Marketing chief Jaime Cohen Szulc unlocks true meaning for Levi’s. An exclusive Q&A interview by Tim Manners.

It could be Gareth Hornberger, the @levisguy on Twitter. It could be Levi’s iPhone app or information about Fader/Fort, an indie-music festival.

But it could also be a Levi’s pop-up print workshop in San Francisco, stamping out decidedly non-digital posters, books and T-shirts. It could even be the economically depressed town of Braddock, Pennsylvania, which Levi’s is featuring in an old-media television advertising campaign ... read >>

He's 77 years old now and the song that made him famous turns 55 next month, but Little Richard's influence still runs strong, reports Marc Myers in the Wall Street Journal (8/10/10). "I was like the rappers today, creating dirty words to blues songs on the spot," says Richard. "One of them was called Tutti Fruitti." (video) Indeed it was, and even though the original lyrics were cleaned up, teens at the time knew exactly what he meant when he sang "about a girl named Sue who knows just what to do." Woooooo.

Released in January, 1956, Tutti Frutti peaked at No. 17. It was followed by Long Tall Sally (No. 6), and Slippin' and Slidin', Rip It Up and Ready Teddy -- Little Richard recorded "15 Billboard Top 100 hits by 1958. He also made three film appearances, including The Girl Can't Help It, starring Jayne Mansfield (video). "I had started standing at the keyboard so I could do my stage routine without having to get up," says Richard. "I also began putting my leg up on the piano, like Otis Turner." (video)

Richard was already dressing flamboyantly and wearing his hair in a pompadour, a style he picked up from Esquerita, the R&B singer who also taught him how to play boogie-woogie piano. "I wore makeup and wild outfits to keep white people from focusing on me as some kind of a ... threat," says Richard. "I knew that if I looked crazy, not cool, I wouldn't be seen that way. And it worked. People focused on the music." The affected include Elvis, the Beatles, Stones, Jimi Hendrix and Michael Jackson. "I should be better recognized today for sure," says Richard. "I am the beginning. I am the originator."

Even mighty Walmart can't get a handle on "zero waste" when it comes to the apparel it sells, reports Stephanie Rosenbloom in the New York Times (8/18/10). It's an issue since "about 15 to 20 percent of the fabric used to produce clothing winds up in landfills because it's cheaper to dump the scraps than to recycle them." Where Walmart has used its clout to support compact fluorescents and concentrated detergents, it apparently hasn't yet exerted as much muscle where clothing is concerned.

Manufacturers face other obstacles, as a zero-waste goal likely would involve "re-engineering the supply line," and "overhauling a factory is obviously expensive." But that's not stopping zero-waste zealots like Timo Rissanen, co-author of "Shaping Sustainable Fashion," who says he is re-learning how to design, scrap-free. One technique involves creating a pattern that fits together like a jigsaw puzzle. Another avoids cutting the fabric altogether, and instead drapes it over a mannequin to be tucked and sewn.

Parsons the New School for Design is also now offering a course in zero waste in which students will be challenged "to figure out how to create zero-waste jeans without compromising style." This includes not only fabric waste, but also "the dyes added only to be washed out again, the energy used to transport the denim all over the world, the packaging, and the gallons of water used by consumers to clean the jeans." The winning design will be manufactured by Loomstate, an organic fashion label, and sold at Barneys New York next spring.

"People tell us, 'I love my trash can,'" says Simplehuman founder Frank Yang in a USA Today piece by Matt Krantz (8/9/10). Frank's cans get that kind of response because Simplehuman trash cans "are crafted from stainless steel and have pedal mechanisms that gradually open and close the lids." For this kind of love, some folks are willing to spend between $100 and $200 for a trash can. Simplehuman also makes "sleek and functional automatic soap dispensers, dish-drying racks and shower caddies."

To keep his high-end edge, Frank created "a separate team of engineers who specialize in broad functions, such as hinges and pumps" that pushes Simplehuman "to come up with new designs a product engineer might say are impossible." Such was the case when Frank said he "wanted a trash can that could sit flush against a wall and have no external hinge attached to the lid." The product engineers said it couldn't be done, but the design engineers "found a way to put the hinge inside the can." (link)

Durability is even more important, says Frank, who insists that function always trumps form. Each Simplehuman trash can is tested by "robots that pound on the foot pedal of trash cans over and over." The cans come with a ten-year warranty. Frank established his fancy brand identity during the housing boom, when people were thinking in terms of $200 trash cans. Now that times are tough, he's introduced cheaper plastic versions that also claim durability (link). "My products will always be a step above," says Frank.

The latest "it" handbag from designer Stuart Vevers is "a leather version of an ordinary brown paper grocery bag for about $1,045," report Ray A. Smith and Christina Passariello in the Wall Street Journal (8/7/10). Not only that, but Stuart is "making a point of using the same bag shapes season after season -- the opposite of 'it' bags' short fashion cycle." This is a big departure for Stuart, who had been "known for creating showy studded and tasseled 'it' handbags," in the years just prior to the economic collapse.

"It's kind of taking the bag back to its purest functionality," says Stuart, who designed the bag, known as Papelle (image), for Loewe, a 164-year-old "Spanish leather-goods brand owned by LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton. Handbag sales are down in the US, falling 3.3 percent, to $6.97 billion last year, and luxury labels are scrambling to tone down their images. However, Stuart says the transition to his grocery-bag design wasn't without its challenges.

"Luxury was becoming a word that was so overused," he says. "I think there was some confusion as I was explaining that it was time to move on." However, Loewe CEO Lisa Montague says she "strongly believes in Stuart's ability and his sensitivity to understand the evolution of the market." Retailer Linda Fargo of Bergdorf Goodman thinks Stuart is on the right track, too. "The time is right for this new kind of classicism," she says. And Stuart is not looking back, saying, "I don't think I could ever design the way I did then now."

"People get mad at us when we kick them out, even at 2 a.m.," says a staffer at Forever 21's Times Square store, in a Wall Street Journal piece by Shelly Banjo (8/3/10). As unlikely as it sounds, the store is something of a tourist attraction and stays open well past closing time for most other retailers -- and even some so-called nightspots. Linda Chang, who is Forever 21's marketing chief, says most of their other stores close at 9 p.m., even its Las Vegas store.

But New York is different: "New York is the city that never sleeps," she says. "Even at 2 a.m., foot traffic and sales are worth keeping the store open later." The store itself also stands apart from most other Forever 21 outlets, most of which are smallish, boutiques, and mall-based. The Times Square store is four stories high, measuring 90,000 square feet, and "is decorated like a tourist attraction," including "displays of New York paraphernalia such as a graffiti-adorned taxi cab and a mock Times Square display of signs, lights and mannequins." (images)

Linda, whose parents, Don and Jin Sook Chang, co-founded Forever 21, says the unusually late hours, like the department-store format, is both strategic and experimental. She notes that tourists tend to shop there just before heading home. As one such tourist explained, "It's not open this late and it's definitely not four stories in Florida." The downside is that the store also tends to attract late-night inebriateds, but they are managed by "a full force of security guards." Forever 21 expects sales of $3 billion this year, up from $2.3 billion in 2009.

Shopper data is yielding sometimes surprising insights into regional trends and preferences, reports Christina Binkley in the Wall Street Journal (7/29/10). It might come as a surprise, for instance, that luxury spending is growing most quickly in Detroit -- up 18 percent in the first quarter of 2010 versus a year ago, according to American Express. Perhaps not coincidentally, Ford's stock is up, too. In New York City, meanwhile, luxury spending is down 7.7 percent, and in Atlanta it's down by 18.2 percent.

Shopper data from Hautelook also finds that Southerners favor white, green and pink. In L.A., it's black, white and gray. Maybe not so surprising. But this is interesting: According to sales data from ShopItToMe, women on the coasts are not only thinner than the rest of the country, but also smaller. Women also spend less on fashion in flashy Dallas than they do in frumpy Washington DC. And the most conservative dressers in New York City live on the Upper West Side, which "has a reputation for being culturally liberal."

The most popular brand among ShopItToMe shoppers, across all cities, is Victoria's Secret. Another survey finds that Best Buy bores women and both men and women are bored with Dom Perignon. The Center for Culinary Development finds a connection between food and fashion in L.A., where tastes in both are casual and locally grown. In Brooklyn, an affinity for home-sewn clothes is also matched by demand for home-made food. "They're making their own pickles, butchering their own meat," says Kara Nielsen, a food consultant. "It's what I call 'party like its 1899.'"

The most surprising thing about the trend toward blue-hued fragrances for men is that it's so recent, reports David Colman in the New York Times (7/29/10). "We do color association studies all the time, and the idea of blue being steadfast and dependable -- that never changes," says Leatrice Eiseman of the Pantone Color Institute. "But it also brings up all these ideas of sky and water ... So there's this dichotomy between associations of both safety and freedom, but they're both good."

The twist is that blue's popularity may be attributed to something other than the color itself. Some 20 blue-hued fragrances are on the market today, and at least some of them were inspired by Davidoff Cool Water, "a blue-bottled men's fragrance that came out in 1988 and remained in the top 10 sellers for more than a decade." But it was the aroma, and not just the color, that perhaps best explains its success. "What they did was use some aromachemicals used in more functional perfumery," says Paul Austin, a consultant.

Specifically Cool Water's formula included dihydromyrcenol, a fragrance that's "used in soap and detergents to evoke a sense of freshness and cleanliness when you open the package." That gave Cool Water a brightness and pop that was very different from the traditional European ingredients like citrus and lavender. It also incorporated a synthetic compound, calone, with a whiff of saltwater." This not only inspired more blue fragrances, but also more "fresh" and "watery" aromas, which the color blue happens to convey nicely.

Apparel makers are using an "Eco Index" to go greener, but aren't quite ready to share their scores with consumers, reports Christina Binkley in the Wall Street Journal (7/22/10). The "Eco Index" is a software program that's been under development for about three years by "roughly 100 well-known apparel brands and retailers." It's designed "to help them measure the environmental impact of their apparel and footwear, from raw materials to garbage dump."

The garbage dump is a big one: "Americans tossed out 12.4 million tons of textiles in 2008 -- a number that has risen far faster than other sources of trash," according to the EPA. Levi's, in response, now uses its care tags to ask consumers to donate old clothes to Goodwill, which earns them some brownie points on the Eco Index. This doesn't necessarily make Levi's jeans any greener, and some question whether the Eco Index methodology -- which is based on information provided, but not proven, by the manufacturers and their suppliers -- is valid.

Another big question is if, and how, to communicate scores to consumers. The prevailing opinion is that the scores need to be presented in the same way by everyone, either by "a single number on a hang tag" or perhaps by posting information online. In the meantime, Levi's says that the program has prompted a streamlining of its transportation routes as well as packaging reduction. Timberland now awards gold, silver or bronze stars to suppliers who improve their environmental standards. "I now have tanneries fighting over the points needed to get a silver rating," says Timberland's Betsy Blaisdell.

A pop-up retail workshop in San Francisco is part of Levi's "Go Forth - Ready To Work" marketing campaign (video), reports Laura Compton in the San Francisco Chronicle (7/4/10). The eight-week event involves outfitting a 3,000 square-foot retail space on Valencia Street into "a fully functional, albeit temporary, print shop filled with heavy equipment, salvaged work tables, type cases, ink and other essentials of an age-old art." (images).

Levi's Workshop San Francisco, as it is known, features various "local writers, artists and creative types," and "will produce a range of printed matter, such as books, posters, and T-Shirts." All proceeds from the sale of goods produced at the store will go to three local non-profit organizations: Women's Building, Southern Exposure and Plaza Adelante. Zach Augustine of Winston, a retail consulting firm, says the Levi's Workshop fills a gap left by budget cuts for arts and education.

"It's almost like you're going to school at some amazing fine art workshop presented in the old-school environment," he says. Mike Maher of Taylor Stitch, a local shirtmaking artisan who is participating in the Workshop, agrees: "The beauty of it is, they're giving people skills, educating them," he says. Other participants include Shepard Fairey, who will produce San Francisco Giants baseball cards, as well as Arline Klatt and Beth Lisick, who will host a release part for a letterpress book. Levi's plans to open a second Workshop in New York City this fall.