Are you looking for a lightweight jacket that gives you a certain amount of coolness? Then you can't avoid the denim jacket! Here you will not only find out where the jacket has its textile roots, but also everything about styling, trends, and care!

What is the denim jacket?

There are now so many different denim jacket models: But what is the denim jacket all about? 

The classic denim jacket is waist or hip length. You will find metal buttons on the patch breast pockets, on the sleeves, and in the middle to close. It has a collar that is folded down. Two longitudinal seams on the front emphasize the figure. Adjustment tabs on the lower collar are also typical.

By the way: denim is actually a cotton blend. The fabric becomes much more durable than your T-shirts with a special weaving technique.

The history of the denim jacket

The denim jacket was originally developed for locomotive drivers. The robust fabric and the wide cut were perfect for the hard work. In 1946 the denim jacket was easily available to the masses for the first time - and started a wild fashion career: Elvis, hippies, rockers - for all of them, the jacket was a symbol of freedom and rebellion. Of course, patches and embellishments could not be missing. In 1967 Levi's designed the "Levi's Strauss Trucker Jacket": New were the longitudinal seams on the front, which emphasize the waist. This finally made the denim jacket a fashion piece that has become an integral part of the fashion world.

How does a denim jacket have to fit?

The classic denim jacket should fit loosely, and the bottom hem should either be tailored or end on the hip. In the meantime, however, the jacket is available in so many different versions that the fit always turns out a little different, anything you like is allowed. However, there is a law on jeans jackets: the bigger and wider the fit, the more casual it looks. So if you want a light jacket for a more chic outfit, choose a classic cut. Otherwise, there are no limits to your styling. 

These are the 6 biggest denim jacket trends

The Classic

Waist-length, loose in the waist with a relaxed fit on the shoulders: the original cut is timeless and just always works. We particularly like the combination of light rock and casual sweater.

Cropped

With this trend, the denim jacket ends at waist height or even directly under the chest. The short version of the denim jacket is particularly cool when the hem is slightly frayed at the bottom. The cut especially emphasizes the middle of the body: You can reinforce the effect by combining a pair of high-waisted pants.

Straight Cut

Wondering what is the difference between this model and the classic denim jacket? The classic denim jacket has a much wider cut at the waist and sleeves. The straight cut plays around the figure more, and you look slimmer. In addition, this rather simple version can really be combined with everything. 

Oversize & Boyfriend

Oversize jackets have been with us for some time now. Of course, there is also the denim jacket in the oversized edition. The trend originated in the 90s. In recent years, hardly anyone has escaped the nostalgia of the 90s vibes in the fashion world.

The boyfriend style is a bit oversized but is trendy as well. The style suggests you are wearing up your significant denim jacket, hence the term “boyfriend” style. 

Black and White

You don't just have a choice when it comes to the cut of the denim jacket: black and white brings color variety to your jacket selections. Another advantage is that you can also wear them on items of clothing that might have been less suitable for the blue color. The outfit looks particularly stylish when the black or white can be found in another piece of clothing.

NEW YORK (AP) — Upscale department store chain Nordstrom is getting into livestream selling, the latest U.S. retailer to jump on the trend that has been already popular in China.

The move, announced Wednesday, is part of the Seattle company’s overall strategy to shift more of its business online.

Nordstrom will kick off its livestreaming channel with a Burberry virtual styling event on Thursday. The presentation will focus on how to wear Burberry runway looks and style them by mixing and matching with other pieces from the collection. On Friday, shoppers can tune in to learn the latest skin care and hair care tips for at-home beauty rituals. And on April 8, customers will learn how to style jewelry. During the livestream selling events, shoppers can buy products and participate in a live chat.

Livestream selling is taking off in the U.S., ushering in a new way for Americans to shop online. Instead of searching for what they want, they pick up their phones, sit back, and click to buy if they like what they see.

“Livestream Shopping enables us to stay closer to the customer with interactive and engaging experiences that allow for discovery, personalization and service at scale,” Fanya Chandler, senior vice president at Nordstrom, wrote in a blog post Wednesday.

This mode of shopping was expected to ring up nearly $5 billion in sales last year and reach $25 billion in 2023, according to retail data firm Coresight Research.

The pandemic is helping to feed the craze. Business owners with closed stores had taken to livestreaming to sell all sorts of items. At the same time, tech companies, including Facebook, Instagram and Amazon, have made it easy for businesses to livestream from their smartphones.

Online shopping giant Amazon has been experimenting with livestreaming for five years, but in 2019, it offered a free app allowing businesses that sell goods on the site to livestream from their smartphones.

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AP Retail Writer Joseph Pisani in New York contributed to this report. (Associated Press) 

If you’ve been in the olive oil section of the grocery store lately, you’ve likely been confronted with a lot of choices. Possibly even a wall of olive oils, with different symbols on the bottles and a whole lot of brands to choose from.

For most of us, the world of olive oil is a bit of a mystery, and you may find yourself with the same kind of uncertainty you feel in a wine store when contemplating the plethora of bottles lined up.

My friend Ted called me up a while back and asked, “Should I buy the extra virgin olive oil, or should I go with something more experienced?” Yes, the jokes about extra virgin olive oil (EVOO) are easy, but the fact remains: There is a lot of confusion about which olives oils to buy and how to use them.

So let’s get into it. What kind of olive oils should you keep on hand, and which should you use when?

First, let’s dive into the meaning of extra virgin, virgin and pure olive oil.

The term extra virgin, which also might be labeled cold-pressed, refers to oil made from the first pressing or milling of fresh, young, green olives.

According to Vincent Ricchiuti, a fourth-generation farmer in Fresno, California, who founded Enzo Olive Oil, “One of the most important things for quality and freshness is how fast you get the olives from the tree to the mill.” His organic olives go from the tree to bottle within 24 hours.

A variety of olive oils are displayed at a grocery store in Waterbury, Vt. (AP Photo)

The flavor of extra virgin olive oils can range widely. Olives, regions, weather… all affect the taste and quality, just like wine. Good-quality extra virgin olive oils usually have pleasant notes of bitterness, and different oils will have more specific flavor nuances: You may hear yourself using words like peppery, grassy, vegetal, sweet or almondy. The intensity of flavor varies from delicate to assertive, though good extra virgin olive oil should always taste fresh and clean. The color may range from a rich glowing green to golden yellow.

Pure olive oil, which also might be labeled simply olive oil, is a blend of olive oil refined because it doesn’t meet the qualifications of virgin olive oil plus some virgin or extra virgin olive oil, added for flavor and color. This oil is best used for cooking and frying, as its flavor tends to be blander and less nuanced than extra virgin olive oils.

Joseph R. Profaci, executive director of the trade group the North American Olive Oil Association, says, “While extra virgin olive oil is the most prized grade for good reason, we need to keep the door open for consumers to use lower grades of olive oil if that is what fits their taste preferences and budget.

“Home cooks who are accustomed to neutral-flavored, highly refined seed oils but are curious about the potential health benefits of olive oil might want to start with regular olive oil or even light-tasting olive oils. Think of them as a gateway into the category.”

Very good extra virgin olive oil is best used in cold preparations, rather than cooked, to get the most out of its singular flavor. Think about salad dressings, and drizzling over any finished dish, from soups to fish to crostini. If there is a harvest date on the bottle, check that it is from the previous fall’s harvest.

Some cooks hesitate about using good olive oil because of its reputation for having a lower smoke point, the temperature at which it begins to burn. Francesca van Soest, technical sales and marketing manager for Australian-based Cobram Estate, says, “There has been this unsubstantiated rumor that you cannot cook with EVOO because of its smoke point for far too long. If you go to Europe, everyone has been cooking with extra virgin olive oil for millennia, so why do we believe that we can’t here?”

Rolando Beramendi, founder of the California-based Italian food importer Manicaretti, adds, “you just need to be very good friends with your flames” when you cook with olive oil and make sure the temperature doesn’t get too high.

Where to splurge on expensive olive oil and where to economize?

Shop for olive oil at stores with high turnover, so it hasn’t been sitting on the shelf for months. Besides local grocery stores, there are of course online and specialty shops that sell a wide variety of artisanal, small-batch extra virgin olive oils that can be pricy but singular.

“As far as the money you are spending, think about that we are quick to buy a $35 bottle of wine, and drink it in the same meal. But a $35 dollar bottle of olive oil (stored properly), can last for months, so you’re getting more than a good bang for your buck,” says Beramendi.

If you use a lot of olive oil (and dear reader, that would be me), proper storage is less of an issue because you will use it up before its quality really declines. The best way to store olive oil is sealed, in a cool, dark place (if you store your olive oil by the stove, don’t!).

A variety of olive oils are displayed at a grocery store in Waterbury, Vt. (AP Photo)

Some manufacturers bottle their olive oil in dark or even opaque bottles to prevent light from accelerating oxidation of the oil. Light, heat and air are the enemies of stored olive oil. Stored properly, good extra virgin olive oil will last for months, and a more commercially produced one should last for at least a year, though once opened it will start to decline more quickly. If it smells or tastes rancid, toss it.

Quality olive oils come from all over. Italy is one of the most famous producers, but so are Greece, Spain and, in recent decades, California. Good olive oil is also produced in countries as diverse as Australia, Tunisia, Turkey, Morocco and Croatia. In Italy alone, Sardinia, Sicily, Umbria, Tuscany, Apulia and Liguria are among the regions revered for their distinctive oils.

Most olive oil-producing regions have third-party verification and accreditation, and Van Soest urges buyers to look for those seals on the bottle to avoid any adulteration or mislabeling of the oil.

The world of flavored olive oils is also robust. Enzo makes two lines: Infused ones are made on a larger scale from a combination of extra virgin olive oil mixed with organic essential oils such as garlic, basil and Meyer Lemon. Then there is the pricier “crush” series, where raw ingredients, such as locally grown clementines and Fresno chilies, are crushed with the olives.

Of course, as with wine, cheese or chocolate, to start to learn about olive oil is to scratch the surface of a deep and ancient food tradition. But just by experimenting a bit, and maybe spending a few extra dollars, you’ll see the delicious results right away.

(Apnews.com)

With nominations set and just over a month until showtime, details are trickling out about the 93rd Oscars and neither sweatshirts nor Zoom made the cut.

“Our plan is that this year’s Oscars will look like a movie, not a television show,” said show producers Jesse Collins, Stacy Sher and Steven Soderbergh in a statement Friday. They’ve enlisted Emmy and Tony Award winning director Glenn Weiss to direct the live broadcast on April 25.

Although considerably scaled down from a normal year, the producers have said they are committed to holding an in-person event at Los Angeles’ Union Station for nominees, presenters and limited guests. There will also be a live component at the Dolby Theatre, which has been home to the Academy Awards since 2001.

But unlike the Golden Globes, which combined in-person and Zoom elements in its bi-coastal broadcast, the Oscars are not making a virtual element possible for nominees who either can’t or don’t feel comfortable attending. The producers said they plan to treat the event like an active movie set with on-site COVID safety teams and testing protocols.

And, yes, they expect attendees to dress up.

We’re aiming for a fusion of Inspirational and Aspirational, which in actual words means formal is totally cool if you want to go there, but casual is really not,” producers said.

The 93rd Oscars will be broadcast live on ABC on April 25 starting at 8 p.m. ET. (via AP)

HONOLULU (AP) — Tourists are traveling to Hawaii in larger numbers than officials anticipated, and many are wandering around Waikiki without masks, despite a statewide mandate to wear them in public.

Hawaii’s “Safe Travels” program reported that about 28,000 people flew into and throughout the islands on Saturday, the highest number of travelers in a single day since the pandemic began, the Honolulu Star-Advertiser reported Monday.

Before the pandemic, Hawaii had about 30,000 arrivals daily. When quarantine rules were put in place early in the pandemic, arrivals plummeted and the state’s tourism-dependent economy tanked.

In October, state officials launched a pre-travel testing program that allowed visitors to sidestep quarantine rules. But travel remained sluggish until the second week in March, when spring break tourists started arriving in the islands.

Travel company Pleasant Holidays president and CEO Jack Richards told the Honolulu-Star that the agency’s bookings increased 30% over the last two weeks.

“We haven’t seen travel demand for Hawaii this strong for over a year,” Richards said. “I thought we would have a U-shaped recovery; it’s V-shaped. January and February were terrible, but we’ve gone from zero to 150 mph in two weeks.”

Hawaii News Now reported that officials are receiving complaints about visitors not wearing masks. With a few exceptions, people in Hawaii are still required to wear masks while in public.

“I’m a believer that if you’re outdoors, you can remove it,” said Glenn Day, a visitor from Indiana.

Visitors said rules in their home states are different than those in place in Hawaii.

“We carry our masks around and if we walk into an establishment we’ll wear one, and if people look like they’re uncomfortable with us around, we’ll put one on. But otherwise, like I said where we come from, people are really not required to wear them,” Wisconsin visitor Larry Dopke said.

“I’m not wearing one right now, I’m outdoors,” said Todd Hasley who was visiting from Idaho. “Boise city has an indoor mask mandate. The rest of the state has a mask recommendation.”

Some lawmakers expressed concern about a possible backlash from residents.

“I think we’re all going to have to be prepared for a potential surge in tourism,” said Hawaii state Rep. Scott Saiki, a Democrat. “I think we have to be prepared because the public may have a response to a sudden surge.”

Such a reaction could hinder economic recovery.

“Pushing back against tourism is the same thing as telling your neighbor they shouldn’t have a job,” said Carl Bonham, executive director of the University of Hawaii’s Economic Research Organization.

Hawaii requires all visitors and returning residents to get negative pre-travel COVID-19 tests before flying to the state to be exempt from the 10-day quarantine rule.

The island of Kauai has additional measures that will be in place until April 5. All visitors to Kauai must either spend three days on another island or quarantine at a county-approved resort for three days and then get second, post-arrival tests.

Violating the state’s coronavirus mandates, which are outlined in Hawaii Gov. David Ige’s latest emergency proclamation, is a misdemeanor that is punishable by up to a $5,000 fine, a year in prison, or both.

Each island county’s police are responsible for enforcing the rules. Messages from The Associated Press seeking comment from the Honolulu Police Department regarding enforcement of mask rules in Waikiki was not immediately returned.

Tim Sakahara, a spokesman for Honolulu Mayor Rick Blangiardi, said in an email that the city recently put up banners throughout Waikiki reminding people to wear masks and remain socially distanced.

“These banners provide a tool to help Honolulu Police officers do their jobs in gaining compliance with COVID-19 rules,” Sakahara said. “The majority of residents and visitors are compliant with the rule or are cooperative when informed of it.”

However, some residents have also opposed wearing masks. Two people were arrested and two others were cited during a weekend anti-mask rally in Waikiki.

Hawaii has had among the lowest rates of confirmed coronavirus infections in the U.S.

NEW YORK (AP) — Regal Cinemas, the second largest movie theater chain in the U.S., will reopen beginning April 2, its parent company, Cineworld Group, announced Tuesday.

Regal had been one of most notable holdouts in the gradual reopening of cinemas nationwide. For nearly half a year, its 7,211 screens and 549 theatres in the U.S. have been dark. Doors will open early next month with attendance limited to 25% to 50% capacity in about 500 locations.

Cineworld also agreed to a new multi-year deal with Warner Bros. Beginning next year, the studio’s releases will have a 45-day exclusive window at Regal cinemas, roughly slicing in half the traditional period. That doesn’t apply to Warner releases this year, which are streaming simultsneously on HBO Max when they open in theaters.

We are very happy for the agreement with Warner Bros.” said Mooky Greidinger, chief executive of Cineworld. “This agreement shows the studio’s commitment to the theatrical business and we see this agreement as an important milestone in our 100-year relationship with Warner Bros.”

Regal’s April 2 reopening coincides with the release of Warner Bros.′ “Godzilla vs. Kong.”

The agreement is the latest in a reordering of the theatrical marketplace —sea change accelerated by the pandemic but viewed as long-in-coming by some analysts given the rise in streaming services.

Universal Pictures last November agreed to deals with AMC and Cinemark — the first- and third-largest chains — to shrink the theatrical window to 17 days, or three weekends. Greidinger at the time said the company didn’t see “any business sense” in that model.

The Walt Disney Co. on Tuesday said it would release several of its largest upcoming films, including the Marvel movie “Black Widow” simultaneously in theaters and on Disney+.

In the United Kingdom, where Cineworld is targeting a May reopening, the Warner agreement shortens the theatrical window to 31 days but can be extended to 45 days if a film reaches a certain box-office threshold.

About half of North American theaters were open as of last week, according to data firm Comscore. In the past few weeks, theaters have been allowed to reopen in New York and Los Angeles — the two largest U.S. markets — for the first time since the beginning of the pandemic.

“With capacity restrictions expanding to 50% or more across most U.S. states, we will be able to operate profitably in our biggest markets,” said Greidinger.

BORDEAUX, France (AP) — It tastes like rose petals. It smells like a campfire. It glistens with a burnt-orange hue. What is it? A 5,000-euro bottle of Petrus Pomerol wine that spent a year in space.

Researchers in Bordeaux are analyzing a dozen bottles of the precious liquid — along with 320 snippets of Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon grapevines — that returned to Earth in January after a sojourn aboard the International Space Station.

They announced their preliminary impressions Wednesday — mainly, that weightlessness didn’t ruin the wine and it seemed to energize the vines.

Organizers say it’s part of a longer-term effort to make plants on Earth more resilient to climate change and disease by exposing them to new stresses, and to better understand the aging process, fermentation and bubbles in wine.

At a one-of-a-kind tasting this month, 12 connoisseurs sampled one of the space-traveled wines, blindly tasting it alongside a bottle from the same vintage that had stayed in a cellar.

A special pressurized device delicately uncorked the bottles at the Institute for Wine and Vine Research in Bordeaux. The tasters solemnly sniffed, stared and eventually, sipped.

“I have tears in my eyes,” Nicolas Gaume, CEO and co-founder of the company that arranged the experiment, Space Cargo Unlimited, told The Associated Press.

Alcohol and glass are normally prohibited on the International Space Station, so each bottle was packed inside a special steel cylinder during the journey.

At a news conference Wednesday, Gaume said the experiment focused on studying the lack of gravity — which “creates tremendous stress on any living species” — on the wine and vines.

“We are only at the beginning,” he said, calling the preliminary results “encouraging.”

Jane Anson, a wine expert and writer with the wine publication Decanter, said the wine that remained on Earth tasted “a little younger than the one that had been to space.”

Chemical and biological analysis of the wine’s aging process could allow scientists to find a way to artificially age fine vintages, said Dr. Michael Lebert, a biologist at Germany’s Friedrich-Alexander-University who was consulted on the project.

The vine snippets — known as canes in the grape-growing world — not only survived the journey but also grew faster than vines on Earth, despite limited light and water.

Once the researchers determine why, Lebert said that could help scientists develop sturdier vines on Earth — and pave the way for grape-growing and wine-making in space.

Christophe Chateau of the Bordeaux Wine-Makers’ Council welcomed the research as “a good thing for the industry,” but predicted it would take a decade or more to lead to practical applications. Chateau, who was not involved in the project, described ongoing efforts to adjust grape choices and techniques to adapt to ever-warmer temperatures.

“The wine of Bordeaux is a wine that gets its singularity from its history but also from its innovations,” he told The AP. “And we should never stop innovating.”

Private investors helped fund the project, which the researchers hope to continue on further space missions. The cost wasn’t disclosed.

For the average earthling, the main question is: What does cosmic wine taste like?

“For me, the difference between the space and earth wine ... it wasn’t easy to define,” said Franck Dubourdieu, a Bordeaux-based agronomist and oenologist, an expert in the study of wine and wine-making.

Researchers said each of the 12 panelists had an individual reaction. Some observed “burnt-orange reflections.” Others evoked aromas of cured leather or a campfire.

“The one that had remained on Earth, for me, was still a bit more closed, a bit more tannic, a bit younger. And the one that had been up into space, the tannins had softened, the side of more floral aromatics came out,” Anson said.

But whether the vintage was space-flying or earthbound, she said, “They were both beautiful.” (via APnews.com)

More than 1.5 million people streamed through U.S. airport security checkpoints on Sunday, the largest number since the pandemic tightened its grip on the United States more than a year ago.

It marked the 11th straight day that the Transportation Security Administration screened more than 1 million people, likely from a combination of spring break travel and more people becoming vaccinated against COVID-19.

Airline executives say they have seen an increase in bookings during the last few weeks.

However, passenger traffic remains far below 2019 levels.

The TSA said Monday that it screened about 1.54 million people on Sunday, which appeared to be the largest number since March 13, 2020. It was more than triple the 454,516 people that TSA reported screening on the comparable Sunday a year ago, and the seven-day rolling average of screenings has doubled since Feb. 1.

Still, the number of people passing through airport checkpoints Sunday was about one-fourth below the number on the closest Sunday in 2019. (AP)

There’s something missing from a new wave of bars opening around the world: Alcohol.

Aimed at the growing number of people exploring sobriety, the bars pour adult drinks like craft cocktails without the booze. At 0% Non-Alcohol Experience, a futuristic bar in Tokyo, patrons can sip a mix of non-alcoholic white wine, sake and cranberries from a sugar-rimmed glass. On a recent evening at Sans Bar in Austin, Texas, customers gathered at outdoor tables, enjoying live music, bottles of alcohol-free IPA and drinks like the watermelon mockarita, which is made with a tequila alternative.

Sober bars aren’t a new phenomenon. They first appeared in the 19th century as part of the temperance movement. But while previous iterations were geared toward non-drinkers or people in recovery, the newer venues welcome the sober as well as the curious.

A lot of people just want to drink less,” said Chris Marshall, Sans Bar’s founder.

Marshall, who has been sober for 14 years, opened the bar after serving as an addiction counselor. But he estimates 75% of his customers also drink alcohol outside of his bar.

“It’s just easier,” said Sondra Prineaux, a regular customer at Sans Bar. “I don’t have to worry about leaving my car here and getting an Uber home. I’ll wake up without a headache.”

Abstinence challenges like Dry January — which began in 2013 — and a growing interest in health and wellness are behind the trend, said Brandy Rand, chief operating officer for the Americas at IWSR Drinks Market Analysis.

Last year, alcohol consumption in 10 key markets — including the U.S., Germany, Japan and Brazil — fell 5%, IWSR said. Consumption of low- and no-alcohol drinks rose 1% in that same time period.

Alcohol still far outsells low- and no-alcohol drinks. Drinkers in those key markets consumed 9.7 billion 9-liter cases of alcohol in 2020, compared to 292 million 9-liter cases of low- and no-alcohol beverages. But Rand notes that global consumption of low- and no-alcohol beer, wine and spirits is growing two to three times faster than overall alcohol consumption.

An explosion of new products is also fueling sales. There are drinks from smaller makers like Chicago’s Ritual Zero Proof — which opened in 2019 and makes no-alcohol whiskey, gin and tequila — and big companies like Anheuser-Busch, which introduced alcohol-free Budweiser Zero last year.

“I have the wonderful problem of too many great options,” said Douglas Watters, who opened Spirited Away, a New York shop that sells non-alcoholic beer, wine and spirits, in November.

Watters said the pandemic lockdown caused him to rethink his usual pattern of ending each day with a cocktail. He started experimenting with non-alcoholic beverages, and by August he had decided to open his store. Many of his customers are sober, he said, but others are pregnant or have health issues. Some are training for marathons; others just want to cut back on alcohol.

“There are a lot of people, this past year more than ever, thinking more critically about what they’re drinking and how it’s making them feel,” he said.

Joshua James, a veteran bartender, had a similar realization during the pandemic. After a stint at Friendship House, a substance abuse treatment center, he recently opened Ocean Beach Cafe, an alcohol-free bar in San Francisco.

“I wanted to destigmatize the words addiction, recovery and sober,” he said. “There’s a thousand reasons to not want to drink as much.”

The coronavirus, James said, “warp-speeded” the change in many people’s drinking habits. But it has also hurt the nascent non-alcoholic bar scene.

Some bars, like The Virgin Mary Bar in Dublin and Zeroliq in Berlin, have temporarily closed their doors due to regulations. Getaway, a non-alcoholic bar in New York, transitioned into a coffee shop to weather the pandemic. Owner Sam Thonis has added outdoor seating and hopes to reopen the bar this spring.

Billy Wynne, the co-owner of Awake in Denver, is also selling coffee and bottles of non-alcoholic spirits out of a carryout window for now. But he plans to open the doors to a non-alcoholic bar next month.

Wynne says the price of drinks will be comparable to a regular bar. Alcohol is cheap, he said, and the process for extracting it from some beverages makes them more expensive.

Alcohol delivery site Drizly charges $33 for a 700 ml bottle of Seedlip Spice 94, a non-alcoholic spirit. That’s slightly more than a 750 ml bottle of Aviation Gin, which sells for $30. But Wynne thinks customers are willing to pay for the craft that goes into a cocktail or a flavorful wine whether it has alcohol or not.

He said his customers tend to be in their 30s or 40s, and the majority are women. Some tell him they’ve have waiting their whole lives for a bar like his to open.

“This type of thing, it’s not a fad,” he said. “People don’t wake up to the negative impact alcohol is having on their life and then change their mind.”

(AP)

(photo credit: vogue.com)

Instead of the standard runway show format, Coperni’s Sébastien Meyer and Arnaud Vaillant hosted a screening of a short film at the Apple store on the Champs Élysées today. The duo made an impression on the fashion community during their three seasons at Courrèges. When their gig at that Paris heritage brand ended, they took some time to themselves before relaunching their original label, Coperni, with the cleverest of ideas: a Choose Your Own Adventure Instagram account and a minimalist collection focused on tailoring and ’60s-ish shift dresses that got the balance just right between savvy branding and smart design.

Their new Spring collection is about “connectivity,” hence the venue for their short film. The concept came across most clearly with their leather Wi-Fi bag, which reproduced the familiar signal arches in black and white leather. There was also a Bluetooth bow on the waistband of miniskirts. A vestigial strap on the left shoulder of a neatly tailored blazer was meant to have some sort of relation to the theme, but it was more tenuous—though a customer can scan the jacket’s QR code to find out the fabric’s origins. Meyer and Vaillant like a close-to-the-body silhouette stripped of all but the most rigorous surface details, but even by their minimalist standards the ideas this season were a little thin. One concept that had legs was the pair of Mary Jane ballerinas that, with the adjustment of a few buckles, morphed into an ankle-strap style. These two have a lot of good ideas; with the necessary ready-to-wear development, we hope to see more of them put into action next season.

(printed originally on vogue.com; Coperni Spring Ready to Wear)