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Last year, I pontificated in the style pages of Metro about the trend of high fashion couture designers including Versace and Karl Lagerfeld pairing with lower end or mass market retailers. I don’t mean to get all cranky, but I find myself somewhat troubled reading NPR’s dismissive description of the cult Missoni brand “Few people had heard of Missoni until the venerable Italian fashion house partnered with Target last year. The launch made headlines after Target’s website crashed from all the traffic.” Just because people can’t afford couture clothing doesn’t necessarily mean they aren’t aware of them. The site crashed in part because Target also underestimated their brand aware purchasing public’s desire to own affordable, limited edition designer goods and didn’t properly shore up their web structure.

The idea behind design collaborations of this nature is to connect new consumers with classic brands that are usually out of their price range. It adds an element of instant glamor to a mass market retailer and a quick infusion of cash and attention to brands that might be struggling despite the hype that the luxury market hasn’t suffered due to the economy. In a depressed economy anything that spurs sales seems like a great idea.

*(I thought of following NPR‘s lead and describing it as her inaugural gown, but then wondered at the fashion & grammatical implications of making it sound like it was the first gown she’d designed).

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fencing or massages to yoga and permanent hair removal. They count on huge quantities of sales to spur buying and brand recognition. Reviews are mixed on the long-term benefits for the companies partnering with Groupon, with some small business claiming their deals ruined their business.

I noted a curious come on the other day with a fairly startling price tag– a private cooking lesson with Chef Todd English for only $25,000.00. This steal also includes signed copies of his book and a double thumbed oven mitt.

I’ll admit to being baffled. If you’re a company appealing to bargain hunting luxury lovers, then $25,000.00 seems a fairly steep price (even for a package that includes a double thumbed oven mitt). If you’re appealing to the alleged still thriving luxury market , then the panache factor seems to be lost, since bargain hunting just doesn’t seem to be their thing ($88 million dollar apartment buying offspring of oligarchs, I’m looking at you).

If however, you’re trying to light a fire under your company around holiday time by getting marketers and journalists all hot under the collar trying to figure out your motivation and then give you as much (virtual) ink as possible, well then my friends….You’ve likely launched the next $1,000.00 frittata.

Bon Appetit & Happy Holidays!

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colleague or past co-worker with that one tedious line: “I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn.”

If your mind is like the proverbial steel trap, you’ll instantly remember your connection and be able to decide whether or not the contact is interesting or worth your while. If you’re like most people though, you’ll likely be racking your brains to recall who this so-called friend is, why you lost touch in the first place and why you’d choose to reconnect so publicly.

Worse yet, is when you actually click on LinkedIn and find your proposed connection’s information to be hazy or mysterious. While some people find LinkedIn to be a powerful business tool, others find it to be yet another time-wasting variation on social networking. Whatever your experience is, why would you waste the time of someone you’re trying to connect with and the potential of working together again? If you’ve been too lazy to personalize your note to them in any way, why would you think it appropriate to then ask them for a recommendation on the site? And yes, this just happened to me, repeatedly.

So before you send out your next request on LinkedIn, Take a minute to craft a personalized note or invitation. If you think they may have forgotten you, briefly remind that person how you know each other, invite them for lunch or a quick phone catch up. While generic works, it’s so much better to stand out. And if you’re going to ask someone for a recommendation, make sure that they’ll have something nice to say about you before hitting send!

I was a bit confused though, by some of the posters, including one of the rapper Ice Cube celebrating Mid-Century design darlings Charles and Ray Eames. Their style, ethos and aesthetics seemed incongruous at best, with those expressed or articulated by Mr. Cube*.

According to a recent New York Times article, it would seem that Ice Cube studied architectural drafting in the ’80s. He has a particular fondness for the mix and match and recreate ideals of the Eameses which he likens to sampling or mash-ups, the musical equivalent of combining seemingly unrelated music elements to create a new iconic sound.

Best yet, Ice Cube expressed an inspiring world view on life, business success:

What I learned from architectural drafting is that everything has to have a plan to work. You just can’t wing it…

Whether it’s a career, family, life — you have to plan it out.

And as evidenced by the Eameses and Ice Cube – plan anything well enough, and it will seem to effortlessly fall into place.

*I literally wrote the book on it- Hello Gorgeous! Beauty Products in America ’40s-’60s which will be reissued in 2012

*Insert your own cheap and easy joke about Cubism here

sneaked a peak of me, or at least a picture of me, four stories high and gracing the PR Newswire building. My celluloid self was promoting a live Twitter chat interview with me on how to look and act your best while on-camera.

Amazingly enough, while I’m mostly at ease on camera and on the radio (that morning I taped a series of interviews about the new Coke holiday can design), I found the Twitter interview format fraught with unexpected hiccups. Like how do you sound interesting, engaged, amusing and professional while furiously typing 140 character snippets that also had to include a hashtag?

I’ll let you be the judge of how well I did – the recap is here.

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understand what people are saying in business conversations anymore. Between acronyms and meaningless expressions, he’s found that people blather on without really saying much. Before you engage in your next bout of corporate double talk, try to take a step back and think about what you really want to say and if the popular or accepted expressions help you to say it best.

ISNBIBMOM (I’ll stop now, before I begin my own meanderings.)

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“A local political boss” originating from the Spanish. The only Cacique I’d previously heard of was the plus-size lingerie line from Lane Bryant.

I’d never previously given the word or brand much thought. When I did, I imagined it to mean something sexy or flimsy, or a word invented by the marketing team to sound just French enough, while expressing supportive yet alluring products.

On the one hand, I can see how Lane Bryant might have chosen the brand name to express a certain bold and powerful woman wearing their products. On the other hand, it makes the brand seem a little cheaper or more obvious and a whole lot less sexy.

Then again, company names like Wacoal or Vassarette don’t seem to have influenced buyers’ habits one way or another, and Victoria’s Secret seems more than a bit obvious.

Some of them have been kind enough to agree to let me interview them for 5 Questions for the Interroblog. Their quirky outlooks or creative ways of doing their job have inspired me and I hope their words, wit and wisdom will offer inspiration to you as well.

First up is Joel Stein who describes himself as “Just a Time magazine columnist who is finishing a book.”

I have changed my email signature to this, because I’m a self-promoting tool:
My first book, Man Made: A Stupid Quest for Masculinity, comes out on May 22.

Lots of use of the words ‘strategic’ and ‘creative’ and other corporate speak. As with much of the strictly PR world, a lot of the information feels a few years behind the curve, but if you want an idea of how a former beauty editor became and thinks as a beauty PR specialist, it’s worth a watch.

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Related/Unrelated, high-end bridal boutique Priscilla of Boston, creators of Grace Kelly‘s iconic wedding gown are closing all of their 19 locations in favor of investing resources in parent company David’s Bridal, a lower end mass-market bridal chain.

To put pricing into perspective, according to the Boston Globe, “The priciest dress at David’s retails for $1,400, while the most expensive dress at Priscilla costs $10,000.” The article cites a study by the websites The Knot and the Wedding Channel stating that the national average that brides spend on their dresses has changed little between 2008 and 2010 – just over $1,000, “a number more in line with David’s price point.” Kim Kardashian’s Vera Wang wedding dress alone (one of three) is estimated to have cost upwards of $25,000.00. It’s also been suggested that her entire wedding was paid for by corporate sponsors.

While the wedding and prom industry are seen as being evergreen in even the toughest economies, one wonders if the executive team at Priscilla of Boston might have been wise taking business advice from Kardashian. After all, Kardashian’s 72 day business plan of a marriage is estimated to have brought her a quarter million dollars for every day that she was married.