Fritinancy

Signs of Weirdness

One side of a sandwich board in front of the John Fluevog store on Grant Avenue, San Francisco:

 

“Know You’re Weird!”

 

The other side:

 

“No, You’re Weird!”

 

The resemblance to the “Keep Calm and Carry On” oeuvre is probably not coincidental, but the weirdness and wordplay are pure Fluevog. The Canadian shoe company is weird and proud of it, starting with its name—John Fluevog is the founder and chief designer—and carrying on, as it were, through the merchandise.

Take, for example, this current boot, the Angelina.

 

 

Or a chunky, four-color Mary Jane called the Sam.

The Escarpin has a ball-and-claw heel inspired by the cabriole legs of Louis XV furniture.

 

 

The men’s styles are equally striking.

The Alexander. (A metallic cap-toe oxford? Brilliant.)

 

Sometimes the weirdness overlaps with pure design genius.

The Neptune, perfect for a gala at the natural history museum or a stroll through the Everglades.

 

Lots of companies pay lip service to customer service and community, but Fluevog is the rare business that follows through. Its community (or “Flummunity”) includes a marketplace (“Fluemarket”) for secondhand Fluevog shoes and an invitation to submit a shoe design. Quite a few submissions have made the cut. (It’s “open source,” so no one gets paid, but the citizen-designer gets a free pair and the honor of having the design named after her or him.)

I’m a Vogger myself: I own two pairs of Fluevog sandals (these and these), whose styling skews toward the less-weird end of the Fluevog spectrum but is still distinctive enough to elicit admiring comments. (I think they’re admiring.) The shoes are beautifully made and very, very comfortable.

I wrote about the Fluevog.com FAQ page in 2007. A few of my favorite Fluevog Q’s:

“Who played vibes with Benny Goodman’s big band between 1936 and 1940?”

“Why are Fluevogs so expensive?”

“Are John Fluevog Angels really Satan resistant?”

 

How Kit and Ace Got Its Name

In the February 2 issue of The New Yorker, Lizzie Widdicombe writes about a new clothing retailer, Kit and Ace, that recently opened its first New York City shop.

 

The company has an athleisure*(athletic + leisure) pedigree: one of the co-founders, Shannon Wilson, is married to Chip Wilson, who founded the yogawear pioneer Lululemon. The other co-founder is Chip’s oldest son, JJ. (Chip Wilson, who is an informal adviser to Kit and Ace, “resigned from Lululemon’s board last year, after a disastrous episode involving unintentionally see-through yoga pants,” writes Widdicombe.)

Where did the Kit and Ace name come from? Here’s Widdicombe:

JJ oversees branding for the Kit and Ace line. The name, he explained, refers to two imaginary “muses” that he and Shannon came up with. Kit is the name Shannon would have given a daughter (for Vancouver’s Kitsilano beach, “where all my dreams came true,” she said). “I think of Kit as Shannon in her heyday,” JJ said. “An artist at heart, a creator. A West Coast girl. An athlete.” Ace, her masculine counterpart, is “a West Coast guy. He likes things that are easy and carefree.” He filled out the picture: Ace surfs. “He’s graduated college. He’s thirty-two. He’s maybe dating The One.”

Could Ace be modelled on JJ? His parents teased. “He’s a bit of a pain in the ass!” Shannon said.

“A little pretentious,” Chip said, laughing.

There’s no explanation of the symbol that stands in for “and.”

Besides being plausible personal names, kit and ace have other relevant meanings. Kit can mean “a set of articles or implements used for a specific purpose” (a survival kit; a shaving kit), while ace can mean “expert” or “first rate.” Both words can function as verbs (to kit out, to ace a serve) as well as nouns.

This isn’t JJ’s first foray into retail, or into company names that follow the X + Y formula: He founded Wings + Horns, a menswear company, in Vancouver in 2004.

Kit and Ace sells clothes made from a washable fabric blend the company calls Qemir (sometimes uncapitalized; pronunciation uncertain): 81 percent viscose, 9 percent cashmere, 10 elastene. The company has applied for trademark protection for “Qemir” and for a tagline: “Technical Cashmere.”

Kit and Ace, like Lululemon and Wings + Horns before it, was born in Vancouver, BC; a second U.S. store opened in January on San Francisco’s Fillmore Street.

For another retail store name taken from imaginary “muses,” see my 2012 post about Georgi & Willow. For more “X + Y” retail names, see this post and my Pinterest board. For a roundup of restaurant “X + Y” names, see this post.

More on Lululemon, including the origin of its name, at the bottom of this November 2013 post.

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* First use of athleisure in print: 1989 (in a company name). In the generic sense, the earliest usage dates from around 1995.

F-Plus

Four new F-word sightings in the public square, from coy rebus to unexpurgated vulgarism.

“Who the [fork] will win?” Ad for the Bravo TV series “Best New Restaurant,” premiering January 21. (Thanks to Karen Wise for the tip.)

*

 

A Merry Friggin’ Christmas, in theaters and on demand today. Rated PG-13 (“for language and crude humor throughout”), it’s one of the last movies completed by Robin Williams, who committed suicide in August. As Jesse Sheidlower documents in The F Word, “frigging” (noun and modifier) has been a coarse synonym for “fucking” for centuries; James Joyce famously employed it in Ulysses (“that frigging drawing”). 

In addition to the vulgarism in the title, the movie is notable for its poster design, which is either a homage to or a ripoff of the great designer Saul Bass, who created titles and posters for Vertigo, Spartacus, Anatomy of a Murder, and many other movies. As noted in a recent Reddit thread, the Merry Friggin’ Christmas poster also bears a startling resemblance to the poster for the 2008 Coen Brothers film Burn After Reading. (A Merry Friggin’ Christmas was directed by the memorably named Tristram Shapeero.)

*

For the Strategy magazine Agency of the Year competition, Canadian marketing agency Cossette promoted itself with a video that asked a single question: “What the fuck is going on at Cossette?”

  

NSFW unless you use headphones.

 

AdFreak called the video “amusing,” and congratulated “people from rival agencies who make cameos here, including Carlos Moreno and Peter Ignazi of BBDO and—at the very end—Geoffrey Roche, who founded Lowe Roche. Other folks making appearances include the Trailer Park Boys, Chris Van Dyke of School Editing and Ted Rosnick of RMW Music.”

Cossette (named for founder Claude Cossette) did not win.

*

Finally, a greeting card that clearly doesn’t come from Hallmark.

“You Are Doing a Fucking Great Job,” Seen at eye level at Nathan & Co., a gift shop on Piedmont Avenue in Oakland; created by Emily McDowell, who also offers a “ready-to-frame art print” with the identical sentiment.

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More in this vein:

“Half-Fast, Whole F-Word”

“Reflexive Fun”

“F Is for Friday”

“Abso-Booking-Lutely”

How Ski-Doo Got Its Name

Ski-Doo, the snowmobile brand so widespread that it’s almost a generic term, was never meant to be called “Ski-Doo.” Its inventor, Joseph-Armand Bombardier, had named his creation “Ski-Dog,” because it was meant to replace a dogsled. As a 1992 article in Popular Mechanics explains: “Fortunately for Bombardier (pronounced bom-bar-dee-ay), an early brochure was misspelled and a winter legend was born.”

 

 

The original Ski-Doo, 1959. Source: BRP.

 

Bombardier, born in 1907 in the rural town of Valcourt, Quebec, had experimented with snow vehicles since he was a teenager. His first attempt, created when he was just 15, used a rear-mounted Model T engine and a wooden propeller. A 1935 prototype employed a sprocket-and-track assembly and floating suspension. In 1942 he founded Bombardier Recreational Products (now BRP); the company still has its headquarters in Valcourt but is now a multinational corporation that makes railway and aerospace parts, Evinrude outboard motors, and Can-Am all-terrain vehicles.

Ski-Dog wouldn’t have been a bad choice for the brand name, but as Ski-Doo the company benefits from the association with “skidoo” or “skiddoo”—to get away, to go out—an early-20th-century slang term that may have been derived from 19th-century “skedaddle.” It’s an appropriate association with fast-moving, terrain-defying vehicles—an association that carried over to the company’s aquatic brand extension Sea-Doo, launched in 1988. “Skidoo” is memorialized in the quaint phrase “23 skidoo,” about which Barry Popik’s Big Apple blog has the last word.

And as the 1992 Popular Mechanics story helpfully points out:

While the name of the most ubiquitous snowmobile was the result of a printer’s error, perhaps it wasn’t really a mistake. After all, there is a relationship between a dog and doo. Perhaps future historians will dig up the truth.

I know of at least two other companies that owe their names to typographical errors: Lane Bryant (a misspelling of founder Lena Bryant’s first name) and Lands’ End (whose misplaced apostrophe is attributed to an error in the company’s first catalog).

Previously in How They Got That Name: ASOS, Pitango.

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Hat tip: Jay Cornell.

Name in the News: Tweed

The main headline in the business section of Sunday’s New York Times was “When Cannabis Goes Corporate”; the story centered on Tweed Marijuana, one of 20 companies officially licensed to grow marijuana in Canada.

Tweed Marijuana logo. Lovely typeface.

 

There are no precise equivalents to Tweed outside Canada, where marijuana cultivation and sale are federally regulated.* But even without direct comparison, the Tweed name stands out as multilayered and highly distinctive.

Word of the Week: Frissant

Frissant: A hybrid pastry invented and named by Swiss Bakery (“artisan bread specialist”) in Vancouver, British Columbia. Frissant is a portmanteau of fritter (a small cake that’s sautéed or deep-fried) and croissant (a buttery, crescent-shaped baked pastry).

Frissant photo from SwissBakery.ca: “Frissant is Canada’s cronut on the map! No lineups, no scalping. Just come on in!”

 

Frissants are the latest invention to capitalize on the modified-doughnut frenzy that began in May with the introduction of the cronut—a fried, cream-filled doughnut made of flaky croissant dough—at the eponymous Manhattan bakery of Dominique Ansel. Ansel—who has filed for trademark protection of “cronut”—makes just 300 cronuts a day, and they sell out quickly at $5 each. As Ben Zimmer pointed out in his Boston Globe “The Word” column and in the Visual Thesaurus, early copycats such as doissant and dossant have lacked the lexical punch, and the publicity bonanza, of “cronut.”

“Cronut” has also benefited from its New York City origins (if you can make it there…). “Frissant” may be doomed to provincial obscurity, but I for one applaud the cleverness of the coinage. Not only does it maintain the Frenchiness of “croissant,” but it also suggests frisson – a thrill, a shiver of excitement – a delectable French word imported into English in the 18th century.

For more on the cronut craze, see “Crazy for Cronuts: Picking Apart the Tasty Trend,” which aired Saturday on NPR’s “All Things Considered.” For more food portmanteaus, see my posts on turducken, veggieducken, cherpumple, mockolate, and Edward Gelsthorpe, coiner of Cran-Apple and Manwich.

Here, There

Earlier this year I wrote about two new and unrelated brands that share a name: Nokia HERE (yes, all shouty like that) and PayPal Here. Now comes word, via Coin Branding of Toronto, that Radio-Canada, the government-owned, Francophone counterpart of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, is jumping on the brandwagon with ICI, French for “here.”

“Ici, tout est possible.” Image via Coin blog.

The new name comes from the network’s longtime on-air identification: “Ici, Radio-Canada.” The network’s domain name, currently radio-canada.ca, will change in October to ici.ca.

The announcement “swiftly met widespread condemnation and mockery, especially from those angered over dropping the word Canada,” writes Ian Austen in the New York Times. He adds: “Some online critics, particularly on English-language Web sites, suggested that Quebec separatism was a factor in the new name.”

Coin Branding’s Andris Pone points out that ICI “cannot possibly be a good choice” because the network’s government funding stipulates that programming be “predominantly and distinctively Canadian” and that it be “in English and in French, reflecting the different needs and circumstances of each official language community.” Not only does ICI flout these requirements, the name is also “totally unrelated to the abiding message of the network,” Pone writes.

William Chambers, Radio-Canada’s vice president of brand, communications, and corporate affairs, “said it was all a misunderstanding induced by the network’s ‘enthusiasm’ for its new identity,” according to the Times story. He said the network’s abstract logo – Chambers called it  “the gem,” but most people, says the Times, call it “the pizza” – will not change.

Read the French-language press release about the name change.

 

In other directional naming news, I’m pleased to tell you that, contra Gertrude Stein, there is a ThereThere in Oakland.

 

 

In fact, you can buy a poster-size print of that nifty ThereThere ambigram at the Oaklandish retail store.

Underwear Week: Ginch Gonch

It’s Day Four of Underwear Week! Grab your passport and some loose loonies: we’re headed north of the border for today’s installment.

 

 

I stumbled upon undie-maker Ginch Gonch about six months ago. The name was a complete puzzle to me, the tagline (“Live Like a Kid!”) didn’t seem to clarify the odd words, and I got no help at all from the About page:

Ginch Gonch was born from the rebellion against the dull, colorless underwear endured by most people, and has quickly become one of the fastest growing premium lifestyle brands internationally. It was the first of its kind to successfully combine humor and sexuality with funky, fashion-forward designs, and has completely reinvented the underwear industry through the unconventional ways it sets the trend for the rear end.

The styles pictured on the website have loud prints, bright colors, large “Ginch Gonch” logos, and double-entendre-ish names like “Joystick Jockey” and “Lip Reader.”

What the website doesn’t have are clues about where the company’s located, other than a Montreal area code on the Contact page. The company boasts that its products are sold “in premium department stores and exclusive boutiques” in 22 world capitals, but I’m a pretty serious shopper and I can’t recall ever seeing them.

The Interwebs came to the rescue. Ginch and gonch, it turns out, are two ways to spell Canadian slang words meaning “underwear.” Here’s a definition from the CKA (Canada Kicks Ass) website:

gotch, ginch, gonch, gitch (From Ukrainian gatky/gatsi): refers to men’s brief-style underwear, particularly those that are threadbare. Used in British Columbia and Alberta. Gitch and gotch are variants heard mostly in Saskatchwan. It is also acceptable to append ‘ies’ to any of these variants, especially when referring to the underwear of male children. eg: “Make sure you do laundry tonight, I’m going to need some clean gonch in the morning”. The term is becoming more widespread in use as a result of the rise in popularity of Vancouver-based undergarment company GinchGonch. A “gotch-pull” or “gonch-pull” is another name for a wedgie.

So—Vancouver, not Montreal? The Internet is silent on the discrepancy. But I was definitely warming to the name: it’s fun to say, relevant (if you’re from British Columbia or Alberta), and memorable.

Apparently, though, if you’re not from British Columbia or Alberta you may be as clueless as I was about ginch and its relatives. Here’s a question posted on Yahoo Answers in 2008:

Is “ginch / gonch” really Canadian slang for underwear?

“Ginch Gonch” is a Canadian underwear company, and they say their name comes from the canadian slang word(s) for underwear “ginch / gonch”
now, i'm Canadian, but i’ve never heard the term before... how common is the slang?

And the answer, seemingly from another Canadian:

Gitch and Gotch are words that i am familiar with -- both refer to underwear. I can't say anyone in my generation (born in 70s) would use the term, but we do know what it means. My parents (born in the late 40s) use the term quite often. I can't remember them using any other term for undies.

I also consulted the OED, whose entry for ginch makes no mention of Canada, underwear, or the supposed Ukrainian origin:

Etymology: Origin unknown.

slang (orig. and chiefly U.S.).

An attractive woman, esp. (freq. depreciative) one regarded as an object of sexual gratification. Also as a mass noun: such women collectively.

1934 J. D. Carr Eight of Swords ix. 98 He found himself walking away beside this lithe, bright-eyed, altogether luscious ginch in the tennis frock.

1960 Coshocton (Ohio) Tribune 5 Dec. 3/3 Flip little ginch, ain’t yuh?

1971 E. Tidyman & W. Friedkin French Connection (film script) (Electronic text) 6 A close shot of a chorus line, with lots of tits and ass and lean, long legs... Russo takes the seat on the right, eyes immediately on all that ginch.

1992 C. Nova Trombone (1992) iii. 242 Well, I guess that's Dean's last piece of ginch, isn’t it? There isn’t any romance or desperate women where he's going.

2002 J. A. Jackson Badger Games 17 You’re shaggin’ the ginch. I seen her, not a bad little piece of ass.

Well, wow. I’ve seen The French Connection and read a bit of detective fiction, but I can’t remember ever encountering ginch in this sense or any other. Please let me know in the comments if you’ve heard or used the word in any context.

Meanwhile, enjoy Ginch Gonch’s self-description:

Through its cheeky, outside-of-the box marketing campaigns and sassy names for its products, Ginch Gonch has acquired the reputation of being the brat of the industry. Ginch promotes fun, freedom of expression and diversity through its famous catch phrase “Regardless of your inches we cover you in our Ginches!”. Its “Shiny Heiny”, “Wiener Eater” and “Crotch Rocket” underwear have won the hearts and crotches of millions all over the world who embrace the Ginch Gonch Live Like a Kid! philosophy.

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Previously on Underwear Week:

Cheekini

True & Co. and the MILFs

Underwear Startups

Argo

I saw Argo over the weekend and thoroughly enjoyed it. Directed by and starring Ben Affleck, it’s the smart, suspenseful, mostly true story of how six Americans were brought out of Tehran – “exfiltration,” often abbreviated to “exfil,” is the term of art – in 1980, in the middle of Iran’s Islamic revolution. (Fifty-two other US Embassy employees weren’t so lucky: They spent 444 days as protagonists in what became known as the Iran hostage crisis.)

I say Argo is mostly true because, like most narrative art, it takes some liberties with historical fact, telescoping and condensing and even inventing when it serves the story. For a more literal account of the real-life drama, whose details were declassified in 1997, you may want to read the memoir of Antonio Mendez, the CIA agent who masterminded the escape. (He’s played by Affleck in the film.)

Genuine publicity for a fake movie. Via Foreign Policy.

 

Or you can read “How the CIA Used a Fake Sci-Fi Flick to Rescue Americans From Tehran,” Joshuah Bearman’s 2007 article for Wired that’s getting a lot of new eyeballs this season. It’s a terrific read that fills in many of the blanks (such as the roles of some unsung or undersung Canadians). For my part, I was amused by one passage toward the end that’s omitted from the movie but appealed to my love of names, puns, and coincidences.

A little background: Argo was the actual title of the fake sci-fi flick that formed the cover for the exfiltration. And Anders is Bob Anders, a senior embassy officer who was one of the six Americans being exfiltrated.

Here’s the passage from Bearman’s story:

As they boarded the plane from the windy tarmac, Anders noticed the word AARGAU was printed across the fuselage — the name of the Swiss region where the plane originated was strangely similar to that of their cover story. He punched Mendez’s arm and said, “You guys arrange everything, don’t you?”

In Affleck’s movie, the Argo title is never fully explained. A minor character asks whether it’s a reference to the ship of Jason and his Argonauts. “Ar … go fuck yourself,” replies Lester Siegel, the (fictional) Hollywood producer played by Alan Arkin. And, according to an account in Foreign Policy of the actual events, that “profane ‘knock-knock’ joke” is in fact how Argo got its name.

An additional tidbit from Foreign Policy:

One “ironic coda” from the CIA account: “By the time Studio Six folded several weeks after the rescue, we had received 26 scripts.… One was from Steven Spielberg.”

In Canada, by the way, l’affaire Argo is known as “the Canadian Caper.”

A Name Change at Teenflo

Last October I called Teenflo, the chic, 35-year-old Canadian fashion label, "one of the worst brand names I've seen." To quote myself: "The name suggests teenagers (who go with the flow?), but one look at the clothes tells you the label is targeted at sophisticated adult women with money to spend."

Apparently someone at Teenflo concurred, because the name is about to change to "Judith & Charles."

A recent post by Abusing the Comma (in real life the lifestyle editor at Yahoo! Canada) shared the news:

The Teenflo name came from the names of the original founders Martin and Florence when the line launched in Paris in 1975. However, deciding enough was enough (and probably tired of explaining the name's origin to the media), Teenflo's Judith Richardson and Charles Le Pierrès have launched a re-branding initiative moving from Teenflo to the eponymous Judith & Charles, gradually removing all mention of "Teenflo" from the line.

"We're transitioning in the new name," said Judy Richardson at the store opening in Bayview Village. "You will still see the Teenflo name on some items but eventually it will all be Judith & Charles."

The new name is less misleading, but I wouldn't call it distinctive. In fact, shopping malls are overrun with "X & Y" (or "X + Y" or "X and Y") labels right now. ("X & Y" is also a major trend in restaurant naming, but that's a topic for a different day.)

Here's a list—far from comprehensive, I'm sure—of fashion brands that follow the formula.

Alice + Olivia
Elizabeth and James¹
Graham & Spencer
Holmes & Yang²
Ingrid & Isabel ("The most versatile maternity accessory you'll ever need")
Lutz & Patmos³
Mac and Jac
Mars and Valentine
Martin + Osa⁴
Max and Cleo
Me & Ro
Mike & Chris
Nic + Zoe
Nick & Mo
Rag & Bone
Robbi & Nikki
Rock & Republic
Soia & Kyo
Truth & Pride
Whistle & Flute

Of course, there's a long tradition of partnership names in fashion and retail: Sears & Roebuck, Abercrombie & Fitch (founded in 1892 as a purveyor of sporting goods), Baume et Mercier. But the current trend goes beyond actual partnerships. Often, the linked names or words communicate a story, real or fictional (in the case of Martin + Osa, a historical one; in the case of Elizabeth and James, a vague narrative about "a young girl and a boy"); borrow bits of obscure slang (a "rag-and-bone man" is a junkman; "whistle and flute" is Cockney rhyming slang for "suit"); or simply juxtapose words for the hell of it. (I've never figured out "Rock & Republic.")

To be sure, it's easier to secure a double-barreled Internet domain name than a single-word name. But remember: a domain name is just an address. To succeed, a brand needs to stand apart from its competition. And in a world of "X & Y" brands, "Judith & Charles" becomes just two more names customers will struggle to remember.
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1 The line was started in 2007 by the Olsen twins, Mary-Kate and Ashley, who named it after two of their siblings (who aren't connected to the business).

² "Holmes" is Katie Holmes, a k a Mrs. Tom Cruise.

³ The designers' surnames.

⁴ The parent company of Martin + Osa, American Eagle, recently announced that it will close all 28 retail stores and the online business by mid-year.