• How I Became a Hipster - NYTimes.com
    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/02/fashion/williamsburg.html?pagewanted=all

    Un article très drôle sur le quartier de Williamsburg au Nord de Brooklyn.

    “Brooklyn” is now a byword for cool from Paris to Sweden to the Middle East. It’s been strange to live across the river from a place that suddenly becomes a cultural reference point — not unlike having your dachshund become an overnight celebrity. Part of you wonders, Why him and not Aunt Barbara?

    So I decided to embed myself among the rooftop gardeners and the sustainability consultants and the chickeneers. I wanted to see what the demographic behind nanobatched chervil and the continually cited show “Girls” could teach me about life and craft cocktails. I wanted to see what sullen 25-year-old men had to tell me beyond “Leave me alone during this awkward period of beard growth.”

    First I needed to outfit myself. H. W. Carter and Sons in Williamsburg is full of flannel and cardigans and work boots for the younger set. When a scruffy, ponytailed salesman in his 20s approached, I told him: “I’m going for a Mumford & Sons look. I want to look like I play the banjo.”

    The sweet-tempered salesman helped me try on several field jackets, including an olive green London Fog, while a second equally sweet and solicitous young salesman (this one in a wool cap) helped me try on selvage denim jeans and a big, lumpy wool cardigan that looked like a lamb had died on me. He also showed me a $225 short-sleeve, plaid, navy jacquard shirt, which I decided to buy. While waiting at the cash register, I picked up a pair of argyle wool socks from a nearby wicker basket and asked, “Are your socks local?” The salesman self-consciously said no. I returned the socks like an organic farmer who has learned that a friend has named her child Monsanto.

    #New_York #Brooklyn #gentrification

  • Some Retailers Rethink Their Role in Bangladesh
    NYTimes.com

    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/02/business/some-retailers-rethink-their-role-in-bangladesh.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc

    Ça commence...

    Ever since a building with garment factories collapsed in Bangladesh last week, killing more than 400 people, Western apparel companies with ties to the country have scrambled to address public concerns about working conditions there.

    Benetton repeatedly revised its accounts of goods produced at one of the factories, while officials at Gap, the Children’s Place and other retailers huddled to figure out how to improve conditions, and some debated whether to remain in Bangladesh at all.

    At least one big American company, however, had already decided to leave the country — pushed by the last devastating disaster, a fire just six months ago that killed 112 people.

    #sweatshop #bengladesh