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The mysterious death of a 29-year-old lady, Kemi Arobieke, who reportedly died while on a visit to a former Senior Special Assistant to Osun State Governor Rauf Aregbesola, Bode Olugbore, is certainly raising serious dust as the family of the deceased are up in arms, demanding that the man tell them how she died.

Reports have it that the lady who was an event planner in Lagos, was deep in the midst of planning for her wedding in November but lost her life while visiting her man friend on Saturday, August 8, after she left Lagos to Osogbo, the Osun State capital on Thursday to spend the weekend with Olugbore.

Her family however got a call on Sunday, August 9, that Arobieke had died in an accident but by the time they got to Osogbo, they realised that she was actually electrocuted in her lover boy’s apartment and her corpse had been deposited in a mortuary.

But the family are crying foul, believing that their sister must have been murdered because there were tell-tale signs that could lend credence to that assertion.

picture: chiffon bridesmaid dresses ukA relative of deceased, however said the family would not take the explanation that she was electrocuted as being bandied by the police, believing that she must have been murdered.

The family source also said that the late Kemi had known Olugbore for about four years, but the family initially did not know about their relationship.

“My sister travelled to Osogbo and she was supposed to return to Lagos on Saturday, but we got a call from the police that she was involved in an accident and it was very serious.

When we got to Osogbo, the police prevented us from seeing her, but told us that she had been electrocuted by an electric fan, but it is unbelievable.

We were made to understand that she was electrocuted in the apartment by a standing fan. That is very hard for me to understand. The police showed us the fan, and it seemed to be working fine.

It was not burnt. The socket was not burnt. So, it is suspicious that she was electrocuted. The current in a fan is not enough to kill except one has direct contact with a live wire. The marks on her body suggested something contrary.

Right now, everyone is waiting for answers from the autopsy. We know that the man has been arrested by the police.”

Another family member took to social media to post this:

“I write this with a heavy heart the demise of my immediate younger sister, Kemi Arobieke who was murdered. On Thursday 6th of August, my sister left for Osogbo to see Bode Olugbore, the State Special Adviser to Governor Aregbesola, without telling anyone only for us to get a call on the 8th, Saturday, that she had died in an accident in Osogbo.

The police asked us to come immediately that it was tragic. We got to Osogbo in the night but was told to wait for the DPO the next morning. We got the shocker on Sunday that my beloved sister was electrocuted. We went to the mortuary where we discovered that she was not electrocuted but murdered.

Autopsy and Postmortem was to be carried out at LAUTECH. My fear is that the result has been tampered with in their favor. Bode Olugbore who is married with 3 kids, has not told us the family what really happened to our sister, who was planning her wedding in November.”

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A new survey has uncovered the amount Britons pay to see friends and family tie the knot, with men being hit particularly hard in the wallet

Photo Source: wedding dresses uk　　Crashing a wedding is the cheap way to enjoy an expensive passtime Photo: The Wedding Crashers

46 CommentsA new study has confirmed what many of us have known for a long time: that weddings leaves a sizeable hole in the wallet of each and every guest.

The total average cost associated with attending a wedding – including expenditure on a wedding gift, personal grooming, and even preparing the car – was calculated at just under £170. According to the survey, the average male wedding guest shells out £166.36, while women pay six pounds more.

Men appear to be particularly susceptible to the social competition of weddings, with one in four admitting that they feel under pressure to appear more successful and happy than they actually are.

The survey of 1,000 adults, conducted by the Post Office gift card One4all, found that 32pc of men admitted to spending three hours or more preparing for a wedding, and that they increasingly view the ceremonies and receptions as places to show off their achievements – or even attract new romantic partners.

• What to wear to a wedding: the ‘I dos’ and don’t s

Almost half of the men said they felt inadequate when compared with other guests, and therefore compensated by spending the same amount as women on grooming, clothes and gifts for the occasion.

The grooming treatments are perhaps the most extravagant expenditures, with men matching female beauty costs by indulging in spray tans, professional shaves and even waxing treatments before somebody else’s big day. These bids to impress other guests even extend past personal appearance, with one in two men confessing that they have their car thoroughly washed before a wedding. 7 per cent even said they have hired a car because they were embarrassed about the vehicle they owned.

Whilst women spend an average of £40 on a wedding gift, men ten to splash out considerably more, spending approximately £56 on the happy couple. It is suggested that this may stem from man’s innate fear of appearing ‘stingy’ or ‘tight’, especially when surrounded by old friends or family.

　　Hugh Grant in Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994) Photo: Gramercy Pictures

Aoife Davey, Group Marketing Manager at One4all, said: “The research has uncovered some interesting findings, especially surrounding men and the time, money and effort they’re investing when it comes to being a wedding guest.

“In particular, the fact that 42pc of men see weddings as an opportunity to meet new people compared to 34pc of women is fascinating. It would appear that men are becoming more gregarious, and willing to put themselves out there socially. As with high school or college reunions, there’s always a sense of competition at weddings when it comes to sharing achievements or success stories.”

Ms Davey’s observation that men see weddings “as an opportunity to meet new people” is supported by the statistics. Seemingly inspired by the amorous atmosphere, weddings have become a playground for eligible British bachelors.

One in five men said they attended these events with the express intention of meeting a new partner, while one in four confessed to having kissed or slept with someone they’d met at a wedding.

• Is this the worst wedding dance ever caught on video?

However, men do not simply use these occasions as hunting grounds for hookups, as one in every ten men has gone on to marry someone they met during the course of another couple’s big day.

“It’s understandable that men may feel inadequate or feel the need to appear more successful in front of family and friends, hence the lengths they are going to when it comes down to their appearance and generosity.

“All of this combined makes for a totally modern male wedding guest”.

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Researchers at the Maryland Historical Society in Baltimore are searching for our region’s history in fashion relics of the past.

For decades, vests, coats, dresses, shoes, and other wearable items sat in boxes lined with tissue paper. The acidic packing materials do no favors to the costume collection.

It doesn’t help that the collection’s current storage space, the historic Enoch Pratt House on West Monument Street, isn’t climate controlled. Over the years, some of the costumes began to split.

Chief Curator Alexandra Deutsch says it will take three to five years to clean, document, and rehouse the entire collection — between 10,000 and 12,000 single pieces — in a new storage facility, designed just for textiles.

picture: vintage inspired wedding dressesDiscovering what’s already in the collection

This summer, the conservation team began to transfer costumes over to the new storage area, which is outfitted with large tables for measuring, examining and cleaning the clothing. MDHS is raising funds to keep the conservation project going.

“We’re just right now going through a process of discovery,” Deutsch says.

“There is a lot left to go,” Registrar Allison Tolman says. “This is the first time that we’ve attempted doing this, so it’s kind of putting our toe in the water, and we’ve been lucky to have interns who were very productive and really intelligent.”

With measuring tape, pen, paper, and a very gentle vacuum in gloved hands, a team of interns does much of the discovering. On Aug. 12, each of the three young women will deliver a public presentation on their findings at MDHS.

They’ve spent the last three months digging through degraded boxes, cataloguing more than 300 objects.

They uncovered wool swimming costumes, military uniforms, fancy dresses, and even underwear. Intern Emily Bach plans to talk about some of the quirky undergarments they’ve found, such as an 1850’s maternity corset.

These days, most moms-to-be wouldn’t think of cinching their baby bump. Bach says this practice often resulted — sometimes intentionally — in miscarriage.

“The main purpose was to actually hide the pregnancy and allow a woman to still have the financial freedom of working or not having to go into bedrest, so it helped give them a few extra weeks or months,” she says.

Other fashion choices came with unhealthy consequences. Intern Lidia Plaza will lecture about the explosion of color that accompanied the development of synthetic dyes. She thinks a few garments in the collection got their bright, emerald hue from “arsenic green.”

“It was one of the first color-fast dyes, which made it very popular in the 19th century,” she says. “A lot of people wore it, and it was also used in wall paper and in toys and candy, and as well as in clothes. Unfortunately, as the name suggests, it contained arsenic.”

Plaza will also talk about a popular shade of purple that caused the “mauve measles.”

“A lot of women developed rashes by wearing these clothes too close to their skin, but they remained popular,” she says. “People loved these colors!”

Lots of history in old objects

Intern Anna-Maria Hand says that throughout this process, she and the other interns didn’t know what they’d pull out of the next box. Her favorite discovery was a beautiful blue gown that came from a prominent Maryland family, the Ridgelys.

“I remember Lidia and I kind of were ‘saving it’ because we saw the quality of fabric when we opened the box,” she says.

It wasn’t just high-quality; it was pristine. For a dress from the 1860′s, that was unusual. Deutsch says the “Ridgeley dress” is a great example of finding clues in clothing.

“It literally looked almost unworn, and then you realize, well because of her husband’s death, this electric blue gown, she stopped wearing because she was in mourning and she didn’t remarry, so you begin to get at a history you might not otherwise find,” she says.

“We were able to date it, so it was really nice to be able to state the provenance of that particular garment,” Hand, a Maryland native, says.

Tolman says it’s interesting to see how much history can be found in the folds of a single object.

“When you look at a dress and you can see hems moved, brought in, brought out, then you can see that this person grew or this person had a younger sister who got to wear the same dress,” she says, “and you can see how things were altered, not only for size, but also because some things go out of style or they need to change the silhouette, but they love the fabric.”

Deutsch says she looks forward to rotating out the outfits on display, showcasing her team’s hard work and the society’s costume holdings, which she says date back to at least 1740. There are women’s, men’s and children’s costumes, including a girl’s dress featuring a handmade lining crafted from numerous pieces of fabric.

There’s also a well-known, whimsical dress by French designer Hubert de Givenchy.

“We have one of the gowns that was worn by the Duchess of Windsor, this ivory, organza gown by Givenchy that has been embroidered with a silk thread, with monkeys that are [in] a band,” Deutsch says. One monkey plays a flute, while another bangs on a hand-stitched drum in this 1950s wearable tribute to 18th century porcelain monkey bands.

Deutsch says Wallis Simpson wore the unique dress once, before giving it to a relative who immediately gifted it to MDHS.

This is the stuff of fashion, and Maryland, history. Deutsch says in the 1980’s, when the museum’s retired housekeeper Enoliah Williams organized, packed and stored the collection in Pratt House, it seemed like a good decision.

“When the costume was originally housed there, the Pratt House was where a lot of our collection was housed,” she says. “But also, the standards of how collections were stored were very different, and the understanding about what objects really need for their own longevity, which is a regulated climate with the proper amounts of humidity, that wasn’t really understood to the extent it is now.”

She says a consistent climate, and keeping the collection in acid-free boxes, will help prevent further damage.

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Fashion, cocktails, entertainment, gifts, discounts, and an exclusive handbag trunk show Wednesday, August 12 kicks off the three ENAZ women’s clothing boutiques’ annual fund raising activities on behalf of the North Shore Auxiliary of Jewish Child & Family Services. The annual fall fashion preview night will be held from 6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. at ENAZ For Life, 309 Happ Rd. (next to the Happ Inn), Northfield.

The exclusive fall fashion preview night enables guests to use key cards they purchase in the store that night for $75 (cash or check) to buy merchandise, including jewelry, at a discount of 20 percent. It’s an exclusive time to buy the cards as they won’t be sold until the next night at the other ENAZ locations – ENAZ, 444 Central, Highland Park; or ENAZ On The Park, 111 W. Church Street, Libertyville – as well as ENAZ For Life for use from Saturday, August 15 through Sunday, August 23 when the campaign ends.

Money from key card sales goes directly to the North Shore Auxiliary of Jewish Child & Family Services.

A highlight of the fall fashion preview night is the J. Markell Designs exotic skin handbag trunk show featuring an appearance by luxury handbag designer Julie Neff from 2:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.

ENAZ has been an annual participant to the Key Card event for over 20 years and continuously has the top selling amount of cards. Through multiple events each year, the North Shore Auxiliary of Jewish Child & Family Services dedicated volunteer members take pride in funding programs that improve the lives of challenged young people and their families.

Satisfying the fashion needs for 22 years of the casual, polished, put together, on-the-go woman, and those who want to be just that, sisters Melinda Kaplan, Samantha Shapiro, and Lena Blitstein, and their mother and retail store founder, Susan Lurie, offer at the three boutiques the newest, most notable clothing lines, vibrant looks, local artisan jewelry, handbags, accessories, and custom day spa that matter to their clients.

“As women and sisters, devoted to our families, socially active, on-the-go from early morning to night, we are our own demographic,” said Blitstein, who often attends Fashion Week events in New York City to keep up with the latest styles. “Our clients like what we like so it makes it easier for us to deliver what they need.”

picture: bridesmaid dress shops london“We’re more than just a store,” said Kaplan. “We listen carefully to the personal and professional fashion needs of our clients and make sure they go home confident in their selection. We truly care about how they look and feel in their different environments.”

Clients from as far away as Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles come to ENAZ (the acronym for Energy, Nature, Attitude, and Zest For Life), ENAZ for Life, and ENAZ On The Park for the wide variety of offerings…from vibrant t-shirts, denim, chunky knitwear, and dressy pieces to custom jewelry to the more than 25 scented oils for blending into silky lotions and bath gels.

“When you walk into our stores you see carefully chosen pieces on clean and organized racks and mannequins with the season’s hottest looks,” said Shapiro, who serves as buyer and merchandiser while Blitstein is buyer and head of marketing. Kaplan is director of operations.

Its clothing lines feature Michael Stars, Sanctuary, J Brand, Genetic Jeans, Central Park West, and its own ENAZ 4 Life label. Its jewelry offerings include local designers such as Rita Ratskoff Designs, Dana Rebecca Designs, Shoshanna Lee, Avaasi, Allison Fiutak, Graziela Gems, and many more.

The custom Spa Bar offers up lotions, bath gels, and perfume oils to treat the body and spirit as well as specialty baskets for special occasions and holidays.

ENAZ, ENAZ for Life. And ENAZ On The Park host many special trunk shows featuring a variety of clothing and jewelry designers. Its dedication to customer service even extends to its free signature gift wrapping.

The ENAZ concept was created and developed by Susan Lurie in 1993. ENAZ is located in Highland Park at 444 Central Avenue in the village’s fashionable downtown shopping district, ENAZ For Life in Northfield at 309 Happ Rd. (next to the Happ Inn); and ENAZ On The Park at 111 W. Church Street facing Cook Park’s often festival-like community gathering place in Libertyville’s hot downtown area.

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With the increasing demand for information available right at our fingertips, there is a parallel demand for technology and websites dedicated to couple’s weddings. Wedding websites are the norm in modern day nuptials, but what do they offer?

Wedding websites, as with most things, offer many pros and cons. The biggest con is that it does take time gathering the information and creating the site. On that same note however, the information provided by the site is beneficial to all parties involved in the Big Day. Let’s break down a few more of the pros:

1) A multitude of information is offered to guests, especially those coming from out of town.

picture: peach bridesmaid dressesWith your wedding website, you have the ability to provide dates, times, location information and even hotel accommodations for out of town guests. When inviting friends and family from outside the city, you want to make sure they have all of the details and will have a smooth and fun trip. Maps, step-by-step directions and contact info can also be helpful and shared with guests through your website.

2) Couples can share fun features about the wedding, as well as pictures.

On the website, the couple has the ability to share their proposal story or how they met, along with bridal party details and other aspects of the Big Day. Guests can get to know the couple, see their engagement photos and feel an overall connection before the ceremony.

3) Need-to-know registry information.

Your wedding website is a great place to put all the facts and figures, especially those involving wedding presents and gift ideas. The couple can put up all of the stores where they are registered, as well as links to their specific registries to make it even more accessible for their guests.

When it comes to building the perfect website, it is important to not go overboard, but to include all the necessities. It’s also a great way for the couple to display their styles and personalities through design and customization. Some of the wedding websites we like are The Knot and WeddingWire.com, which both come with added planning tools. We also like WeddingWindow.com and Wix.com. Wedding Window does require you to update to premium (with a fee) if you do find a template or theme you like. Wix.com gives couples the opportunity to design their site completely from scratch, customized specifically for them and is user-friendly.

Wedding websites are not a necessity when it comes to planning your nuptials, but it can be a fun bonus to design with your fiancé and gives all the wedding details to your friends and family at the click of a button.

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If you want to be an actor, move to Los Angeles; if you want to form a start-up, move to San Francisco; if you want to be a fashion designer, move to New York; and if you want to be a songwriter, move to Nashville. Or, at least, that was true once upon a time.

While the music industry continues to be the strongest economy in Nashville, the city is also proving itself to be a nurturing environment for young fashion brands looking to make a name for themselves outside of the crowded scenes in New York and Los Angeles. Imogene + Willie might have the most name recognition, but over 150 small-scale brands call Nashville their home. And now, thanks to Van Tucker, a former banker with a history of helping creative brands build business infrastructures, the fashion community has formed a trade organization with the hopes of incubating brands and preparing them for the global stage.

In April 2013, Tucker got together a small group of people from the fashion community to discuss putting a system in place to support the industry. “Nobody had just grabbed the reins, so to speak, to really develop the thoughts around an infrastructure — what it would look like or what it would do or how we would go about it,” she said. Tucker recruited a student from the Vanderbilt’s graduate business program to get some hard numbers on the city’s designers.

“We took that information back to the community and presented it and said what do you think? What do you want to do with this?” said Tucker. “They overwhelmingly wanted to explore the possibility of forming a council or some kind of governing body.” A group of about 150 people split into committees to evaluate different sectors and, flash forward to April 2015, the Nashville Fashion Alliance (NFA) was born. It’s mission is to “build this infrastructure and nurture this ecosystem so that our brands can survive and thrive,” said Tucker, by focusing on advocacy, education, sourcing and production.

Tucker took cues from the most successful fashion trade organization in the U.S. — New York’s CFDA. Its president and CEO Steven Kolb visited Nashville in June and advised Tucker to “stay focused on the business infrastructure,” she said. Kolb added that the NFA should focus on supporting brands, designers and manufacturers in order to prepare them for a global stage. “That was the most amazing compliment of all,” said Tucker. “He felt that we could truly do this in a way that could help emerging brands and start-ups incubate themselves to be ready for bigger cities, like New York, L.A., London, Milan or Paris.”

picture: champagne bridesmaid dresses ukAfter raising $103,321 on Kickstarter in May to get started — which Tucker says was also a way to raise awareness about the organization — the NFA has one important program already underway. In partnership with the Catholic Charities organization, a sewing training academy will open in August to teach underserved populations how to produce apparel in order to serve local manufacturing facilities. “When [a designer can] get in a car and drive across town to an apparel factory, that can make all the difference in your time to market, and it can make all the difference in the quality of your finished garment,” said Tucker. “It’s a really critical piece of the creative process. It’s not just that we’re going to [design something] and pass it off to some nameless, faceless person.”

Jobs with “living wages” are waiting for the trainees at apparel manufacturing facilities or with independent designers, many of whom employ sewers in house. One company eager to hire is Omega Apparel, a production facility in Smithville that has spent the last 20 years as the largest manufacturer of military dress uniforms in the country. In 2013, after shrinking military budgets forced President Dean Wegner to downsize the company from a peak of 212 employees to only 128, he approached Tucker. A retired army ranger and businessman, he had only bought the company in 2012 and was hoping to work with Nashville’s fashion designers as a way to diversify his client base.

But Omega was not set up to produce less than 5,000 pieces of an item per week, and no designer is producing anything near those numbers in Nashville. So Wegner reevaluated how his company operated and thanks to insight from an employee named Becky Rhine — who used to work in Disney’s costume division making small batches of Cinderella dresses and Goofy costumes — he invested in machinery and equipment and transformed production lines into production pods. Now he has almost 60 customers and a full service design team and is set to open a 10,000-square-foot facility in Nashville this fall. He plans to hire 1,000 sewers in the next five years and his new location will make it even easier for him to work with Nashville brands.

“I believe in five to 10 years that fashion and apparel will be synonymous with Nashville,” he said. “I could not afford to invest all the training we would need for that number of people over the next five years but now that we have a partner in Catholic Charities, that has a certified sewing training academy, we can do that,” he said. Wegner hopes the program will scale to other cities in Tennessee, which has 75 apparel factories, and across the country where trained labor is lacking.

In addition to investing in skilled laborers and domestic manufacturing, the NFA’s other biggest priority for young brands is business mentorship. “The NFA is going to be really instrumental in helping people do something as simple as write a business plan,” said Libby Callaway, a creative consultant and board member of the NFA who was part of the small group Tucker assembled in 2013. [Full disclosure: I travelled to Nashville on a press trip paid for by the city in July, and Callaway coordinated visits with designers and Tucker while I was there.] “These designers have good ideas and they’ve figured out to build the product, but they haven’t figured out how to support the process or promote the end product,” she said. Libby hopes the NFA will encourage the city to invest in the fashion industry as it has the music industry — with mentorship, time and resources.

That’s not to say Nashville’s fashion designers aren’t already reaping the benefits of the city’s unique environment. Brands such as Elizabeth Suzann, a million-dollar business that sells only direct to consumers online, can stand out in a smaller market and find a strong identity online — all without getting caught in the season-focused, overcrowded schedule of a city like New York.

“Nashville is a very accessible, collaborative city,” said Tucker. “Part of our value system is always going to be playing a huge value on the creative class, I think that’s just embedded in our DNA. It’s part of our history, its part of our present and it will definitely be a part of our future. Fashion is the next step.”

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KIDDERMINSTER Town Hall will be ringing the wedding bells for the first gay couple to be married under its roof next month.

Danny Mellor and Richard Coleman are having their fairytale wedding in the landmark building after it became the town’s registrar following the closure of the district’s register office at the Council Offices, Woodfield, Bewdley Road.

But despite the historic occasion for the town hall since the legalising of same-sex marriage in the UK last year, the couple are just ready to be married to each other.

Richard said: “The town hall said it’s the first same-sex wedding for them so we wanted to tell the world to show the normality of life.”

The grooms-to-be first contacted churches to host their wedding after unsuccessful attempts at trying to recreate the famous outdoor wedding from Twilight: Breaking Dawn, but many were still awaiting authorisation to perform same-sex ceremonies so were unable to book them in. Then on the off chance, they took a look at the town hall.

picture: beautiful wedding dresses“The decision to get married wasn’t rushed – we should have saved for years for the picture perfect wedding but we want to get married to each other and a big expensive wedding would have been for everyone else, not for us,” Richard said.

But they have still done everything they wanted and brought the outdoors in.

Both Danny, 31, and Richard, 33, who met when Richard took a job at Danny’s place of work as a care worker in March last year, have picked and dried flowers for the tables, created a centre piece out of wood, crystals, shells, leaves, flowers, and have even incorporated lost family members by adding feathers and ashes.

Danny said: “That’s how we wanted it – handmade and from us. Everything we’ve made is from us.”

When asked about the legalisation of same-sex marriage, both Richard and Danny, who are planning to foster children after they are married, agreed that love is blind.

Richard said: “Love is love – and it’s as simple as that.

“It doesn’t matter where you go in life there will be people who disagree with it, but as long as it;s your life and you’re not hurting anyone or hurting yourself or breaking the law, what does it matter? It’s 2015, not 1954.”

Danny said: “I have always been asking for that person to support me and be a partner for me, and that’s who Rich is to me and I couldn’t ask for anymore.”

In August Danny and Richard will be walking down the aisle in the King Charles room at Kidderminster Town Hall to A Thousand Years by Christina Perri marking a historic occasion in their lives as well as in the history of hall.

Joanne Bowkett, deputy town hall manager, said: “The town hall is delighted to be the new home of the Kidderminster Registration Office and we are very much looking forward to welcoming all the couples sharing their very special day with us.

“We wish Danny and Richard many years of happiness together and thank them for allowing us to celebrate with them the town hall’s first same-sex marriage.

“A new era for the town hall has begun.”

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With more than 25 years of experience in the denim industry, local denim guru Gary Lenett is shaking up the athleisure category with jeans that are fit for a modern lifestyle.

Armed with two proprietary fabrics, Lenett has launched an evolved line of Dish jeans where function meets fashion alongside its men’s performance line, DU-ER.

A North American-wide launch program is in the works, starting locally in Vancouver with a pop-up shop.

We sat down with Lenett to learn more about Dish and DU-ER.

What inspired you to create DU/ER?

I created DU/ER mostly for selfish reasons. I ride my bike to work and wasn’t able to find anything that allowed me to commute to work comfortably and still be appropriate to walk into an important business meeting. I tried different ‘commuter jeans’ on the market, but they just did not hit the mark in terms of fit or fabric.

I wanted jeans that would adapt to the typical Vancouver lifestyle and transition from day to night without requiring a change of clothes. I wanted to create a line of jeanswear that combined function and fashion and could take me from work to play and in everything in between.

How is it different than other denim lines on the market?

picture: pink bridesmaid dresses ukIt is different in almost every way. Most denim brands in North America are primarily trend based and reflect one or more of three common themes – rock & roll, sex and or what I call “americana”. We are fundamentally different in that we start with trying to solve real problems (i.e. providing clothing that you can ride a bike in and still look good). More than just jeans, we are selling a lifestyle. If it doesn’t look great we wouldn’t develop it, but where this is the end of the story with most jean brands, for dish and DU/ER it’s just the beginning.

Talk to us about the fabrics L2X and N2X.

We developed two proprietary fabrics that mix performance wear with denim. L2X (lesiure to extreme) is built to function as a light, breathable fabric – so it feels like a jegging but looks like a traditional, structured jean. The mixture of unique performance fibres (common in coolmax fabrics) helps regulate temperature, moving moisture away from the body so the wearer stays cool and dry.

Our second fabric, N2X (nature to extreme) combines denim with a fibre made from Tencel. Composed of eucalyptus wood pulp, Tencel has natural moisture absorbing and anti-bacterial qualities that provide a luxurious, lightweight feel to denim. Naturally odour resistant, N2X fabrics absorb moisture so you don’t feel it on your skin and helps stop the growth of bacteria so your clothing stays fresh longer.

Why are you launching in Vancouver?

I was born and raised in Vancouver and the concept behind the brand (jeans as lifestyle) was really inspired by the West Coast / Vancouver lifestyle, because of that it was a natural decision to launch the brand here.

What is athleisure and who do you think is your target buyer?

Athleisure is clothing that is designed both for athletic & leisure activities. Our target is the on-the-go, urban man or woman who lives a healthy, active lifestyle. Someone who wants both performance and style in their clothing and does not want the hassle of having to change their clothes as they move through all the transitions of a typical day.

You’re taking DU-ER on the road. What locations do you plan on going and when?

We will be doing another pop up store in Vancouver in the Fall and then planning to do pop up stores right across the U.S.A. beginning in the Spring of next year, starting with Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, L.A. and San Diego.

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Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos once famously said that in order to be a $200 billion company, Amazon had to learn how to sell clothes and food. And while the company has been steadily growing the latter business with initiatives like Amazon Fresh, today it took a step down the catwalk to build up the former.

Amazon has opened up a new photography studio in Shoreditch, London — a 46,000 square-foot venue with 22 photography bays that Amazon says is one of the largest of its kind in Europe and will help it create and add more than 500,000 images of clothes to its sites every year.

The studio is a brick structure that dates to 1850 and was built under the arches of the Hoxton railway line and is leased from Transport for London, the city’s transportation authority.

picture: green bridesmaid dresses ukThe site was derelict before Amazon got a hold of it. It has been home to a glass factory and a steam train workshop, both of which seem kind of apt when you consider the fragile and fickle nature of the fashion industry, as well as the machine-like force of Amazon’s growth and ambitions.

The move comes as Amazon is hoping to ramp up significantly in fashion sales both on Amazon.com and other properties that it owns in the UK, France, Italy and Spain. The company says it has added 100 new fashion brands to its platform in 2014, with brands including Hugo Boss, Gucci watches, Emporio Armani, Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger, 7ForAllMankind, American Retro, Petite Bateau, Levi’s and Lacoste.

Online fashion is very big business in Europe already, with companies like Rocket Internet making large investments alongside the likes of luxury conglomerates like LVMH. Startups like Net a Porter and ASOS have been big breakthroughs, and others like Farfetch now also coming up steadily as rivals. In other words, Amazon is moving into a very busy market.

Opening a studio to shoot items would help Amazon boost its inventory in two ways: by selling more items itself and also helping third parties sell more on its marketplace. The company says between April and June it sold over 30 million fashion products in Europe — although, as is often the case with Amazon, it does not say how that translates into dollars.

“Our aim is to make Amazon the best place to buy fashion online,” said Sergio Bucher, VP of Amazon Fashion EU, in a statement. “The opening of our new fashion studio, in the heart of one of the leading fashion capitals of the world, illustrates our ambitions.”

In addition to photography, the studios will have an editorial suite that will also include video editing and a library, as well as offices for Amazon’s fashion staff charged with bringing more merchants and advertisers to the platform.

Amazon has been a significant force in driving the growth of the tech scene in London, with one big development being a move of its UK offices from the outskirts of London — in Slough, the dreary suburb that was the setting of the original Office series — to a 15-story building on the outskirts of London’s financial centre currently being built to house 5,000 employees.

This new photo studio will add 35 jobs plus another 75 at seasonal peaks. It’s also been trying to position itself as a brand in the fashion world. In February, the Council of Fashion Designers of America announced that Amazon would be a major sponsor of the first-ever menswear Fashion Week in New York this year.

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en in vests. Guilty pleasure? Reserved for the holiday wardrobe? A garment to showcase all those hours spent beavering away at the gym? The thing Justin Bieber seems to live in 24/7 (see previous point neatly brought to life with additional baseball cap and chain necklace styling)? Something, along with Ready brek, that your mum forced you to wear to school during the winter months under your shirt as a child of the 1980s? An off-duty stripper vibe, as seen on Channing Tatum? Heck, wearing a vest is a complicated business. Let’s divide and conquer: here are five ways to tackle them. Deep breaths.

President Obama is famed for wearing a vest under his trademark white shirt. This is a subtle power move, bulking up the body and preventing shirt transparency in front of the world’s media. It’s also a darn practical approach that brings comfort to many a weather situation. If its roasting, a well placed under-garment is going to soak up the perspiration, making you feel much less rumpled than rocking up to your breakfast meeting in a pool of your own liquid. Ew. Personally, during the summer months I stock up on under layers from the likes of Uniqlo (their Airism range is particularly good for keeping things dry in the heat), The White Briefs (a newish Swedish underwear-come-lifestyle brand) andSunspel, whose cotton vests maybe one of the best wearing items of clothing I’ve ever had. The bottom line is, they protect shirt armpits from stains – and no-one wants to think about stains when they’re thinking about fashion now do they?

2. Silver Screen Vest Idols

Picture: QueenieBridal chiffon wedding dressAll time greatest silver screen vest idol? Brad Pitt in Fightclub, obvs. This vest is not just jazzy (and it really is jazzy) but shows Mr Pitt in his physical prime with muscles oozing all over the place. One thing to take from this is if you’re wearing a vest as a top layer it’s often considered something of a statement, so you might as well go for it. Naturally the high street will serve you well on this front – seeASOS (shown on models tattooed up to the eyeballs) or Topman. Otherwise, more commonly, Hollywood would have you in something simpler and probably white. Think Matt Dillon in The Outsiders – white vest, jeans, neck chain, possibly a bandana. Or Robert De Niro in Raging Bull. These are classic vests designed to ripple with old-school masculinity. Note: as is often the case, if all of the above leaves you cold, you can always channel vintage Ryan Gosling whose been known to wear a simple striped vest (stripes are as fail safe as anything), with no fuss, possibly a simple necklace and sunglasses. The Gosling that keeps on giving etc.

3. 2016 Vest Styling Now

Forget summer 2015, we might still be very much in it, but in fashion terms we’re so over it. The sales are on – particularly good for designer-vest buying btw – ergo any trends related to that season are officially done. No matter, we’ve already seen what designers want us to wear next summer thanks to the recent menswear shows in London, Paris, Milan and New York. Picking up on that Gosling stripe tip is very next season AMI. Their vest is cut higher on the chest – just tuck into a fluid grey slack and add a skinny belt. You can get something pretty similar at Sunspel right now. Givenchy and Lanvin both showed suiting with vests for next summer, which when you consider the way the suit has been relaxed over the past few years, seems kind of par for the course. Whether this translates from a runway model to bit-squiffy-in-a-wedding-marquee civilian reality is another matter. Meanwhile, if you’re looking for an upscale designer vest, Haider Ackermann is your man: they feel beautiful on with the absolute perfect slouch factor. You might still snag one in the sale, just don’t tell anyone it’s spring/summer 2015, naturally.

4. Tanking It

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Topman’s vest T-shirt Photograph: PR

The tank vest is basically a lot less chesty. It’s like a crew T-shirt with the sleeves shaved off. It’s quite Public School – the hip New York based menswear duo who’ve won a billion fashion awards of late for their minimal sports aesthetic and were recently appointed head designers at DKNY. It’s the kind of look that works well on a slightly broader frame and, almost more than any other vest, seems to demand extremely good arm definition. Not sure why. Discuss. Designer Astrid Andersen, who shows in London and is popular with the hip-hop fraternity, is a great advocate of this style. Hers are bold, yes, but cut loose to sit slightly away from the body, which is far more attractive than spray-on. American Apparel also have this shape in spades. Topman have it fashioned with surfer motifs. God, even Nick Jonas wore one earlier this year in black. Plus, they can work quite well layered under a short-sleeved shirt – with the shirt worn open, your armpits fully ventilated. Meanwhile, if you don’t want to fully commit then just follow Brooklyn Beckham’s lead. At Coachella he neatly shoved his T-shirt sleeves up to give the effect of a tank, the thrifty devil.

5. Slashed

Yes, those vests that are cut lower at the arm holes, so they gape around your torso, showing off rib and possibly nipple, are, without question, thoroughly questionable. This is truly the vest of the show-off. It is nothing more than gratuitous. See Channing Tatum leaving the gym during training for the Magic Mike sequel. Frankly, so much of that last sentence sums up what is wrong with the slashed-sided vest. And, if it doesn’t, then theheadline that accompanied Guardian film editor Peter Bradshaw’s review might: “Like watching pained strippers dryhump.” And while we’re on tricky terrain, let’s close proceedings with mesh. Yes, that’s right, mesh. Totally fine worn as an under garment or in a sports context for breathability. Totally fine if you’re in a photo shoot and you’re Robert Pattinson at the height of your hair’s prowess and you’re rebelliously smoking. Really not fine as a top layer worn on it’s own. That’s just tits on toast. And menfolk, really, no one needs your tits laid out for them. They just don’t.

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