Category — Blog

“In China, My Name Is”
Valerie Blanco & Ellen Feberwee

Authors Valerie Blanco and Ellen Feberwee met each other during their study ‘Concept & Brands’ in the Netherlands. From day one they began working together. Both craving culture shocks they moved to a country where they expected the biggest cultural differences; China. Study, work and travel were the main activities throughout their stay. Currently they live in the Netherlands again.

“Culture and society inspire us. We would like to share our findings and hope this will enrich people’s life and business. If only in a small way.”

In Shanghai, they noticed that the opening up of China’s borders has made a big impact on the most important aspects of Chinese society: name giving . A lot of Chinese people choose an English name they use next to their Chinese name. In their book “In China, my name is”, they interview several people, and get behind the meaning of their adopted English names. All the pictures in the book are made by Ellen Feberwee and Valerie Blanco theirselves. The results are interesting, funny and personal stories. Visit their website: www.chinese-identity.com, for more info!

Title: In China, My name is
Authors: Valerie Blanco & Ellen Feberwee
ISBN: 978-0-9899666-7-5
EUR: €17.00
April 2009
www.chinese-identity.com

Thursday was D-day for the graduates and Mint! The graduates got to show off their designs during the Fashion Transit show in the World Fashion Centre. Mint was present with a beautiful stand, where the magazine was presented to the outside world for the first time. Visitors of Fashion Transit had the honour to be the first to see and buy the magazine.

What a busy week…
Monday, Ellis and I went to the Arnhem Mode Biënnale to promote Mint. For a month the centre of Arnhem will literally form the core of the third edition of the Arnhem Mode Biënnale. SHAPE is the connecting thread of the greatest cultural fashion event in the world. This year, more than 80 fashion labels are participating, including Lanvin, Raf Simons, Hussein Chalayan, Jil Sander, Rick Owens, Martin Margiela and Viktor & Rolf. Where fashion is, is Mint. We decided to promote Mint at the Mode Biënnale, because that’s the place were fashion minded people will be. We spread flyers around town, hung some posters, and ‘accidently’ dropped some flyers in the exhibitions.

On Wednesday the magazines finally arrived. We all were very excited to see what they were going to look and feel like. After unloading the truck we finally got to see the magazines and yearbooks for real! And I must say, they look AMAZING J In this week the whole minor looked like a little factory. All of the 2000 magazines and yearbooks had to be put together in one sleeve… This was quite a challenge because the magazine had to be at the distributors by Friday. It was quite a job but we all pulled together and got it done in time!

Thursday was D-day for the graduates and Mint! The graduates got to show off their designs during the Fashion Transit show in the World Fashion Centre. Mint was present with a beautiful stand, where the magazine was presented to the outside world for the first time. Visitors of Fashion Transit had the honour to be the first to see and buy the magazine.The Mint webteam was also present, filming the show for the website, and asking people what their special relationship is with their clothing. You can see the video and people’s answers on this website.

Friday Anouk and I went to three distributors in Nijmegen, Arnhem and Utrecht. It was a two hour drive to Nijmegen, but the reaction to the magazine in the bookstore was worth it. The owner was very taken with the magazine, and was curious to read it. Next stop was Arnhem. We delivered the magazines, and after a quick drink and snack, we went back to Utrecht. It was quite a long day, but a very exciting one, because our magazines are really in stores now!

Check for points of sale www.mintmagazine.nl/where-to-buy

The last few weeks were exhausting and exciting! After months of hard work our site is launched. From filming to editing, layouts in Photoshop to Dreamweaver, blog writing to posting text in Wordpress we’re on top of it all. We passed different stations on a wild ride through webland.

Since I’m not a child of the internet generation this has all been very new to me. I like to send handwritten postcards instead of emails. I find it more personal but knowing the possibilities on the web is very useful.

I joined the website team to learn new skills. A few months later, I’m proud to see what we’ve accomplished in a short period of time. Especially knowing that we built the site with such a small team. This Thursday Fashion Transit will begin, and on Wednesday of next week the Mint party will kick off. Nice!

WOW! WOW! WOW!

The Mint Bike parade was a huge success!!! We sure as heck got the word out about Mint Magazine throughout all of Amsterdam!!!

The evening began swimmingly with a french fry dinner and dress up in the magazine room. Plaid, polka dots, sparkles - our team dropped all their inhibitions and dressed for success. After the excitement upstairs we all worked out way to the parking lot to jazz up our bikes. There were posters, balloons, flowers and every other kitsch item you could possibly imagine.

Our faithful guide Selianthe toured us through the city with just a short stop over in the nine streets to pick up Frank who was looking suave in his plaid pants and lime green shirt. We continued on, passing out flyers, taking photographs and shouting with glee.

Our final stop was Vondelpark where we adjourned for an evening drink, which was well deserved after a solid three hours of biking. Good hustle team!!! The magazine and launch event were well represented.

SUCCESS!!!

22th of June 2009

Although we’ve now been working a long time on this website it’s still in progress. I love inspecting and investigating if everything works on each page. It’s pretty hard to navigate the website and it needs to be clear for every visitor. This week I am focussing on the product page, which needs to look great to sell tons of products. I already set aside the quirky belt and the bowties; I just love them!

Today my group mates Ellis and Thom are going to the Arnhem Mode Biennale. This is one of the biggest fashion expositions in the world where fashion designers and labels such as Lanvin, Viktor & Rolf and Martin Margiela show their work. Unfortunately I can’t go, but I am dying to hear from them how it was.
They are filming the event, which can be seen on the website.

Just a few more days and Mint will unveil their products, magazine and yearbook to the world at Fashion Transit. This is the graduate fashion show for the students of Amsterdam Fashion Institute.

I can’t wait!

Anouk Rijkenberg (webgeek)

Production, PResentation, PRecision and most importantly: PRet (‘fun’ in Dutch). These are the key words when it comes to PR. The PR-group really got things started the last 2 weeks, creating awareness for Mint throughout Amsterdam and the rest of the world.

When the posters and flyers finally arrived from the printer last week, we immediately started to spread them throughout the city. Flyers are being put in (fashion) stores and galleries all around town and posters are hung up at as many places as possible to make everybody feel the Mint-vibe. The Visual Merchandising team is working on the design of the window material: Mint is gonna be at at least 6 shop windows in the coming month!

On top of this there are all kinds of events organised to shake up the city. Tonight (June 18^th) a so called ‘Mint Parade’ is taking place in Amsterdam: a flash mob in which all students ride throughout the city centre together on Mint-style pimped-up bikes. This again to show Amsterdam what Mint is, but also just to have fun as a group.

At this stage, all seams to be coming together for us at the Mint Company. Everybody is working really hard to realise their own projects, but the most important thing now is to radiate the fun we have as a group to the outside world. Like I said, in the end it is all about the PRET.

‘Sarah, a fisherman’s wife, saw Peter slowly approaching the shore, coming home after being away for three months. “Finally…He is coming home. I’ve waited all this time to feel his kiss on my cheek.” For this special occasion she changed her outfit 400 times; she wanted to look at her very best. Finally she decided to put on her favorite dress, the one she wore on their first date. It was a dress that Peter loved very much. On the shore she waited, just like the other ladies who were just as exited.’

This is what fisherman’s wives must have felt when their beloved ones sailed out. And these woman were represented at the new fashion exhibition ‘Gone with the wind’, organized by the Zuiderzeemuseum. I have wanted to see this exhibition for a long time. Partly because a friend of mine (and some other students from various fashion institutes) were invited by Alexander van der Slobbe, a Dutch designer and guest curator, to make costumes inspired on those women. It was a spooky, but also moving sight to see these black puppets welcoming the boat that we were on. Great concept!

As we continued our journey we walked through typical Dutch streets, for the Zuiderzeemuseum is an open air theatre. As we strolled along we ended at a the indoors exhibition, located in a fabulous building from the VOC era. A place where some of Dutch most famous fashion designers, illustrator and photographers, displayed their work. They are constantly inspired by Dutch traditional clothing. A combination between contemporary design and traditional costumes made the long journey to Enkhuizen worth wile. If you want to see the exhibition yourself (and I highly recommend it): it is at the Zuiderzeemuseum till the 22th November 22th 2009.

Produce produce produce. Those are the key words this week. The 6 different products are looking good and will of course sell out right away. The only thing we can do before the Mint Event and especially Fashion Transit is to produce as much as possible! So right now we are working very hard on producing enough items so that we can keep up with the demand.

Besides the products,  we are working on the labels and packaging to make all the products look nice and give them the look and feel of Mint when people buy them. The postcards that we just received are also very Minty. The feeling is there and the only thing we have to do now is pass it on!

Hopefully everybody will look really Mint the end of this month =)

http://www.acupoflight.nl/Home

June 4th 2009

It’s been sheer madness this week for the yearbook! After the Fashion Transit briefing, we got right into interviewing and photographing all the graduates. Our team was working around the clock proofing, arranging, freaking out and calming right back down. WAY TO GO KARA!!! All those late nights spent kerning and adjusting have paid off. The graduates now have a wonderful book showcasing their work along with their fabulous selves. Go team!!! Just a few more minor details and then we split off and start helping out the other teams. Who knows what tomorrow will bring. We sure don’t!

June 3th 2009

So this week was a busy week: everyone was stressing out as the deadline of the magazine and yearbook was coming soon. Thankfully we had a long weekend to relax a bit.

The magazine and yearbook went to press this Tuesday. Now we can start concentrating on PR. We started writing the pressrelease: the deadline is on Friday. We also have to present the whole PR plan to the company.

Thursday Havana came by and made some pictures while we where picknicking in the garden. Very funny! Loek was guest of the week and hand in our daily program. Havana will be available today (3th of June) in all the HVA faculties.

 Next week www.ELLE.nl will publish some visuals and important things of Mint on their website. So that will be exciting!

Then we started calling distribution adresses: some where very enthousiastic and some weren’t. So that will be our challenge this week, to get  them on board . This week one person of the magazine group and one person of the yearbook group will help us making the window material for the shops, so we can promote our magazine, yearbook and products trough instore communication.

Yesterday Kim went to the Zeeman headquarter because they want to sponsor us in the T-shirt action. We are going to print a black bow and the Mint logo on the white shirts. Next week we are going to sell some shirt in the school. Be aware…