Its All in the Jeans Essay -- Fashion Clothing Retail Essays

It's All in the Jeans Bell-bottoms came and went, came back and then left again. Top hats had their era. Platform shoes had an intense, yet short, life. Polyester made a brief appearance. At one time, sailor suits could be seen everywhere; not anymore. Hot pants come and go. Yet jeans seem to have survived. They have achieved the impossible: remaining a major trend from the eighteenth century to the present day. Jeans -- trousers made of denim clothing -- have survived through the decades and the centuries. All trends tend to become old and eventually lose their place in society, some more quickly than others. Whether it is clothing, music, hairstyles or attitudes, all seem to have a time limit. Fashion, in any category, has often made it across borders, oceans, social classes and genders, but few have made it through time. Jeans have made it through all of the above, and more. They have made the ultimate transition from being a trend to being a classic. Eternal. Popularity usually comes with an expiratio n date, but apparently not for jeans. As described by the â€Å"History of Jeans† website, the history of jeans is complex and goes all the way back to the eighteenth century, when the word â€Å"jean† is believed to have originated in Italy. Genoan sailor outfits were made from a mixture of materials. Pants made of this denim cloth were called â€Å"jeans† after the Genoan sailors who wore them. â€Å"Denim† refers back to a clothing material used in France called â€Å"Serge de Nimes†. Translated, â€Å"serges† is a kind of material and â€Å"de Nimes† means â€Å"from Nimes†, a town in the south of France. Trading across the Atlantic, along with European immigration, brought denim cloth and jeans to the country that would make both famous. In the USA, jeans we... ... is the key to survival in general? Evolution. Think about it. It makes sense. In order to survive, something must adapt to its ever-changing environment. This principle applies to all things, alive and non-living. Without adaptation comes extinction. It is essential to evolve. Jeans have done exactly that. In the constantly changing world of fashion and popular culture, jeans have been adjusted every step of the way to suit their new environment. In this case, the environment involves trends, attitudes and looks. With every decade and every new generation, jeans have been adapted in order to ensure their continued popularity. Sources Cited â€Å"The Gentrification of Blue Jeans† website www.chass.utoronto.ca/history/material_culture/cynth; â€Å"Historic clothing† at histclo.hispeed.com; and â€Å"History of jeans† at www2.gol.com/users/bobkeim/Garment/jhistory.html.

1800’s Era of Good Feelings Essay

Although many seemingly happy events such as the â€Å"Era of Good Feelings† and the granting of universal white manhood suffrage occurred during the early 1800’s, the statement that nationalism and not the fear of sectionalism caused westward expansion is an invalid statement. Westward expansion was truly an effect of a growing sectionalism in the country originating from events such as the Tariff of 1828 , the National Bank, and the Missouri Compromise. Preceding the Missouri Compromise was the Tallmadge amendment. When the Tallmadge amendment was passed, the South was infuriated. The amendment decreed that the slave state of Missouri had to gradually free all of their slaves and prohibited any more slaves to be brought into Missouri before they could be admitted into the Union. See more: Homelessness as a social problem Essay This made slave-owning Southerners upset because they viewed the amendment as a threat to sectional equality and balance. With the South suspicious of the North trying to ban slavery and the North suspicious of the South trying to expand slavery, both sides naturally flocked to the West in order to gain another slave or free state to tip the balance of power in their direction. Even in the Florida Purchase Treaty of 1819, after war hero Andrew Jackson exceeded his orders from the White House and tore through Florida, motives for acquiring new land seemed to continually hint towards the growing sectionalism and concern about the issue of slavery. Also, the uneasy Missouri Compromise gave both North and South even more reason to expand westward. The Missouri Compromise established Missouri as a unrestricted slave state which gave abolitionists and Northerners great concern about the spread of slavery while the establishment of the Missouri Compromise line that prohibited slavery above it caused Southerners to worry about slavery too. All the suspicions and fears of the two sections resulted in a fast and furious expansionism in the west. Then, during the presidency of John Quincy Adams, his nationalistic policies of roads and canals laid a heavy financial burden upon the federal government requiring the continuation of the tariff which caused tension among the South. The National Bank, although established by the nationalist Alexander Hamilton, played a big role in sectionalism in the United States. When the Bank of the United States irresponsibly overspeculated in the West, the financial crisis of 1819 arose in which many western banks were shut down and had to foreclose mortgages on numerous farms in the West. The foreclosure of farms in the West made the National Bank extremely unpopular in the West and fueled western sectionalism, pushing western farmers to lean towards the slave-owning Southerners in the battle for influence in the West. In addition to these events, the Tariff of 1828 made Southerners angry yet again and widened the rift between the North and South even more. The extremely high tariff was not for revenue but rather for the purpose of protecting American manufacturing. This made the Southerners upset because it showed partiality to the northern factories and hurt the southern farmers who were large consumers of manufactured goods. The hated tariff would then prompt South Carolina to take action and bring out the old Kentucky and Virginia resolutions to nullify the tariff. Thus, these two events added to the worries of both sides and to the westward expansion fever.

Cultural Metaphor Essay

Cultural metaphors is a cultural system wherein people with the same beliefs, traditions, ideologies, morals or values associate with each other. People belonging to the same culture, share or participate in a particular interest activity, event, or organization, and any other means, that represents their culture is an example of a cultural metaphor. (Gannon, 2008) Moreover, these interest activities, events, organizations, etc. are specifically identified to one particular culture, influencing the way of life of its people. Cultural metaphors create a more discernible way of exhibiting a unique feature of a particular culture to other people. Since these unique features of a particular culture differ from other cultures, most people would probably have different opinions about them. Examples of cultural metaphors that most people know of include the Italian Opera or the American Football. These cultural metaphors associate certain activities or events, in this case the opera and football as distinct to a particular culture. Furthermore, basing it on the examples given, cultural metaphors, although distinctive to a particular culture, is also well known or popular to other cultures. (Gannon, 2002) Rules, ideologies, knowledge and rituals are several cultural concepts that make up the cultural metaphor. The rules that make up the cultural metaphor are either written or unwritten rules that people of a particular culture follow. For instance, rules that govern American football may differ from its European counterpart. Ideologies are certain beliefs or values that are accepted and practiced by a particular culture. For example, the Chinese believes in placing their idols in an altar for health and good luck. The concept of knowledge in cultural metaphors involves information that only a specific culture knows, as Americans are knowledgeable about football, while Europeans are more adept in soccer. Rituals are rites or customs practiced by a particular culture. For example, Muslims all over the world pray at the same times of the day for five times. References Gannon, M.  J. (2008). Cultural Metaphors: Applications and Exercises. Retrieved April 2, 2008, from Sage Publications. Website: www. csusm. edu/mgannon/Documents/CULTURAL METAPHORS. doc Gannon, M. J. (2002). Cultural metaphors: Their use in management practice and as a method for understanding cultures. In W. J. Lonner, D. L. Dinnel, S. A. Hayes, & D. N. Sattler (Eds. ), Online Readings in Psychology and Culture (Unit 16, Chapter 4), (http://www. wwu. edu/~culture), Center for Cross-Cultural Research, Western Washington University, Bellingham, Washington USA.

The eNotes Blog Exquisite Commencement Speeches by FamousAuthors

Exquisite Commencement Speeches by FamousAuthors A lot of the literary geniuses who penned the top one hundred literary works are dead- but a surprising number of them aren’t, and have thankfully  stuck around long enough to see the invention of YouTube. Check out the funny, profound, tragic, and sometimes surprising revelations offered by the authors you think you know in their commencement addresses. Lois Lowry, The Giver Lesley University, 2014 To be honest, I can’t think of a single reason why you would want to listen to advice or heed any so-called wisdom from somebody who has dropped out of college not once, but three separate times, three different universities. But I’m going to try nonetheless. And I’m going to do it by telling you a story, a story of hubris, betrayal, and despair†¦ Season 2 Episode 7 of Game of Thrones. No, I made that up. Actually, this is a true story from my own childhood. In 1947, Giver author Lois Lowry spent her entire allowance on an â€Å"echo box,† an orange cardboard container the size of a paperback book with a hole in it. The manufacturer claimed that one need only speak into the echo box, and when the button was depressed the speaker would hear her voice again, exactly as she had spoken. The device seemed magical to the ten-year-old who â€Å"never had a voice, never felt important, never felt heard.† Yet when she decided to display her impressive new voice to her family one night at dinner, she pressed the button only to find a needle had popped out and pricked her in the finger so deeply she bled. Never invest all your money in a place that deals in deception. But more importantly, even though you will encounter some hideous and very painful failures during the process of learning how it works, your voice does have power. I’ve spent my entire life since 1947 learning that about my own voice. †¦ I’ve learned that the words that I say which are thereafter contained in something †¦ those words are powerful and important and I must choose them with care, sometimes even with reverence, and always with caution. J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter Series Harvard, 2011 The first thing I would like to say is thank you. Not only has Harvard given me an extraordinary honor, but the weeks of fear and nausea I have endured at the thought of giving this commencement address have made me lose weight. †¦ Now all I have to do is take deep breaths, squint at the red banners and convince myself that I am at the world’s largest Gryffindor reunion. Rowling recalls the occasion of her own graduation and the struggle she experienced with parents who hoped she would use her education to escape poverty. Her studies in Classics didn’t exactly fulfill their expectations- and seven years after her graduation she â€Å"had failed on an epic scale †¦ by any conventional measure.† Her marriage had fallen apart, she had no job, she was a single parent, and was â€Å"as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain without being homeless.† So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had been realized, and I was still alive. Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 Caltech University, 2000 Read the full commencement speech transcript. Now, right after graduation today, make a list of the people who don’t believe in you. And you have a few, don’t you? I had plenty of people who told me not to do what I was going to do. You make a list this afternoon of the people who don’t believe in you, and you call them tonight, and tell them to go to hell! It’s not surprising to hear from the man who described in such vivid detail the ill-effects of the â€Å"parlor walls† that no one should ever have to watch the local television news again. â€Å"Don’t look at it ever. Because it tells you how bad you are.† More surprising are anecdotes of rollerskate adventures as a poor boy in Hollywood, comic strips torn up after the young author gave way to peer pressure, rejections by editors, and dire financial straits. Beneath his yearbook photo, a penniless unpublished Bradbury had them put â€Å"Headed for Literary Distinction†- and he was right. For the next four or five years, move into the future. And don’t listen to any more damn fools after this. And that’s what I did. John Green, The Fault in Our Stars Butler University, 2013 first I have to deliver terrible news, which is that you are all going to die. But, as John Green points out, it’s not bad to recognize how temporary things are. And one thing we should recognize is that the hero’s journey isn’t one from weakness to strength- but rather one from strength to weakness. As you graduate, you start over and become the rookie, the nobody. It’s not easy but it is heroic. And it reminds us to be empathetic, to remember â€Å"that the lives and experiences of others are as complex and unpredictable as your own†- they, like you, â€Å"contain multitudes.† I am going to hazard a guess that relatively few of us closed our eyes and thought of all the work and love that Selena Gomez or Justin Bieber put into making this moment possible for us. We may be taught that the people to admire and emulate are actors and musicians and sports heroes and professionally famous people, but when we look at the people who have helped us, the people who actually changed actual lives, relatively few of them are publicly celebrated. We do not think of the money they had, but of their generosity. We do not think of how beautiful or powerful they were, but how willing they were to sacrifice for us- so willing, at times, that we might not have even noticed that they were making sacrifices. Toni Morrison, Beloved Wellesley College, 2004 Regarding the future, I would have to rest my case on some bromide, like the future is yours for the taking. Or, that it’s whatever you make of it. But the fact is it is not yours for the taking. And it is not whatever you make of it. The future is also what other people make of it, how other people will participate in it and impinge on your experience of it. The future, Ms. Morrison argues, is hardly a certain thing- not with the â€Å"burgeoning mà ©nage trois of political interests, corporate interests and military interests† that threaten life as we know it. Neither is the past safe; as we analyze and reanalyze what came before, not even events long gone offer stable footing. She says she can’t even talk about happiness; she hopes these aren’t, as most graduates are told, the best years of their lives, since they have so many to come. In the end she offers this: The theme you choose may change or simply elude you, but being your own story means you can always choose the tone. It also means that you can invent the language to say who you are and what you mean. But then, I am a teller of stories and therefore an optimist, a believer in the ethical bend of the human heart, a believer in the mind’s disgust with fraud and its appetite for truth, a believer in the ferocity of beauty. So, from my point of view, which is that of a storyteller, I see your life as already artful, waiting, just waiting and ready for you to make it art. Elie Wiesel, Night Wagner College, 2012 When I came, some of you stopped me and said, â€Å"I read your book,† in singular. The naà ¯f in me would have asked, â€Å"Which one?† But I am generous, and I didn’t. Oh, of course, I knew which one you meant: â€Å"Night.† Political activist and holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel tells the students of Wagner College that the world will never learn if it has not already- if Auschwitz did not cure the world of racism, anti-semitism, and hatred, then he thinks it is unlikely that anything will. Yet â€Å"despair is never a solution† and â€Å"hatred is never an option.† All he can offer the graduating class is hope- an enormous gift. Remember that hope is not a gift given from God to us; hope is a gift, an offering, that only we human beings can give to one another.

Using the Keyword Final with Inheritance in Java

Using the Keyword Final with Inheritance in Java While one of Javas strengths is the concept of inheritance, in which one class can derive from another, sometimes its desirable to prevent inheritance by another class. To prevent inheritance, use the keyword final when creating the class. For example, if a class is likely to be used by other programmers, you may wish to prevent inheritance if any subclasses created could cause problems. A typical example is the String class. If we wanted to create a String subclass: public class MyString extends String{ï » ¿} We would be faced with this error: cannot inherit from final java.lang.String The designers of the String class realized that it was not a candidate for inheritance and have prevented it from being extended. Why Prevent Inheritance? The main reason to prevent inheritance is to make sure the way a class behaves is not corrupted by a subclass. Suppose we have a class Account and a subclass that extends it, OverdraftAccount. Class Account has a method getBalance(): public double getBalance(){ return this.balance; } At this point in our discussion, subclass OverdraftAccount has not overridden this method. (Note: For another discussion using this Account and OverdraftAccount classes, see how a subclass can be treated as a superclass). Lets create an instance each of the Account and OverdraftAccount classes: Account bobsAccount new Account(10); bobsAccount.depositMoney(50); OverdraftAccount jimsAccount new OverdraftAccount(15.05,500,0.05); jimsAccount.depositMoney(50); //create an array of Account objects //we can include jimsAccount because we //only want to treat it as an Account object Account[] accounts {bobsAccount, jimsAccount}; //for each account in the array, display the balance for (Account a:accounts) { System.out.printf(The balance is %.2f%n, a.getBalance()); } The output is: The balance is 60.00 The balance is 65.05 Everything appears to work as expected, here. But what if OverdraftAccount overrides the method getBalance()? There is nothing to prevent it from doing something like this: public class OverdraftAccount extends Account { private double overdraftLimit; private double overdraftFee; //the rest of the class definition is not included public double getBalance() { return 25.00; } } If the example code above is executed again, the output will be different because the getBalance() behavior in the OverdraftAccount class is called for jimsAccount: The output is: The balance is 60.00 The balance is 25.00 Unfortunately, the subclass OverdraftAccount will never provide the correct balance because we have corrupted the behavior of the Account class through inheritance. If you design a class to be used by other programmers, always consider the implications of any potential subclasses. This is the reason the String class cannot be extended. Its extremely important that programmers know that when they create a String object, its always going to behave like a String. How to Prevent Inheritance To stop a class from being extended, the class declaration must explicitly say it cannot be inherited. This is achieved by using the final keyword: public final class Account { } This means that the Account class cannot be a superclass, and the OverdraftAccount class can no longer be its subclass. Sometimes, you may wish to limit only certain behaviors of a superclass to avoid corruption by a subclass. For example, OverdraftAccount still could be a subclass of Account, but it should be prevented from overriding the getBalance() method. In this case use, the final keyword in the method declaration: public class Account { private double balance; //the rest of the class definition is not included public final double getBalance() { return this.balance; } } Notice how the final keyword is not used in the class definition. Subclasses of Account can be created, but they can no longer override the getBalance() method. Any code calling that method can be confident it will work as the original programmer intended.

Court Reporting. Write up two court reports, from the given material Essay

Court Reporting. Write up two court reports, from the given material each with a commentary - Essay Example While presenting the case, the prosecution reiterated that the girl had been found murdered in a field near Seaburn Metro Station over the weekend. She had five stubs in the stomach and medical reports presented in the court showed that she died from shock and internal bleeding. Before the body was discovered, the 14 year old girl had gone missing since Friday when she failed to return from school. A dog walker discovered the body of the girl lifeless in the field the following morning as police was already conducting a search. According to witnesses, the accused boy had squabbles with the dead girlfriend days before the incident. Detectives are still awaiting the test results of DNA samples collected from a knife used in the murder. The defendant’s lawyer, Doug Richardson asked the court to bail him out, citing the defendant had no previous criminal records. The court denied request for the bail given the weight of a murder charge. The defendant remains in police custody awai ting the next court hearing as the victim awaits burial next month. Commentary Whereas journalists have the responsibility to provide the community with accurate information of the happenings going on around them, there are legal responsibilities they have to consider when reporting events (Banks 2012, 02). Court proceedings are sensitive. While reporting the murder case involving the teenager, Paul Ross, the law requires that the name of the defendant be withheld. Whereas there is never any problem mentioning the name of the victim unless in a sexual assault or rape case, I chose to withhold the name of Monica Smith to protect identity of the accused. Additionally, the report does not detail the names of the parents of the accused and the victim for the same reason of protection of identity. This is particularly imperative given the fact that a defendant remains innocent until proved guilty in a legal procedure. In addition, the report fails to mention remarks reported in the court as having transpired before and after the incident. Before the murder, the defendant is reported to have states, â€Å"If I can’t have her, no one can.† Additionally, Ross is recorded to have broken down and confessed killing his girlfriend during police interrogation. He said, â€Å"I didn’t mean to kill her, just frighten her with the knife.† This report dodges these comments primarily to prevent a scenario that may show prejudice and bias. The journalist report fails to mention these statements as that would seem as though the journalist already has a formed opinion that Ross is guilty. It leaves the legal responsibility of determining innocence or guilt to the judiciary. Second Court Case The Newcastle Magistrates Court on Monday bailed out a revered Newcastle barrister after an awry â€Å"blind date† led to a lawsuit. The 33-year-old resident was charged with attempted rape of 19 year old Sunderland University Law student. The two were strang ers to each other until Friday night when they met at a popular nightclub in town. The young woman claimed that they did not know each other until that evening when the defendant bought her drinks and asked her out to smoke cigarette. She says it was at that moment that the defendant tries raping her, raised an alarm and escaped before calling the police. In his defense, the 33-year old Newcastle resident reiterated that they had mutual consent to spend the night in a hotel room next to the

Digital Marketing Plan for an online multi-brand retail Essay

Digital Marketing Plan for an online multi-brand retail - Essay Example It is targeting to cater to the online shopping needs of modern females of UK, by offering the next generation trends in the fashion segment. Situational Analysis The UK is recognized as one of the leading markets for manufacturing and evolution of the fashion in the global arena with textile industries producing 8.5 billion pounds of finished goods (Fashionunited, 2009). As of the year 2010, the UK fashion industry has been valued at around 21 billion pounds (Guardian, 2010).The recession and the slowdown in the markets all over the globe, created a down trend in the industry. Further slowdown happened in this particular sector, as more and more consumers tried cutting their expenses. Also, the continuous fear emerging out of the slowdown in the Euro zone and possible chances of a double dip recession has continued to impact the economy as well as public spending for the fashionable clothing sector (Centre For Retail Research, 2012). This has led to the retaliation of fears contributing to a possible bleak outlook for the UK fashion and garments sector. Also, there has been a unique factor that has been realised and noticed in this particular industry for the year 2011. The online model of purchase, which has been prompted by extensive promotion for the online model of shopping has started to cannibalize the in store sales. This has further impacted and hampered the sales that are happening in stores for the entire year of 2011 (Centre For Retail Research, 2012). Objectives The high end ‘New Waves’ is trying to act as a platform for providing a collaboration between the new and emerging pool of new designers as well as the fashion industry of UK. The primary focus of New Waves online model is to act as an online window for the fashion conscious consumers of UK and introducing them to the next big thing that is going to happen in the fashion industry of UK. They are making efforts to aim for a 65% recall from the total target segment, within a period of 6 months duration. It also is trying to achieve the objective of promoting itself as a national level clothing brand in the UK Market. Strategy Segmentation Marketing segmentation is an important and vital role, which is employed by all organizations large or small and is considered as an extremely strong weapon in identifying the target consumers (Charles, Hair & McDaniel, 2011, p. 260). New Waves, in an attempt to promote itself as a national level brand in the UK market are essentially targeting the modern fashion conscious female consumers of the UK zone falling within the age bracket of 18-36 yrs. Targeting The modern generations of consumers, who are mostly falling within the specified age group, are increasingly becoming tech savvy and are more increasingly inclined towards the internet. So, it will be very much essential for the brand to target and communicate as well as interact with the consumers in order to make the brand’s presence felt online to these young consumers. Positioning In an effort to communicate the brand well in the minds of the modern consumers of UK, New Wave should increasingly use a combination of st rategies and tactics for promoting the concept online. The best way to make this happen is to use a number of effective online promotional tactics. Tactics and Actions New Waves can utilize a variety of online promotional strategy and techniques in an effort to market its platform and communicate effectively to the young target segment. In an effort to communicate with the young fashionable modern consumers, New Waves should think of making its presence felt by tying up and collaborating with various online fashion magazines like MC Magazine,