modern life vs. human nature

OMG have you seen this mess? I was in the Vancouver airport and happened to walk by the Olympic store and…my jaw dropped. I had to take pictures. I had to ask the store clerk if I was now living in Finland..ah..or Greenland because the colors were lime green, light blue and dark blue I think… or some kind of blend of all of them in a child’s cartoon dream of heaven and snowy white sheep grazing in a field!

Look below…

My next WTF? moment was when I realized there was no red or brown anything in the store? Had I forgotten the color of our flag? Wait, that was my third WTF? moment; no maple leafs? I was stumped. I could not buy anything with either red, brown or a Canadian flag so I left empty handed and confused.

My fourth WTF? moment was that everything was made in China! Now, for those of you not aware of the clothing industry in Canada there are literally thousands of manufacturers and designers in this country that are going out of business everyday because they don’t have enough work. Plus, most of those companies and designers are really good at one thing; designing “Canadian” and “Canadian looking” sportswear. They are good at things like jackets, performance fleece tops and pants, hoodys and every other sportswear style known to the world because Canadian designers invented most of them!

Not to say that Canadians didn’t design the abominations that are the Olympic garments. I would call these designers retarded but I would be offending retarded people everywhere..so maybe blind is better?

However, I can’t really blame the designers because they are taking direction from the high ups at HBC who obviously live in Finland, have sheep grazing in their back fields and live in some sort of cracked out cartoon ferryland where bubbles come out of their butts and rainbows out of their ears as they talk about the kind of garments to make for the Olympics held in “pretty, pretty land” BC.  As a designer you either do what your boss says or quit. If I was an HBC designer I would have held a big meeting with everyone and then jumped up on the boardroom table and stabbed myself to death on top of all the designs! I couldn’t live knowing I made these designs. Maybe then the blood from my wounds would have inspired some red!

In the end, the travesty that is the Olympic program is indicative of what ails the Olympics in every aspect; greed. HBC threw bags of money at VANOC and without any regard for quality of design, integrity or national empathy VANOC sold the right to represent Canada to design hacks!

At this point, the only thing we, as Canadians can do to show HBC just how out of touch they are with the public is to not buy; which won’t be particularly hard..ha!

Enjoy.

This is really just a plug for the new Modrobes site and store that just launched this weekend.  I put the site together with some help from a great tech guy jamie at Vertical Grain Design.  Designing websites has become as easy as taking a night course and spending hours pouring over your computer reading manuals and randomly trying things…kind of like being in school again.  The difference is when you are finished you actually get something useful; a digital storefront in the Modrobes case.

Patience and persistence is the new technology.

It is amazing to see that the internet has almost reached it’s goal of democratizing(is this a word?) the world. I mean, with enough due diligence anyone with a computer and a web connection can become part of the new business paradigm that is exploding on our screens today.

However, though we are lucky enough to have a a computer and a web connection some people consider themselves lucky to live out the day without being bombed, shot, jailed or worse; so maybe it’s not the complete package but it’s a good start. It also allows people like me not to have to work for large, multi-national corporations and have a chance of competing against them. In case you were wondering these corporations won’t hire me anyway.

So the plan is to bring back the “pants” and then add my knowledge of “eco” apparel and apply it to what was once a great brand and then take it to you, the humble customer and hope beyond reason that you will like what we are doing.

Maybe I’ll see you around. Here we go again.

Enjoy.