Showing posts with label nooismo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label nooismo. Show all posts

Friday, July 10, 2009

strip for me baby




this is out of order, i know i need to blog about what a HUGE success the pop-up shop party was last night. give me a day or two to decompress and i will blog about that. i'm also now allowed to blog about my exciting fragrance! i'll blog that this weekend as well. you can read the cool article on timeout here.

the nooka message has evolved from an ethos most simply expressed by the not so marketing/sexy attitude of "question everything" and "explore alternative systems" to a more elegantly articulated theme of "universal language". universal language is a key tool for strengthening global culture and insuring greater cooperation for even greater innovations from our society in the future. i truly believe that fashion is as much a universal language as math and music, and in that sense, i like to think of nooka as a futurist brand. it is easy to see these themes in the nooka time pieces which for the most part do not need any written language skills to use and they're designed with a glam future aesthetic, and would be understandable if sent to another planet as a gift. and i am now proud to announce the release of the nooka strip™ [the NS], our very first belt!

belts originated in the bronze age, in leather form, between 3500 & 1200 BC. the bronze age saw the creation of knives, axes, pottery that were more durable than those previously created in the stone age. In these times, interestingly enough, primarily men wore them, and they were used for a decorative purpose. it was considered rare for a female to be seen wearing a belt.

starting in the 1920s, as fashion changed, so did the function of belts. instead of being for show, men needed something to hold up their pants! no longer was it just military men wearing them [suspenders were more commonly used to hold mens pants up before this change in trend] .

Today, there is a variety of belts - police officers use them to hold their equipment, women wear them with a high waisted skirt to provide some oomph, and plumbers...still don't wear them. There are different colors, different sizes, different materials, different types of belt buckles. It has become one of those things that can 'make an outfit'.

but with all the options for belts out there, i still felt something was missing both functionally and in terms of form and color. so i came up with the NS™. the closure is something i developed with my design team to offer easy adjustment throughout the day [i never found the perfect hole in a traditional belt, and it's really socially awkward to readjust a traditional belt in a restaurant!] which is the functional innovation. the innovation in look-and-feel is apparent – you can do the dreaded "matchy-matchy" look with our belts and zubs!

it looks so good you'll have no problem getting people interested in looking at your crotch, and the mechanism is so slick, your pants can come off faster than they went on. this is why i came up with the product name "strip" [strip of material for form as well, so it's really a pure expression of form follows function]. seriously, belts up until now were too concerned with holding your pants up, and a belt equally concerned with getting-off is truly an innovation.

nooka strip available at den, 330 east 11th street until august 16th, DDC lab in NYC [currently west 14th street location] and here. join nooka and love nooka on facebook and nooka on twitter.

Monday, January 14, 2008

musings on NOOISMO™

i am often asked to define the nooka customer in terms of demographics, which is difficult for me as the nooka customer spans many different age, economic, and cultural groups. i am able to describe one part of their personality to which i coined the term "nooismo™" – a person who appreciates new developments in technology, art, design and culture. people who exhibit signs of nooismo are sometimes the trend-setters themselves, well-versed in the visual language of context in pop culture and able to see when something truly is 'noo' and fresh.

for example: courreges was a ground breaking fashion designer in the 1960s. he was one of the first to pioneer the use of industrial synthetics in fashion and his looks presented a utopian vision of the future. he is one of the grandfathers of 'nooismo'. the iphone is also a product that has nooismo appeal [and it would have even more without ATT!].

music is a good place to find an emotional connection to nooismo. at the moment, the label modular records is the finest example of a music company that successfully presents noo and fun bands [fun is an important component of nooismo]. if you're interested in bands in the past who exhibited the ultimate in nooismo for their time, i recommend this blog by Dave Renard – it's amazing, he digs up long forgotten and hidden gems.

other random past nooismos: inline skates were hailed as an innovation over traditional roller skates, but actually, their design predates the truck design that was popular for most of the 20th century. luckily someone found a way to reinvigorate their nooismo in the 1980s! fuel cell technology is another old innovation [invented in the 1800s] that will hopefully be noo again big time!