Fritinancy

Word of the week: Poplin

Poplin: A strong, lightweight, plain-woven fabric with a smooth finish, historically silk but now more commonly cotton.

Poplin weave structure, via Charles Tyrwhitt.

A Ro by Any Other Name

I usually can come up with a theory to explain copycat names and naming trends. In the early aughts, many companies chose double-O names (Qoop, Squidoo, Doostang, ooVoo) to sound like Google. All those X + Y names (Mizzen + Main, Standard & Strange, Coral & Tusk)? They evoke Ye Olde Tymes, with the modern bonus of yielding cheap domains. Lately, we’ve seen a cluster of first-name names like Oscar and Emma, the better to blunt the cutting edge of technology.

But the explanation for one mini-trend has eluded me. Perhaps you, dear readers, can help.

April linkfest

Good news for liberal-arts majors: “Behind Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa and Microsoft’s Cortana are not just software engineers. Increasingly, there are poets, comedians, fiction writers, and other artistic types charged with engineering the personalities for a fast-growing crop of artificial intelligence tools.” (“The Next Hot Job in Silicon Valley Is for Poets,” Washington Post.)

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A small hotel group, Small Luxury Hotels of the World, is “ditching photos entirely in its new campaign and running text-only ads that flatter the target market by suggesting they'd never fall for typical tourism marketing anyway.” (“This Hotel Group Is ‘Unadvertising’ Its Properties with Intentionally Dull, Text-Only Ads,” AdWeek.)

 

 

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Name in the news: Draper James

There’s a curious little kerfuffle going on between two businesswomen whose flower-shaped logos are suspiciously similar in shape and embellishment. What makes it especially newsworthy is that one of the businesswomen is the actress Reese Witherspoon, and she’s the one being sued.

But that’s not the only thing I find interesting about Ms. Witherspoon’s retail venture, which is called Draper James, after the actress’s grandmother (Dorothea Draper) and grandfather (William James Witherspoon). For me, that name – no matter how sweetly familial – is all too reminiscent of another, much older retail chain, Draper’s & Damon’s.

Word of the week: Cache-coeur

Cache-coeur: A style of women’s blouse that crosses in front and secures at the waist or under the bust. From French (where it’s cache-cœur), meaning “hide the heart”; pronounced (roughly) cash-coor. Sometimes called surplice or simply wrap-front.

Typical cache-coeur style, via Sempre Na Moda blog.

 

Words of the Year 2015: Fritinancy Edition

The WOTY party has begun, and I’m arriving fashionably (or maybe just breathlessly) late. Back in early November, Allan Metcalf nominated basic for the honor; a couple of weeks later Dennis Baron, aka Dr. Grammar, anointed singular they and Oxford Dictionaries selected an emoji, “Face with Tears of Joy.” Merriam-Webster, which chooses its WOTY based on volume of online lookups, selected -ism. The spoofy Emmett Lee Dickinson Museum (named after “Emily’s third cousin, twice removed – at her request”) has been posting one WOTY candidate every day in December, along with runners-up. (I confess I’d never heard of Dick Poop, but I like it.) And over at the Visual Thesaurus (where I’m a contributing writer), Ben Zimmer has nominated a couple dozen notable words that surfaced this year in science, business, news, and pop culture.

My turn now. To compile my Words of the Year list, I followed the American Dialect Society's criteria for selection:

• demonstrably new or newly popular in 2015
• widely and/or prominently used in 2015
• indicative or reflective of the popular discourse
• not a peeve or a complaint about overuse or misuse.

Word of the year: Refugee

Most useful: Mx.

Most likely to succeed: Ghosting

Least likely to succeed: Left shark

Euphemism of the year: Netflix and chill

Most creative: Shipping

Most outrageous: Measles party, schlonged (tie – it was an outrageous year!)

Most unnecessary: Microaggression

Most productive: -shaming

Read on for the full WOTY list – 20 words in all – and brief definitions. Words previously featured on this blog are linked to the relevant posts. And follow the American Dialect Society for news of its WOTY vote on January 8.

One X at a Time: One More Time

What is it about this particular sloganclone that accounts for its abiding popularity? I have a theory, which I divulge further down. But first, five fresh examples.

When the Saints Go Marching In

Fritinancy Fashion Week wraps up on a reverent note, honoring a quartet of brands with “Saint” in their names.

Fashion Week: Short Takes

The Seattle boutique Totokaelo – which since 2003 has championed avant-garde Japanese and European fashion in a city better known for flannel and anoraks – recently opened a five-story, 8,400-square-foot outpost in New York’s SoHo neighborhood. “Totokaelo” may appear to be borrowed from the Chinook language, but in fact it’s a corruption of Latin words that translate to “the sky’s the limit,” a motto that applies to many of the prices. The New York Times says the name is pronounced TOH-toh-KYE-yo,

Issey Miyake dress from Totokaelo.

 

Fashion Name in the News: Bombfell

Fritinancy Fashion Week marches into the trenches today with a name that aims for edgy, teeters precariously, and ends up lurching over the cliff.

Edgy names are nothing new in fashion branding. Here in San Francisco, there’s an upscale boutique for men and women called Acrimony. I’ve seen an online store called Dolls Kill, a fashion brand called Skingraft, and, of course, a sneaker called Tampon. And with “street style,” pretty much anything goes.

Which brings us to the nom du jour: Bombfell, a clothing-by-subscription service for men.

 

Yes, that’s a lit fuse on the mascot’s head. But Bombfell wants us to think metaphorically and word-blend-ly. Care to guess?