now.  When we were designing the line we were drawn to softer sound.  We listened to a lot of Washed Out and Memory Tapes.  There is a nostalgia there, but also a youthful romanticism.

Q: You are showing at Milk Studios where all of the shows will be live streaming, including yours.  There is a lot of buzz going around saying that this technology is democratizing Fashion Week, moving it from elitist to socialist.  What do you think about the infiltration of Social Media into Fashion Week?

A: There is this burst of newness and who knows where that is going to take us.  We love that this medium can connect us with our consumers across the globe in a way we were never able to before.  Nothing should be elitist and change is never bad.

Q: There are a number of designers that are offering their looks to consumers right after they are shown on the runway, how do you feel about that?

A: Well, it must be frustrating for the consumer to see something they love, but can’t have for several months, so I understand that.  It takes us hours and hours and hours create one of our garments because there is so much handwork done, it feels like pricing is arbitrary when the looks are made so easily accessible.  For us, it’s not about creating trends, it’s about creating something to wear and love for the next 10 years.  We are creating heirlooms.

BIO:

Spring 2005 fashion week marked the Costello Tagliapi­etra premier on the New York runways. Costello Tagli­apietra went on to win the 2005 Ecco Domani Fashion Foundation Award and presented their second well-received collection, of twenty-four looks, in which Style.com called “expertly executed”. Finalists of the presti­gious CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund in 2005 and now in 2006, both design ers were elected to the CFDA in 2006.

The Costello Tagliapietra collection is sold at Barneys New York and select specialty boutiques worldwide.

Costello Tagliapietra’s recent collaboration with UNIQLO is also currently available around the world.

Do you remember when the first mp3 players came out? Then, do you remember when they started to make “smart” phones?

Now, do you remember how pissed you were when they made an iPhone?

I sure do. Not because I love electronic gadgets, but because I was irritated that now, I’d be the tool carrying around four separate devices; each of which had different, but equally important functions.

Nowadays, the same goes for digital media. You can blame it on laziness but it just makes sense to have everything you want in one place and that is precisely what two of our talented and good-looking creatives did for Net-a-Porter and Bergdorf Goodman.

Fans now have Fashionfix–a new social media landing page for all things Net-a-Porter.  For Bergdorf Goodman, 5th on 58th serves as their official branded blog but it also showcases BG’s print media as well as high-res videos/photos, and social media links.

All this means is you don’t have to stop by the company’s seperate facebook fan page, twitter page, or related blogs–it’s all here plus, an iPod/iPad/iPhone application that allows you to browse their magazine. You can keep up to date with events, special promotions, and you can even stay in the conversation with direct links to net-a-porter social media sites. Enjoy!

We just launched a new site for The Williams, a new residential property in Williamsburg, by Lucky Boy Development. The site features a photo essay on the neighborhood by Misha Taylor, building on the printed brochure we created earlier this year.

website for The Williams

A content management system allows Lucky Boy to update the status of the apartments, something we’re sure they will be doing fairly regularly as this building is going to sell fast. Head on over and grab yourself a penthouse while you still can!

The first blow to be taken in public, in the current war between
Apple and Adobe was landed by Apple last month when they introduced
new rules for developers creating apps for iPhone and iPad which
prevent developers from creating apps with the new version of Flash.

Flash CS5 was two weeks away from launch, and the ability to create
iPhone apps was a headline feature, but the new rules meant that the
only apps on the store to built with Flash are the one hundred or so
apps created by Adobe’s beta testers. Some of these are fabulous and
well worth the money, especially It’s a Clock – see www.itsaclock.flamjam.com
for more details.

Then last week Steve Jobs published an open letter attacking Adobe,
a letter that is still promoted heavily on the home page of www.apple.com
. The full letter is available at www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/

Everyone was shocked at such a public attack, and Adobe CEO Shantanu
Narayen even did video interview with Alan Murray on the WSJ blog,
available here – www.tinyurl.com/flashceointerview

So what’s all this about? It basically comes down to two companies
with very different agendas.

Apple, as a forward thinking technology company has striven compel
users of their products to upgrade frequently. For example, 3 years
ago they changed the type of processor in their computers so that
today many new software products, including Flash CS5, fail to work
on a Mac that’s more than 3 years old.

By comparison, Windows software tends to be able to run on computers
that are ten years old. But this backwards compatibility comes at a
price. Whereas new Mac software can take advantage of all users
having modern hardware, Windows software generally aims at a lower
common denominator.

Apple want developers to take advantage of their hardware’s newer
features, but when building software that runs on both Mac and
Windows this would mean considerable extra work making two different
versions.

Adobe’s mission is to allow their customers to author content once
and deliver across platforms. Flash is a great example of this.
Despite its numerous flaws, Flash, more than any other web
technology, allows us to design and build one site and deploy it
across platforms and browsers. Even simple HTML websites need extra
code to make them look consistent between browsers and platforms.

The problem with this approach, from Apple’s perspective, is that it
restricts digital content and applications to a feature set common
to all platforms. This means the lack of technical ability of an
ageing Windows computer limits what people can create for Apple
computers.

And this is why Apple banned Flash (and a bunch of other software
products) from creating apps for their mobile devices. If you’re
creating for Apple hardware, Apple want you to use technology that
makes it hard to deploy to other hardware, so that you really focus
on them, and don’t let any other manufacturer’s hardware limit your
feature set.

Although this seems like a big battle to us, as most of us use Apple
hardware daily, the reality is Apple users are a minority. The iPad
is big news, but after discussing these issues with Adobe last week,
they have revealed that their relationships with hardware
manufacturers has allowed them to discover a glut of multi-touch
tablets that are cheaper and more feature rich.

As a side note, Adobe will be providing Starworks with access to
both unreleased software and hardware to give us a head start that
we can pass on to our clients as a tangible competitive advantage.

Regarding the iPhone, there are sixty new Google Android phones
coming out in the second half of this year, something we’d be
foolish to ignore. The user experience on their flagship phone, the
Nexus One (www.google.com/phone) is not even close to that of the
iPhone. It’s comparable to using Windows vs OS X. It is very capable
but sometimes things go wrong when installing apps, and it just
isn’t as intuitive as the iPhone.

But if they can sort the user experience out and make it easier to
get music onto your phone, the better battery life, signal
reception, and open app store may tempt people away from the iPhone.