Even though we at the JustZen corporate headquarters are located in Southern California, we nevertheless are expecting heavy snow this coming weekend (we are high up in the mountains) and so we thought we just show off all the wonderful new skirts we just added to JustZen.com before we all get snowed in and lose power.
So, hold on to your chair, you have half a second for each skirt – and there will be a test later on…
Wearable art can come in many different forms – from a rusty bucket worn as the latest fashionable hat to paint only (applied directly to your body in an artistic way.)
At JustZen.com we are somewhere between these extremes, it is not avantgard, it is not over the top but art that is actually wearable on a day to day basis.
You see, wearable has two rather different meanings and both of those definitions apply to the JustZen line of clothing,
Just in time for the summer (OK, we are actually a bit late, but better late than never) we have come out with a new dress – a cute smock dress.
We thought about just showing you an example or two, but then we had a brilliant idea, why not just show them all?! We just photographed nearly 200 of them and so you might think that it would take a bit too long to show them all, right?
Go to the Mudmee Smock Dress Page to find out more.
What a great 4th of July I had this year!
I did not go to no parade, I did not have any BBQ, as a matter of fact, I had hardly anything to eat all day.
Why?
Because I was very productive and dug myself deep into Anime and Manga. By the way, Anime simply means ‘cartoon’ in Japanese, but here in the west we usually understand this term to represent this very specific kind of cartoon, many love.
I can’t say that I was a ‘fan’ of anime, but I always liked it as you can tell looking at an early attempt to create some…
OK, I admit, that’s real-life anime, not real anime.
But today I tried some real anime, even though with some twist.
Pretty cool, huh?
Did you miss my mail the last two weeks?
Hi and Hello – it’s Merlin,
No blurbs about any insights and experiences from me today (whew!) but only some quick info what I have been doing.
I had mentioned on our JustZen Facebook page a little while back that Gigi had been very busy taking more than 300 photos of new items. So, I had to get busy getting them all up on the web site.
And as there is also a brand new item, I had to create a new page for that ‘Empire Dress’ and tie it all together – so that it actually also works.
That is now all done!
First of all I want to show you our new Empire Dress…
Nice – huh?
Normally we would now make an Independence Day sale – but I am not normal – – hey, I mean politically – – so I decided to make this a
“Introducing the Empire Dress Sale”
and it’s 35% off these new items of ours – yup – more than a third off!
How do you get it? – With one of our promo codes that you enter in the last field at the end of the shipping info when you check out.
So, put some Empire Dresses into the shopping card and enter
pri07135
into the promo field, and we take this right off the total. This code is good for short time only, it will go away eventually.
Here once more the link to the new Empire Dresses.
Peace-Up and Cheers (and happy BBQing),
Merlin
JustZen.com
PS: Nearly forgot – beside these dresses I also added Crinkle Shirts, Thermal Shirts, Henley Tanks, Classic Tanks, Wrap Dresses, Men’s T-shirts and Hoodies, Buddha Bags and a whole bunch of Crinkle Scarves.
PPS: Gigi is in Arizona this long weekend (Sat to Mon) – at the ‘Art in the Park’ in Flagstaff.
JustZen got a chance to play with the big kids – a few weeks ago they got a message from somebody at Women’s Health Magazine offering to shoot some footage of their shoulder and buddha bags for possible inclusion in one of their upcoming editions.
Obviously JustZen was fast to get some samples out to New York. Soon thereafter it became obvious that the next round had been reached when the request for the official name, web site and contact info came in.
And then it really happened – the June issue 2010 featured Iron Man 2 actress Kate Mara, modeling “8 Easy Pieces – This Summer’s Essentials” and they are pretty, relaxed, and ready for a good time – Just like you! (Women’s Health’s words – not mine!)
In case you wonder what these 8 Easy pieces are – here you go…
And indeed, this point #6 introduces JustZen’s buddha bags to the world of fashion, playing with the big kids.
What I mean by “playing with the big kids”?
It is standard operating procedure that the magazine lists all the item the model is wearing in these fashion shots. Look what Kate presents…
Gotta tell JustZen that they steep-up their prices, don’t you think?
Our whole family has watched Miley Cyrus’ Disney Show Hanna Montana pretty much from the beginning and we all like it (especially our nine year old son) – even though I think the coolest person in the show is Daddy – sorry to all you Miley-only fans, but at least it’s the real daddy so the genes are right.
Recently I ran into a nice image of Miley, probably taken somewhere in the greater Los Angeles area – anybody know where exactly? – which I liked…
…even though I think the t-shirt is a bit boring.
Allow me to dream my dream that all star, starlets and celebrities are eager to wear the mudmee tie-dye we offer the world. I am sure that, if they would find out about us, would certainly be true anyways.
I have already started to dress one of our female astronauts properly for her accomplishments in space and so now it was Miley’s turn to be chiqued up.
Out came good old photoshop and suddenly we have some exquisitely dressed Miley Cyrus…
I would have loved to dress Miley in one of our all natural cotton skirts – but that would have taxed my photoshop abilities too much, so instead here you have Destinee modeling one of the mudmee skirts.
She looks a bit like Miley anyways and even is the same age. She and her friend actually came to us offering to model for us – cool, huh?
Many of us will have noticed that there pronounced cycles in fashion. The most obvious is, in my opinion, the skirt’s hemline. The reason for a repetition here is obvious because there are only so many length variations. It can be all the way to the floor, half calf, below the knee, just to the knee and above it. Then a few inches above the knee, half thigh and then all the way where the skirt hardly deserves its name any more.
The hem has to go somewhere and that is pretty much the range, so there must be repetition. Sometime int he past that range was much small and from my own personal experience know what an uproar the expansion of these limits created when the hem dared to rise above the knee, way above the knee. I was still very little, but you can imagine if I can remember the uproar, as a kid where I certainly did not follow any fashion trends.
But now the whole leg is discovered, the range is maximized. I just realized that actually these mini skirts were not all new. Think back to the Roman Empire. OK, it were not women, but these soldiers did wear these cute little mini skirts.
Now, hem-line is one variable, but there are many more. For one there is the prevalent color scheme, pant legs – straight, bell-shaped, low waist, high waist. Then shoulder width, narrow waist or loose. Taking all these factors into account there should be enough combinations that there should be no repetition for a long time.
Maybe it’s the same principle as browsing through the closet once in a while – sometimes you discover something you totally forgot, but when you see it, good old memories come back, you pull it out and wear it. I could imagine that this is the same with fashion designers and trend setters. There are just some things that make us feel good, and we want to regain that feeling when we remember it.
If we just pull out an old outfit to get this old feeling back we often combine this with some of the new experiences we had in the meantime. This way the old becomes new and fresh again.
If we accept the idea that bringing out old trends and outfits re-creates the emotions of the time past, we can understand the endurance of tie-dye. Its first big epoch were the revolting 60s and 70s; definitely a time of full experience of life, the feeling of freedom and accomplishments. There are now some new designs beside the all-prevalent big spiral on the chest, but it is getting a bit dated, and usually, if you see someone wearing the typical tie-dye shirt, you get the feeling of not quite in present time.
This is why the new fresh tie-dye from JustZen.com is such a big success. Nothing realy new was invented, just a creative combination of the traditional mudme, prevalent in parts of South-East Asia, with the tie-dye of the hippie days. A very interesting facet of this combination is the addition of subdued color ways. Or have you ever seen such a quiet, warm tie-dye jacket as the one accompanying this article?
