Pin Ups and Rockers Photo Shoot for TattooApparel.com

When you are in the retail fashion industry photo shoots are something that have to be done for online sales listings and overall marketing. Those who are not in the industry tend to think that fashion shoots are glamorous and easy. Anyone who is actually in the industry will tell you that photo shoots are a lot of work and many retailers dread them.

We find that the way to make fashion shoots enjoyable is to work with people you enjoy being around and like anything else you need a plan. We did a shoot last Sunday for the Perpetual Vogue Store, TattooApparel.com and PerpetualVogue.com and it was nothing short of fabulous. We are calling it our "Rockers Meet Pin Ups" Shoot as some of the models we used were Pin Up Models and some of our male models were the guys from the up and coming Los Angeles Rock Band, Black Star Hollow. TattooApparel.com is in the process of a site redesign so we planned lots of lifestyle type shots for future use on the new site design. To bring our plans to fruition we worked with our favorite photographers, the team from Painted Pinups and also contacted the local classic car club, American StreetRodders and a local chopper designer to bring us some cool cars and hot bikes for the shoot.










We did our standard product shots in our warehouse but added in some other fun scenario shots for specific products such as a shot with two of our lovely models, Briana and Kristabel acting out the scene from the back of our Exclusive Lucky 13/Perpetual Vogue Tattoo Girls T Shirt and some shots with the girls dressed just like the stag party entertainers on our Lucky 13 Stag Party shirt - I think our male model, West really enjoyed the stag party shots!

















We like using guys in Rock Bands as models because they really fit our customer demographic and tend to be naturals at posing as they are accustomed to performing. We had a great time with Brian, Jack and Jackie of Black Star Hollow. We recommend that everyone check them out on MySpace. Their music is great and we are very excited about their soon to be released EP.

















For this project we did lots of location shots that came out great. We shot lots of photos inside of the the garage at White Automotive in La Habra. White Automotive is located right next to the Perpetual Vogue Store on Whittier Boulevard in La Habra and the garage has a great retro look...and by the way if you are in the area and need auto service they do great work. We have our cars serviced there and have always been very pleased with the work. We also took some photos at Perpetual Vogue's other neighbor, Magnolia Country Store to get some great urban looking shots of the models in front of retro looking Airstream Trailers. Magnolia is a treasure trove of interesting things for anyone into retro collectibles.

Deal of the Day Great Fashions Bargains

We don't want to bore by creating a blog post every time we see a good deal so we were pleased to see that both TattooApparel.com and PerpetualVogue.com have created RSS feeds for their deal of the days.

If you would like to subscribe to their feeds go to Tattoo Apparel Deal of the Day or Perpetual Vogue Deal of the Day and click on the RSS button to add their feeds to your RSS feeder.

There are two great deals available right now on both sites. A Hause of Howe Shirt Jacket called Howe Fast with a retail tag price of $145.00 is currently offered as Deal of the Day for $39.95. For the ladies there is a very Spring/Summer style Lucky 13 Tiki Party Dress called Pretty in Pink being offered for $41.95 - normal retail of around $100.00.

Perpetual Vogue Named Shop of The Month by Lucky 13

Lucky 13 has long been one of our favorite brands for mid price point Street Wear focusing on Kounter Kulture Tattoo Art, Hot Rods and Pin Up Girl Designs.

Lucky 13 believes in recognizing their best retail store customers and has just this month launched a new Shop Of The Month Program where they showcase a favorite store on their information web site to let people know about a great place to shop. The very first ever Shop Of The Month nod goes to Perpetual Vogue of Southern California.

Perpetual Vogue specializes in cutting edge street wear fashions for Men and Women focusing on Rocker, Tattoo Art, Musician, Rockabilly, Clubbing, Hot Rod and Pin Up Girl Styles. They carry Mid Point to Premium brands including Lucky 13, Felon, Bettie Page, Rebel Spirit, DOCTRINE, Hause of Howe, Mission Clothing, English Laundry, Fender Custom Shop, Anti Social, One More Round, Rat Fink, Ed Hardy, Rocker Jewelry and Sailor Jerry. They can Rock Your Wardrobe at their Perpetual Vogue Retail Store located at 230 E. Whittier Blvd, La Habra CA 90631 or you can shop with them online at www.TattooApparel.com. They Ship Worldwide, including to Military addresses and carry a wide range of sizes. Be sure to check out their EXCLUSIVE Lucky 13 Tattoo Girls T Shirt that is not available anywhere else!

Web site – www.TattooApparel.com

Exclusive Shirt designs have amazing popularity - the power of co-branding

If you are a shopper you will certainly have noticed that co-branded design work has become popular between some brands, clothing lines and medium to large retailers.

Co-branding can be done in many ways. A retailer may have a creative person on their own staff who creates a design that they like and the retailer then pays a popular brand to manufacture the item for them since they do not have a manufacturing plant of their own.

My personal favorite way to utilize the power of co-branding is when a retailer chooses to utilize the design strength and flair of the chosen clothing brands design team to create a new design that stays within the flavor of what the consumer is accustomed to seeing from that brand yet incorporates the elements that the retailer wishes to see in the finished product. A great example is the Exclusive Lucky 13 Tattoo Girls T Shirt that was released today by Retailer Perpetual Vogue. The owners at Perpetual Vogue had a vision of what they wanted the design to be and then trusted in the design team at Lucky 13 to create their vision while staying true to the feel of a Lucky 13 design. The result is a shirt that any Lucky 13 customer would immediately recognize as having Lucky 13 design elements yet is also co-branded to the retailer as an exclusive item that is not available elsewhere.

Streetwear fashion trends as seen at recent Fashion Trade Shows

Well I think we may have just set a new record for the number of Fashion Trade Shows we attended in a 3 1/2 day time frame. We headed off to Las Vegas last Sunday with appointments set at eight different fashion shows between Sunday - Wednesday. We managed to make it to seven of the shows over the course of a whirlwind three days. Among them were Magic, Project, Pool and the new Christian Audigier show.

With so many shows in town at the same time it did make it a bit easier to get around as the halls at any given show were not as packed as usual since attendees were spread out all over town at various fashion events. The exception was the Project Show which seems to get bigger every time we attend and the aisles there were clogged with attendees the afternoon we attended to keep our appointments with designers of DOCTRINE, Hause of Howe and Anti-Social.





The new show in town with lots of hype to live up to was Christian Audigier's event at Caesars Palace - called the When I Move You Move show. Rumors abound as to whether this show was Audigier's brainchild due to arrogance or whether he had been banned from Magic/Project for problems in the past. Whatever reason for the new separate show I have to say that Christian Audigier does indeed appear to be a marketing genius. Buses, Taxi Cabs and billboards all over town touted his event so that there was no way anyone could miss knowing about it. The show was held in two Ballrooms at Caesars and clothing lines shown included all of the Ed Hardy lines along with new lines that Christian Audigier has come out with in collaboration music celebrities. What better way to have big name celebrities appear at your event then to be in the process of coming out with new clothing labels in their name. Celebrity attendees included Macy Gray, Snoop Dog, Dave Stewart and several Rap stars who I must confess I had not heard of myself being a long time Classic Rock Gal. The other attendees seemed to adore the rappers though and the media was there in full force to film it all. Personally I loved seeing Dave Stewart - he looked great and was very charming. The line of clothing with his name on it had nice lines and great styling without too much bling which tells me that Mr. Stewart himself did indeed have a hand in the design process. We had an appointment with the good folks at Ed Hardy Knits to place orders for new items for this upcoming Holiday Season and next Spring. I like the Knits line as it utilizes beautiful knit fabrics that are far and beyond better than regular Ed Hardy T Shirts yet still have all the beautiful Ed Hardy designs. We will be stocking many new designs of the womens Ed Hardy knits line in the near future.

So what do we see in trends??? Tattoo Art continues to cross over into all styles and genres of fashion. We find this to be a positive influence as Tattoo Art is very versatile. It can be subtle with clean elegant lines or can go out and out in your face blinged out. For our money the smart fashions lines are incorporating Rocker Styling and Tattoo influenced designs into their products utilizing specialty fabrics, print processes, detailing and effects to create wearable art that will stand the test of time, becoming wardrobe favorites for todays savvy fashion consumers. For women we see the retro Pin Up Girl style designs crossing over and becoming mainstream cool for women of all walks of life. Walking the aisles at the event I could not help but see that everyone from long term mainstream brands to new up and coming fashion houses had pieces in their ladies lines with cut and style that was reminiscent of the Pin Up Girl fashions of old. Oh...and Corsets ladies...Corsets with beautiful lines and fabric details are not just lingerie anymore! Corsets are to be worn out paired with pencil skirts for a sultry, edgy look. I was pleased to meet with two corset companies who are making wonderful pieces utilizing cutting edge fabrics and prints. We already have the first couple of designs in stock in our Retail Store and will be adding them to our web site in mid September after our next large photo shoot with models for product shots. For the guys we did see one trend that I thought was funny - vests with shirts attached to them - one piece that looks like two. Now I love a Rocker Style vest on a guy and as a matter of fact we just got some into the store from Hause of Howe (they will be available online as soon as we do our photo shoot) and ordered more styles....I just don't get the attached shirt thing that some designers are doing - a vest is a great versatile wardrobe piece but to me part of the beauty of it is that it can be paired with lots of different shirt styles - why limit the piece to only being able to wear it with the shirt that it is sewn onto? I was disappointed in this - do designers think guys are stupid and cannot manage to choose themselves a shirt to wear under their vest? A guy that is savvy and self assured enough to wear a vest is going to know what to put under it and want to mix and match his shirts from long sleeve button fronts to slim fit t's underneath.

We met with the designers / representatives of lines we already carry and were very impressed with the new styles coming from Christopher Wick's for The Fender Custom shop and English Laundry. We have many new styles in the English Laundry Lennon/McCartney shirts on order for Holiday / Spring. We loved some of the new things coming out of DOCTRINE and Rebel Spirit. For the fashion forward guy that does not like any bling Hause of Howe continues to be the ticket as Jade Howe continues to keep to clean lines with European Rocker edgy effects without the bling. For every day working guy tattoo styles and Pin Up Girl fashions Lucky 13 and Sailor Jerry continue to be staples.

We met with many new lines that we are very excited about. I will talk more about them on future postings but some of our new favorites were: Gibson Apparel, Royal Testament, Anama, Bettie Page Dresses and Anti Social. We look forward to items from these lines arriving over the next several months.

All in all it was a very productive group of shows and we are excited about the new products that will be arriving here over the next several months.