First, I want to thank all of you for taking moments of your day to have a read of this quirky blog- and especially to all of you who have been sharing it with friends and family. With each post, there are lots more of you joining in! Your comments have been fun and encouraging in extraordinary ways. I know that leaving comments is tantamount to public-speaking so your emails have been just as great! Thank you, thank you.
This week my company, Tilevera, has been busy putting the final touches on our newest catalog. It was an undertaking of HUGE proportions for our tiny creative team and we are very excited to finally get it out there. It was developed from a long-time passion of mine, so I thought it would be fun to give the back-story on how it all came about.
Here she goes, again!
If you've been a pal of mine in the biz world for any length of time, you know that there are 3 issues for which I'll always pull up my soap box -
1) my passion for lifestyle marketing
2) the travesty of selling art tiles by the square foot (who are we, Home Depot???)
3) why do shelter magazines never list tile credits?
Just thinking about that last one gets me hot under the collar. But, more on those last two topics some other time.
This post is all about my great affection for lifestyle marketing. Here's the thing- I love the whole notion of it- the idea of being "transported" to any number of idyllic locations, times, sets, moods, etc. I can't tell you when this marketing movement began to gain steam amongst the collective masses, but my own personal history with it began way back in the early 80's.
Welding with Ralph Lauren?
I was a college freshman when I was flipping through a Vogue, or Harper's - who knows- and caught my first glimpse of a Ralph Lauren ad campaign. I was swept away! I hadn't a clue who this RL character was nor that his name was actually Ralph Lifshitz and that he was a merchant from the Bronx. But enough of my RL disclaimers.
The lay-out that caught my eye was filled with squash-blossomed models walking through western prairie fields. Their amazing long skirts looked like swathes of navajo blankets. I wanted a closet full of those costume-like ensembles. At the time, I was a young art student attempting to learn how to weld cor-ten steel. The irony of me in an impossible beaver-pelt coat while covered in construction dust illustrates the power of this type of marketing.
Vintage Ralph Lauren
But, I was enthralled with the beauty of his wild west backdrops and the idea of the old frontier. Who knew it could look so glamorous?
Art imitating art-
Around the same time, a movie had come out called Days of Heaven with it's Ennio Morricone soundtrack and some of the most beautiful cinematography, ever (thanks, Nestor Almendros). It was more a wondrous photo shoot set to film than a typical movie. But I think that along with RL's images, it provides some proof that lifestyle imagery moves in trends as we all become collectively inspired. Psychologists say it's the function of an archetypal projection.
An homage to Andrew Wyeth?
Life's Tiles
There have been many, many lifestyle trends that have come and gone since my first real encounter with lifestyle marketing. Fast forward to several years ago- as I begin to sense that the tile industry in the US is in bad need of a face-lift and that a strong infusion of lifestyle marketing could get us all out of our tract home coma. However, the economy starts to sky-rocket, and everyone's focus becomes simply trying to deliver enough tile.
Now that times have changed a bit, I thought it only right that Tilevera indulge my lifestyle-mantra. And what better way to illustrate the concept than through our newest catalog? So we have attempted to combine all old and new Tilevera designs into a catalog separated by 16 different lifestlyes. There could have been more, but we felt that these were the most dominant of the current trends, based on consistent design requests from all of our customers.
Which one(s) are you?
We've had loads of fun trying to find images that best illustrate all the varied lifestyles (thank you flickr friends!! ), and have had even more fun asking friends which lifestyle best describes their current decor-mood.
So have a look and have fun! You may be a purist, or may require a few of the trends. For instance - I think that I'm a combination of LOFT-SHABBY CHIC-GLAMOUR. And recently, one of my clients discovered that he's been living a life of fraud- all done up like ITALIAN VILLA when in his heart he's all about LOFT. I gotta wonder about that one!!