by at 9:08 pm 23 November 2008
Filed under: Branding
“Seven pintucks on either side of the four-button front placket”
Everybody drives in Los Angeles. Everywhere. Always. Except if you’re 13, as I was in 1987 the year the free copywriting lessons started. Then you walk home from school (Paul Revere Junior High, in my case) to find on your doorstep a catalog from a new clothing company called J. Peterman — a catalog with watercolour images of the garments (no photos!) and long copy so extraordinary, so captivating, that 19 years later it leads you to a mountain town high in the Ecuadorian Andes just to see if they were telling the truth about the “Otavalo Mountain Shirt,” made by the villagers of that town. Claimed Peterman (then as now), this shirt’s “tiny wrinkles and creases…guarantee that you will look neither starched nor disheveled. You will look merely at ease.” Men, in particular, “will look broad-shouldered, brave, and secretly kind. Their female friends will encourage them to go without shaving for a few days.” At long last, then, on a summer market day, for $5 each and using the broken Spanish (learned at Paul Revere), I purchased three of the fabled camisas. Shortly, I discovered that even the line about the shaving turns out to be absolutely accurate. But that’s for a different blog. Now, go get your own free copywriting lessons. Poke around J. Peterman online — make a cup of tea first, and allow a good half hour.
by Ben Knapp at 9:50 am 21 November 2008
Filed under: Press
Tags: India, Wally
Book launches are tiring.
The big man’s been in India to promote the launch of his latest book, The Brand Handbook. This and other quotes, plus some damn good reviews, ran in national Indian newspapers over the past weeks. Recent book tour whistle stops in Denmark, Switzerland, Turkey and Russia were also well received. At least according to Wally!
The past weekend was the last opportunity for people in New York to see the Chanel Mobile Art in Central Park. A futuristic nomad art centre imagined by Karl Lagerfeld and designed by Zaha Hadid to celebrate the anniversary of Chanel’s 2.55, the very same iconic quilted bag that warranted a double spread on Wally’s latest book, and so named because it was first issued in February 1955. I took the A train uptown to see what this was about.
