by Amber on January 7, 2010
Way back when I was 6-years-old, I received this Babar The Elephant diary as a gift. An any year diary, it appears that I have been waiting almost 20 years to find the perfect one. There’s not even a single pen mark in the book! I guess it goes to show I have always had the fear of ‘ruining’ beautiful notebooks with silly scribbles.
The character Babar the elephant was created by French writer and painter Jean de Brunhoff in 1931. The basic premise is thus: Babar loses his mother to a hunter, wanders into the city of Paris, gets adopted by a little old lady and procures a new wardrobe, becomes the hit of high society, wanders back to the jungle and is crowned King of the Elephants.
While I want-want-wanted a pack of 12 colourful Moleskines, I can’t really justify spending that much on stationery when I have so many blank books lying around the house – plus Babar is mighty cute.
Any year? Now is good!
This sums up my aim for 2010 – more conscious consumerism, more reuse/recycling and of course, more charm. It’s important that we all think about how we can impact the world less, by reexamining discarded objects and previously loved good, but at the same time BRING THE CUTE.
Every city in the world has ‘dress-shops’ but in Sweden, it has been taken to another level.
Filippa K have launched a unique branded secondhand store in Stockholm, which will allow customers to sell their used Filippa K pieces on commission. Sold alongside the secondhand items will be samples and a vintage jewelry collection, encouraging more traffic. It’s such a sustainable, fantastic idea!
Resulting in a win-win situation for the consumers, clothing purveyors (the sellers of the used fashion) and the designers. It completely bypasses some of the pain of selling, everyone know what they’re in for.
This could work really well for other labels too, like Starfish from Wellington, New Zealand who are already very progressive in sourcing materials and manufacturing. I’ve seen ‘vintage’ sections in Karen Walker’s stores, Australian chain Sportsgirl and I imagine TopShop has something similar; but this is a firm commitment to re-defining the life cycle for clothes!
[via Springwise]
