Cited: The Baltimore Sun

Holiday Inn moves into the Old Town National Bank after receiving $11.5 million in renovation to the 70 room hotel creating the Holiday Inn Express Downtown Biltmore. You will not find teller windows anymore but walnut-grain registration desk where guests will register. The bank presidents’ office is now a conference room and one of the vaults no longer story money but is a storage area for sheets and towels.

Just about every corner of the former Old Town National Bank building has been put to use in its $11.5 million transformation into Baltimore’s newest limited service hotel, the Holiday Inn Express.

The seven-level, 70-room building at 221 N. Gay St. reopened this fall as part of a wave of hotels planned for Baltimore, and a two-day grand opening has been scheduled for Jan. 13 and 14. According to the developers, this is one of the first times that a Holiday Inn Express has been created inside a historic structure instead of being built from the ground up.

“We were able to utilize the entire building, which was a big bonus,” said Nicholas Piscatelli, the Baltimore developer who started the project. “We played around with it a lot, and it worked out really well.”

It’s not like a “typical hotel” that you might find in the suburbs, said general manager John Blake. But “no one has complained about the uniqueness of it,” he said. “They love it.”

The hotel is owned and managed as a Holiday Inn Express franchise by an investment consortium known as the Old Town Hotel Group. Designed in a Classic Revival style by Frederick Fletcher, and known to many for the Utz potato chips sign that stood on its roof for many years, the building has a stately exterior with Corinthian pilasters flanking the main entrance and an ornate lobby with terrazzo floors and bronze doors salvaged from the exterior. It was built in 1924, housed a bank until the 1960s and then was converted to offices, most recently for a state agency. It had been vacant for the past five years.

Piscatelli said he bought the building in 2004 with the thought of turning it into condominiums. When the housing market cooled, he considered offices. Before any tenants signed on, investors approached him with the idea of creating a hotel.

Visible from the Jones Falls Expressway, the hotel is one of several planned for the east side of downtown along the Fallsway and President Street. A 144-room Fairfield Inn and Suites opened this year at 101 President St., and a 63-room Sleep Inn and Suites is scheduled to open next year at 300 N. Front St.

As designed by Kann Partners — principal in charge Cass Gottlieb, project architect Becky Bass and interior designer Carol Currotto — the building has common areas on the first level and basement, and guest rooms above. The conversion complied with federal preservation guidelines and qualified for state and federal tax credits for preservation, plus a 10-year delay in any increase in property taxes. Without the tax credits, “it wouldn’t have worked” financially, Piscatelli said.

Since it opened, the hotel has drawn a wide range of visitors, including business travelers, tourists, football fans, concertgoers, marathon runners and conventioneers. Because of its configuration, the hotel has some large suites, including one that sleeps eight. That one has been reserved through the end of March by a company that needed to house construction workers building a Burlington Coat Factory branch in Baltimore County.

Piscatelli and Blake said the hotel gets many of its guests through the Holiday Inn Express reservation system. It also provides rooms for relatives of patients receiving care at the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions and Mercy Medical Center, and it offers a shuttle service to the two locations.

Blake said the hospital-related market is an important niche for the hotel because families will come from great distances for health care, even on holidays. For example, he said, one couple is checking in today because a child is having an operation at Hopkins.

The Holiday Inn Express is a “limited service” hotel, with no restaurant or bar. But it offers a continental breakfast, exercise room, business center and on-site parking. Nightly rates range from $139 for a single room to $279 for the largest suite.

Sam Rogers, executive vice president of Visit Baltimore, an agency that promotes the city to tourists and conventioneers, said the hotel is a valuable addition to the city.

“We are always happy to see hotels opening in the city,” particularly when they can meet specialized needs such as serving guests with relatives in area hospitals, he said.

“It’s also good when you see the reuse of historic buildings for other purposes,” Rogers said. “The more we can reuse older buildings, the better off we are.”

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My Take: Everybody seems to be renovating something nowadays. Some people are doing it to avoid foreclosures so they can sell our house. Others are getting KY refinancing just to make their house sell faster. Like I said, everybody seems to be doing these days.

Across the country, from AZ refinancing to Louisville mortgage companies, people are scrambling to restyle their house so they can sell it before foreclosure hits. However, there are some people who have put up their Eagan MN homes for rent to help them pay for investment property. Many property management companies have seen an increase in business from people who do not want to lose their investment properties and decide to rent them.

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Cited: Fashion Industry Network

Intel Labs and Fashion Research Institute are working together on research that is intended to help bring the benefits of virtual worlds to a broader range of business and consumer applications. FRI, by providing decadent Saltwater House to Science Sim creations that push the envelope in terms of content creation, sharing and quality, is helping to develop OpenSim. This is a platform used by FRI’s virtual world design application used by the apparel industry, Black Dress Technology. Black Dress Technology cuts the design cycle time, costs and reduce carbon footprint by 75% of design houses.

FRI’s Black Dress Technology uses the OpenSim virtual world simulation platform, and seeks to foster open-source innovation as a means to accelerate the proliferation of virtual worlds technology. Virtual world technology provides low-cost 3D modeling capability to all designers from large houses to independent designers; Black Dress allows designers to capitalize upon their innate creativity without adding barriers . Black Dress is currently in stealth mode.

Shengri La Chamomile is an early example of the research we will be conducting with Intel Labs. Shengri La Chamomile is a complex, highly involved build, and is the largest such creation in existence so far, and reflects the unique collaboration of fashion and technology. Over the next year, FRI will be creating additional designs of this nature, each incorporating different themes and each designed for immersive fashion design education.

Their collaboration with Intel Labs is currently planned to extend for a year, during which we will study these increasingly complex, large-scale builds, as well as how to scale up and freely deliver this sort of content, which is key to the evolution of large-scale grids and mass adoption of these new technology tools.

The Fashion Research Institute, Inc. (FRI) is the nexus of emerging technology and the fashion industry. Focusing on issues as diverse as bio-renewable, sustainable multi-channel production pipelines to renovating antiquated product design methodologies, FRI leads the industry through its innovative approaches to common problems plaguing the fashion industry.

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Fashion Research Institute (FRI) develops products and systems for the fashion industry that sweepingly address traditionally wasteful, environmentally unsound and unsafe business and production methods.

FRI has developed new technology infrastructures using web 3.0 and virtual worlds, that will reduce related fashion industry production landfill wastes and by-products to up to 1/3 over traditional fashion production methods. FRI’s goal is to research and develop bio-renewable, sustainable, multi-channel production pipelines for the fashion industry, which will change the way the industry handles raw materials, processed materials, product design methodology, and product tracking technology.

In addition, FRI is currently developing a method to distribute digital assets generated from its unique virtual world design application, Black Dress Design Studio. The Fashionable Grid™ enables designers of both apparel and avatar apparel to develop new revenue streams through this service.

Virtual worlds and apparel, footwear, and accessories designers: a natural fit.  Through its subsidiary, Black Dress Technology, the Fashion Research Institute has developed a virtual worlds-based design and development application, Black Dress Design Studio, for the apparel industry.

By leveraging the deep collaborative power of virtual worlds, apparel industry designers and developers save up to 60% of their sample costs, reduce their overall carbon footprint by as much as 35%, and cut their time to market by as much as 6 weeks - per collection! Additionally, because of the greater data fidelity which is achieved by using the Black Dress solution, a higher quality product can be produced, which in turn reduces waste.

The Fashion Research Institute is focused on bringing this solution to the apparel industry to support the real work of real fashion designers charged with developing on-trend, saleable, and properly fitted physical garments, footwear, and accessories.  While virtual fashion is a developing industry, there are a very great many differences between the real world apparel industry and virtual fashion.  Not least of these, of course, are the financial and ecological costs attendant in developing and manufacturing clothing for sale around the world, and the overall scope of the $1.7 trillion apparel industry.

FRI continues to work in this area, supporting Black Dress Design Studio, as well as other initiatives.

OpenSim is the primary platform upon which FRI has developed its products and services, and to that end well-tuned code is a basic requirement.  Working initially with IBM Research, FRI initiated early explorations into alpha testing of this platform through its large-scale, complex developments in OpenSim-based virtual worlds.  This initial creation was a study of how to create a compelling user experience for future work environments.

Black Dress Design Studio, FRI’s design application for the apparel industry rests on the OpenSim platform, and so the maturity of that platform is critical.  FRI believes the evolution of large-scale grids will bring that maturity and it is the compelling, rich content that will help grow these grids.  There have been many efforts in increasing the performance of the OpenSim platform, but it is the user experience of compelling content that must perform well for mass adoption to take hold.

Compelling content will drive the growth of virtual worlds grids; performance is essential to sustain that growth.  But the compelling content must be there first for the platform to host the business models to follow.

The large-scale grids that will ultimately succeed will be the beautiful ones that everyone wants to visit where the user experience is consistently good.   As part of FRI’s continuing research in this area, FRI has signed a research agreement with Intel Labs for a new research collaboration whose focus is compelling content as a target to optimize the performance of the OpenSim platform for an enhanced user experience.

Virtual worlds will play an integral part in high performance computing and imagery from FRI’s creations was exhibited as part of Super Computing 09.

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My Take: This sounds interesting! Bringing two different industries together via technology, is not that more like expanding an industry? No matter, in these tough times it is a good thing. It could even mean more jobs. However, I definitely would not want to worry about data recovery where virtual worlds are concerned. That has got to take up a lot of disk space.

It might not be so bad if they’re using a RAID system with redundancy. Although, RAID systems are typically implemented for data security reasons, RAID data recovery can be difficult depending on what system they use. Otherwise, hard drive recovery can be fairly simple.

All things considered, I think great things can come from a merging of two different industries. And I do not mean just jobs, new ideas, new processes and much more.

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Cited: New York Times

Christian Siriano, Season 4 winner of Project Runway to the buzzwords that emerged from the fashion industry, “fierce”. However, this season the operative word maybe “bummer”. It seems that the cable TV show has no parent network even though the sixth season is in production. The reason, the lawsuits between NBC Universal and Weinstein Co. are still raging.

Although Season 6 won’t be broadcast for months, if ever, the producers filmed an awkward finale at Fashion Week in New York, in a tented room filled with barely hushed uncertainty about the show’s future.

“We are all in a bit of a limbo,” the show’s host, model Heidi Klum, told the roughly 1,000 audience members, “and we hope that everything is sorted out very soon.”

The Runway finales are normally a highlight of Fashion Week, which is held at Bryant Park in Manhattan twice a year. But the lawsuits cast a pall over the competition.

“For the contestants, it’s kind of horrible,” Siriano said before the show.

In previous seasons, the first episodes of Runway had been broadcast by the time the three finalists presented at Fashion Week, enabling the audience at Bryant Park to root for their favorite contestants and handicap the results of the final competition.

But recently, the Runway producers went to great lengths to conceal the identities of the finalists, lest future viewers feel that the show is spoiled by leaks. The finalists weren’t allowed to walk onstage and present their fashion collections publicly; instead, the collections were shown anonymously.

“I’m a little bit sad for our designers, that they don’t get that recognition today,” Klum said. The introductions of the finalists were taped in advance.

In addition, all 16 contestants were expected to be backstage, making it more difficult for models or makeup artists to spot the finalists. Unlike in past years, reporters were prohibited from going into the area.

“I feel really bad” for the contestants, one audience member said as the lights were dimmed. “What a bummer,” a woman seated in the first row added.

Jane Cha, an executive producer, said that the sixth season — the first to be filmed in Los Angeles, after five seasons in New York — was mostly unaffected by the legal dispute, save for the finale. In a telephone interview, she said that the finalists were more worried about “the nuts and bolts of the collection” than about the lawsuits.

The producers finished filming the Los Angeles portion of the competition in October. “We’ll hold it in the can until all this gets sorted out,” Cha said.

She added that it was frustrating, but that “I think we’ve all kind of accepted the situation.”

The legal wrangling started last April when, after five seasons on NBC Universal’s Bravo channel, the producers at the Weinstein Co. sold the rights to the series to another cable channel, Lifetime. That sale prompted a breach-of-contract suit by NBC and a countersuit by the Weinstein Co.

Almost six months ago, a New York state judge issued an injunction that prevented Lifetime from promoting or broadcasting Runway for the time being; Lifetime will appeal that decision in court on March 19. The two companies are awaiting a trial date.

Neither company would comment on the pending suits. In a statement, Lifetime said it continues “to look forward to this entire matter being resolved expeditiously” and that it remains hopeful that the show will appear on Lifetime.

Speaking to the crowd, Tim Gunn, a designer who coaches the contestants on Project Runway, said he wished that he could introduce the finalists: “We have a smashing, sensational season for you. We can’t wait for you to see it.”

Nina Garcia, one of the Runway judges, said in an interview that she was “very hopeful” that the program would eventually be shown.

“The show is about supporting young designers,” she said. “It’s about supporting the business of fashion. It’s not a reality show for the sake of having a reality show.” And amid a gloomy economic backdrop, she added, Runway is “very needed right now in the industry.”

Runway, which in 2007 became the first reality show to win a Peabody Award, has in previous years been the top-rated show on Bravo.

Siriano, for one, sounded confident that viewers wanted Runway to return. “The audience is still out there,” he said.

The next season is usually started by the producers after Fashion Week. However, they have put production on hold. As contestants return to their normal lives, under a strict confidentiality contract that bars them from talking about the show, life goes on.

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My Take: I am a little bit confused about this lawsuit. It was sold during production to a different network. Does that not mean that the original network has rights to that particular production? Or did the sale include that particular production? I guess we’ll find out the court makes its decision. I feel sorry for the contestants having to go through all that lesson bother and then have nothing happen.

What gets me is the frustrations of these models go through to become a top model. They starve themselves to make themselves so skinny naked compete with a toothpick and then the stress makes them nervous wrecks. I am sure that more than one of them has contacted the New Jersey divorce lawyer because they cannot handle the family stress on top of work.

Most models do not have kids so they do not have to go through a NY visitation lawyer to see them or to arrange for their father to see them. Having kids makes them bodies get fat and their bodies get out of shape and they can’t have that in the fashion industry.

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Cited: NY Times

The Crosby Bar and restaurant were built to flow seamlessly into each other and they do. As the diners finish their meals, they begin to make their way to the back room for $18 cocktails. Some will not have far to go because they are guests at the attached Crosby Street Hotel. The quirky decor of the Crosby bar starts with its light fixtures.

The hotel is the first New York outpost of the London boutique group Firmdale Hotels. Perhaps it’s no surprise, then, that the Crosby Bar so earnestly embodies a certain British quirkiness with its Paul Smith-meets-Moroccan décor and eclectic art, including an arrangement of Bakelite telephones on one wall and a huge wooden dodo bird behind the long pewter bar. Stools and banquettes are upholstered in retro orange and candy-colored striped fabric, and lights that hang low from the ceiling are encased in multihued crystal balls that resemble a 1970s craft project. The bartenders, not to be outdone by the furnishings, measure, serve and schmooze in crisp black pants and blue shirts with dapper sherbet ties tucked in around the third button.

Still, for all its head-turning adornments and psychedelic color wheel, the décor is not overwhelming. It almost skews on the warm side save for the high ceiling and metal-framed glass walls that look out onto the street and two enclosed outdoor areas — one of which will open for warm-weather dining.

“It’s not low-key definitively, but it doesn’t have this stuck-up attitude so common at lounges,” said François Zelbat of the Upper West Side, who added, “There is no drama.”

There may be no drama, but according to some, there are still trend-seekers. On a recent weeknight, the crowd was more creative-professional than socially aspiring, though every bit as attractive as you might expect.

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A group of 10 women were having a girls’ night out. Nandita Khanna, who owns an Indian restaurant in New York, laughed when asked if they were prowling for men. “We’re all married with kids,” she said. One friend smiled and said, “I’ll still look!”

Nearby, three women were engrossed in conversation. One of them, Agnes Berecz, an art history professor, offered her professional assessment of the space: “It’s funny how the waiters and bartenders have this full, pseudo-French look — very formal. It looks like they’re coming from Jean Georges or something.”

Patrons tend to stay focused on their original cohorts and their beverages, with the latter being something that the Crosby Bar takes great care to keep on the cutting edge. Its seasonally driven cocktail list includes a revolving menu of drinks adapted from famous bars around the world.

Ann Matthews, the director of development for a recording studio, said she was a fan of SoHo’s new digs. “It’s gorgeous,” she said, as she and a friend stood alongside a growing group at the bar. But she did have a word of advice about the bartenders’ use of a wine jigger.

Ms. Matthews stated that bartenders should just estimate and pour wine directly into a glass because she said, “When you pour wine into metal, it changes the flavor.” Going definitely does not have a good flavor when it has a metallic taste to it.

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My Take: I do not think this is actually a “bar”, but more of a cocktail lounge. You will not usually find a “bar” attached to a hotel, at least not a nice hotel. Nice hotels usually have a cocktail lounge. And it is the smart people that stay at the hotel so that they will not have to hire a Monmouth County DWI lawyer or hire a Texas car accident law firm.

The New Year holiday will probably see many people looking for Monmouth County criminal defense lawyer or a Fort Worth injury law firm because somebody was dumb enough to drive and drink. It is one of the most important things that anybody learns at an academy driving school NY, do not drink and drive. In fact, if you have a motorcycle and you take NY motorcycle lessons you will discover that it is even worse driving a motorcycle when drinking.

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Cited: The San Francisco Chronicle

The problem with trends as any interior designer will tell you are that a trend is often considered when you buy one year and throw out the next. The good news is that some trends do not get thrown out. Not long ago, “going green” was the hottest trend around and now it is considered an industry standard.

So we asked around and pulled together a list of 10 trends for 2010 that have some staying power.

1. Texture

If West Elm’s spring collection, which launches this week, is any indication, texture will be big in 2010. “We are spending a lot of time researching new natural materials and unusual techniques with a lot of rich, textural interest,” said Alex Bates, creative director for the retailer. New products include a woven natural bamboo headboard, a crocheted floor cushion, recycled glass candleholders and storage made of kooboo.

2. Keeping it real

Forget faux. (No more fake antlers, please!) In 2010, we want to see a movement toward the natural patina of woods, metals and other materials. We don’t even mind a water mark or a hint of rust. After all, those imperfections may be the result of generations of wear and come with a good story or two.

3. Layered flooring

According to Marilyn Incerty, trend director for Cost Plus World Market, layering floor coverings adds richness and warmth. She suggested “overlapping several smaller, lightweight rugs with patterns and colors that are complementary - a striped runner on top of a larger geometric rug - or overlapping multiples of the same rug in a variety of colors.” Those with wall-to-wall carpeting can still get in on this trend. Place “a rug over existing carpet for an instant splash of color or pattern,” said Incerty. “This is a great trick for avoiding the hassle and expense of ripping out existing carpeting when you want an update.”

4. Bolder design decisions

“In the last year, people were looking to be calmed and comforted by interiors,” said Melanie Coddington, right, who was recently named one of House Beautiful’s 20 interior designers to watch. “I hope the burgeoning sense of optimism will translate into sparkle, glamour and lots of risk-taking in design. In with color!”

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5. Old is new again

“Antiques and vintage pieces add soul to any space,” explained interior designer Jay Jeffers, “and these types of items are negotiable and plentiful in today’s markets, so our clients are able to invest in key pieces for their home.” From sites like 1stdibs.com to consignment and thrift stores, there are indeed sources out there for any budget.

6. Wallpapered ceilings

We’ve all seen the wallpapered accent wall. In 2010, look for wallpapered ceilings as an increasingly popular option for creating visual impact in a room.

7. Artisanal goods

Just as artisanal foods have taken off, expect the same for home furnishings and accessories. “Artisanal work will continue to be strong,” said interior designer Benjamin Dhong. “Even modernists want to see natural materials or the hand of the craftsman brought into their homes.”

8. The well-traveled look

The Sundance Channel series “Man Shops Globe” follows Anthropologie buyer-at-large Keith Johnson as he visits country after country, looking for special pieces and inspiration for the company’s 135 stores worldwide. Whether you’re scouring the stalls in Paris or browsing shops during a quick weekend getaway, incorporating souvenirs in a space can give it a bit of personality.

9. Palette

Speaking of color, Melanie Coddington is “having a purple moment that will continue into 2010,” she noted. “Gray also continues to figure largely as well - in particular purple and gray, yellow and gray, and matte and shiny gray together are great combinations.” Fellow interior designer Kimberly Ayres concurred: “Gray is the new beige,” she said, adding that she anticipates “rich and unexpected combinations - like gray with teal or magenta or tangerine. It’s a very mercurial color.”

10. Mix it up

“In general, I see a trend to a carefully edited ‘anything goes’ approach,” said Ayres. “Going forward in 2010, it’s all about the mix and how you combine individual, disparate elements. The right classic 19th century piece will mix with certain vintage finds from the ’70s and ’80s and with pieces designed this year.” She added, “Graphic modern print textiles work with traditional chairs and sofas.”

7 trends we’d love to see go

Interior decorator Albert Hadley may have said it best: “The essence of interior design will always be about people and how they live.” Indeed, personal taste and decor that meets your needs are always in style.

That said, there are some trends we’ve come across in the past few years that we wish hadn’t been so widely adopted.

Homes that look like taxidermy shops. Enough with the wall of antlers and animal skins all over the floor!

Flat-screen TVs mounted so high above the fireplace mantel, you get a neck cramp before the first commercial break.

Home makeover shows that set unrealistic expectations about decorating a space. There are usually scores of people working behind the scenes whom you never see on screen. Plus, we’re firm believers that good design takes time.

Shallow sink basins that result in water splashing everywhere.

Outfitting a room top to bottom with reproduction designer furniture. We’ve seen too many homes filled with so much Eames, Bertoia and Saarinen they look like soulless showrooms.

The phrase “man cave.”

Watch any house-hunting program on HGTV and, chances are, granite countertops are on the buyer’s wish list. But there are so many options now available when considering redecorating your home. These options include recycled paper and glass products. For 2010, it would be nice if anyone embarking on a remodel to think beyond the infamous granite and stainless steel that everybody uses.

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My Take: Redecorating your home can be fun and expensive at the same time. One thing people are doing when they redecorate is upgrade their network security software. Of course, if you have a home business you might want to look into managed security services just keep your business safe.

I do disagree there with interior decorating on granite and stainless steel. You can navigate granite in a variety of colors and it is so durable that you will not have to worry about it for a long time. And stainless steel sinks give the kitchen or even a bathroom clean and sterile look to it.

Besides, when you redecorate your home, it should be what you want not what is in style. You are the one that has to lose with the, not your neighbors, friends or extended family.

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Cited: NY Times

“If I see a floral print or pastel dress in my closet, I think: ‘Ugh, gross! I don’t want to wear that,’ ” said Deborah Watson. You will never find her in pink! Ms. Watson has turned her back on the hallowed totems of femininity in favor of the big T-shirt, well-worn jeans and a graying black cotton overcoat. “Anything more girly, I just see as weak,” she said. “It’s not cool to be demure.” Ms. Watson happens to be a fashion stylist in New York

A disdain for such sweetly conventional trappings of sex appeal has trickled down of late from tastemakers like Ms. Watson to scores of followers who are swapping their baby-doll dresses, spindly heels and lace for the flinty attractions of studs and leather, mannish jackets and rock-star jeans. Their embrace of a pointedly aggressive, street-smart style suggests that the more adventurous are rethinking the tenets of female allure.

If the old ideal of sexiness was the shoulder-baring voluptuousness of Scarlett Johansson, the new sexy is the European fashion editor Carine Roitfeld in a black blazer and tall vixenish boots. The look, often slightly disheveled, is shared by off-duty models and style-world insiders.

“We may like Lady Gaga, but in this day and age, women aren’t rushing out to look like her,” said Sam Shahid, the art director behind the provocative advertising campaigns of Abercrombie & Fitch.

Women now want to project a “more powerful sexuality, not a damsel in distress,” said Sharon Graubard, a senior executive with Stylesight, a trend forecasting firm in New York. The look, streamlined and armored for tough times, reflects a distrust of trends and a skepticism toward traditional gender roles. Most tellingly, perhaps, it also represents a pragmatic response to a hobbled economy.

“So-called luxury — people are tired of it,” said Tatsugo Yoda, the owner of Aloha Rag, a fashionably progressive Honolulu boutique with a New York outpost. “They want more utilitarian pieces — military jackets, track pants and classic white shirts — that they can wear more than twice a year.” The look is assertive, Mr. Yoda said, but recognizable at the same time.

Much the same can be said of the 1990s-inflected biker jackets, latex leggings and fingerless gloves that are also key components of a style that is as racy as it is familiar. It represents “a down and dirty kind of look,” said Andrew Bolton, curator at the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. At the same time, its suggestion of disarray “gives an idea of accessibility,” he said. “There is so much sex appeal in imperfection.”

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These notions of sexual allure can be traced to the utility gear adopted by self-styled survivalists, the funky regalia of old-school rockers, even the lingerie-and-leather of Parisian streetwalkers. More Patti Smith than Fergie, current variations on sultriness are thorny and faintly androgynous. These rebellious, antifashion messages, blunted over decades of exposure, have been picked up, inevitably, by the world of high style.

Today shapeless, and sometimes shredded, T-shirts, combat boots and aviator caps reminiscent of a Mad Max epic, are proliferating on runways, as are leggings, fatigues and bicycle shorts. At the same time, retailers are championing the studiedly casual look of tailored jackets, oversize tunics and understated dresses as unfussy correctives to the rumba ruffles and dolly-bird frocks still appearing on some runways. This fall, fast-fashion outlets like Topshop and Forever 21 offered myriad variations on the biker jacket, leather rocker vest and calf-clutching jeans.

Mr. Yoda, for one, is selling a brand of androgyny that has antecedents in the artfully shabby world of grunge. At Aloha Rag, the look is slightly rough-hewn but has the advantage of spotlighting some overlooked erogenous zones: shapely backs and forearms and fragile collarbones, to name a few. It also reflects a willful gender mash-up being propagated by the young or young at heart.

“We’ve got a new dress code based on shifting norms around gender,” said Diane Ehrensaft, a psychologist in Oakland, Calif. Dr. Ehrensaft, who sees many middle school students and teenagers in her practice, argues that their blurring of assigned roles is deliberate and calculated. “Younger people just aren’t accepting the standard boxes anymore,” she said.

With their harsh outlines and suggestions of menace, the latest iterations of sexiness have gained little traction in American fashion glossies, which, some readers argue, persist in promoting sugary looks that are juvenile and contrived.

“Whatever the magazines say, somehow it isn’t working,” said Jamie Chiu, 29, a photographer in New York. “I’m not a soft girl,” added Ms. Chiu, who prefers the more rugged glamour of a leather jacket and skinny jeans. “I want to be sexy on one hand, but I also want to be tough, and I don’t want to show off my body.”

Nor would she be likely to commit the fashion infraction of trying too hard. For sartorial inspiration she looks to mannequins rather than movie stars. “Agyness Deyn, she is the perfect woman now,” Ms. Chiu said. With her choppy hair, funky suspenders and jaunty men’s hats, Ms. Deyn “doesn’t show off too much. She’s my idol now.”

Ms. Deyn and her peers in the modeling world — and, as significant, the editors of European fashion magazines — are the superstars of fashion blogs like Sartorialist, Fashionista and Garance Doré, which tend to bypass the labored sexiness of Hollywood stars like Megan Fox for the spiky yet approachable allure of Emmanuelle Alt and Ms. Roitfeld of French Vogue or Giovanna Battaglia, an Italian fashion editor, who are frequently snapped during fashion weeks on their way to the tents.

“Editors and models have become the new fashion icons,” said Tommy Ton, the Toronto-based publisher of Jak & Jil, a photo blog that documents their comings and goings. “Even celebrities follow their lead.”

“Off-duty models increasingly function as fashion bellwethers,” said Ms. Graubard, the trend forecaster. “They know how to inhabit clothes.”

To Helen Yi, a boutique owner in Chicago, editors like Ms. Battaglia are freshly anointed fashion avatars. “They show you a real-world version of high fashion. They’re not dressed by a stylist, and sophisticated people recognize that.”

And as Scott Schuman, creator of the Sartorialist, the photo blog about street fashion, observed: “It’s the models’ authenticity that makes them so sexy and appealing. People want a look that’s real.”

On recent visits to Europe and Australia, where he was promoting a new book based on his blog, Mr. Schuman noted that the influence of models and editors had become more widespread. “The accountants, doctors, lawyers and students who came to my book signings recognize their names and emulate their style,” he said.

That style, low key and mostly covered, retains a subtle charge. “For me, sexiness is more interesting when it’s not in your face,” said Susie Cho, the designer for Inhabit, a fashion label built on drape-front tank tops, cashmere leggings and filmy cardigans. Neither demure nor revealing, Ms. Cho’s unstructured look is based on comfort.

Ms. Cho states that her lying is not overtly feminine and definitely not ladylike and she puts down recent corseted rivals of the Eisenhower era. She considers many such period looks as being self-conscious if you interpreted literally and some of all ironies. “And there’s nothing sexy about that.” She commented.

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My Take: I have never been one for the feminine look anyway. As for pink, you can have my share of it. It looks good on some people, not on me. I actually think that the “feminine look” is long dead. Take a look at low rise jeans, at one time they were made specifically for women and now you find them for men as well. The same thing goes for women’s skinny jeans. You can now find men’s skinny jeans hanging on a rack.

The same goes with jobs. At one time you would only find men working with junk car removal services and now women are doing the same job. You will even find women working at junk yards that buy or sell junk cars.

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Cited: New York Times

Last month, the Senate replaced a 5% tax on elective cosmetic procedures with one on indoor tanning services in its proposed health care bill. The majority leader, Sen. Henry Reed, directed debate on the bill concerning the Senate’s health care bill that calls for 10% tax on tanning booth services. It seems that dermatologists and plastic surgeons may be off the hook soon.

In recent weeks, doctors and industry groups lobbied against the so-called Bo-Tax, a play on Botox, arguing in part that it discriminated against women, who receive the majority of cosmetic surgery and anti-aging injections. The site Stopcosmetictax.org, financed in part by Allergan, which makes Botox, stated that “it is unfair and insulting” to impose a penalty on cosmetic procedures sought primarily by women as if the procedures were unhealthy, like smoking.

Dr. David M. Pariser, the president of the American Academy of Dermatology, said his association proposed that an indoor-tanning tax be considered in place of the cosmetic tax, and that it contacted the offices of senators. “We made the case this will reduce health care costs by hopefully reducing skin cancer in the future — that’s the point — and also raise a little revenue now,” Dr. Pariser said.

The 10% tax on indoor tanning services, which the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation projects will raise $2.7 billion over 10 years (compared with the estimated $5.8 billion the cosmetic tax would have raised), is designed to offset some of the expense of providing health insurance for millions more Americans.

Supporters of the tax hope it will discourage the use of tanning beds, which have been linked to skin cancer. Indoor tanning before age 30 has been associated with a 75% increase in the risk of melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer, according to a review of medical literature last summer by the International Agency for Research on Cancer, part of the World Health Organization.

“In the past, taxes on addictive substances like tobacco and alcohol have decreased usage,” said Dr. June Robinson, who has studied young people’s attitudes about indoor tanning. “That’s the dream.”

Dr. Robinson, a clinical professor of dermatology at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University, said she was so thrilled when the proposal was announced that she couldn’t sleep. “I feel like sending a dozen red roses to a certain senator from the great state of Nevada,” she said Monday, referring to the Senator Harry Reid, the majority leader, who has shepherded the health care bill.

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But for owners of the estimated 20,000 tanning salons nationwide, the proposed tax is anathema. It represents a further restriction on their businesses, which are already drawing criticism in some states that have restricted teenagers’ access to tanning beds.

“We are the convenient scapegoats for the cosmetic surgery industry,” said Lewis Shender, the chief executive of Hollywood Tans Group, with roughly 180 salons nationwide. He said that the highly fragmented tanning-bed industry, mostly composed of mom-and-pop operators, “doesn’t have the resources or influence” of doctors.

If one objection to the Bo-Tax was that it singled out women, opponents of the tanning tax say that women are also singled out. Most salon owners are women, as are most clients, said Kathe Ray, a moderator for TanToday.com, a forum for salon owners. “They are still discriminating against women,” said Mrs. Ray, the owner of a tanning salon near Detroit. “It’s just changed industries. It hasn’t changed the end customer.”

Come July, when the tax is to take effect, any provider of indoor tanning, presumably including gyms that have only a bed or two, must add the 10% tax to their services.

It is likely that salons will absorb the tax themselves rather than burden consumers, said Dan Humiston, the president of the Indoor Tanning Association. Operators like Mr. Humiston, who owns 33 salons in upstate New York, have already had to substantially discount services to retain clients, he said. “The idea that we are going to pass this tax on to our customers, it’s untenable,” he added. “I do not see that happening.”

Roel Kunst, the director of operations at Portofino Sun Tanning, which has six salons in Manhattan, agrees. “A 10% tax is a huge tax on regular people,” he said. “In this climate, I am not able to pass it along.”

But even if the pocketbooks of some tanning bed users aren’t hit, Dr. James Spencer, a dermatologist in St. Petersburg, Fla., who specializes in skin cancer, said the levy still stigmatizes tanning beds in the eyes of consumers. “The political message here is this is a sin tax to have the social effect of discouraging you to do it,” said Dr. Spencer, who has studied the risks of tanning beds.

Dr. Robinson foresees the indoor-tanning tax dissuading first-time users and people considering “event tanning” before a prom or wedding. But she isn’t hopeful that the “twice-a-week tanner” will stop. “They are truly addicted to the feel-good tendencies from having a tan,” she said. “They will spend money on that, and not spend it on other things.”

Taxing tanning-bed services makes sense to Dr. Darrell S. Rigel, a melanoma researcher and a past president of the American Academy of Dermatology. “The rates of melanoma are rising among young women, who are the biggest users of tanning beds,” he said. “We are seeing melanomas on these women where the sun doesn’t normally shine but where tanning beds shine,” namely on breasts and pubic areas.

According to Mr. Humiston of the Indoor Tanning Association, overexposure to ultraviolet light has risks, but the benefits of moderate exposure to UV light that include its stimulation of the body’s production of vitamin D cannot be discounted. “It’s such hypocrisy that dermatologists are gleeful about putting a tax on something where there’s an actual benefit,” he said. Botox does nothing more than make people look better, he added, “and that’s not going to be taxed?”

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My Take: Is there nothing they will not tax? It seems the trend with taxation these days is if it is bad for you they will tax it until you cannot afford it. What are they going to do when people can’t afford it anymore and stop buying it? What the healthcare bill should be more concerned with are not just healthcare, but the medical supplies that people cannot afford because they don’t have enough money.

The bill should take into consideration the equipment that doctors need like peak flow monitors and other respiratory equipment as well as their electronic health record system. A quick home nurses might need like the portable spirometers with patients at home. Many people are at home and need pulmonary function testing on a regular basis and their insurance may not cover.

No, they would rather concern themselves with people’s vanity of getting a good tan. I wonder if they will start increasing the tax on private label skin care products. I am sure that the cosmetics development industry might have something say about that one.

I will tell you what; I think that the Senate needs a good Maryland residential cleaning service. Maybe it will clean the cobwebs out from between their ears so they can think properly, like the rest of the US citizens. Sometimes I think a maid VA would do a better job in the Senate or Congress than what is there now.

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Related Resources

Cited: Fashion News

It seems that even with the tough economic times there is one part of the fashion industry that seems to be growing. Amongst the many neighborhood shopping thorough fairs with empty Windows and “for lease” signs there are many lingerie boutiques that are managing to survive and grow in numbers. In fact, businesses with limited retail experience brave the tough economy in Los Angeles including Sugar Lilie Dessous Prives, Jenette Bras, and Undrest lingerie and loungewear. Even some of the more stab rushed lingerie brands started new stores that include La Perla that started its second LA outpost in the Malibu Lumber Yard. Even the Atlanta-based Intimacy opened its first California location at the Fashion Valley shopping center in San Diego. Intimacy also plans to open locations in Westfield Century City and South Coast Plaza as early as May 2010.

Because it’s considered a necessity, lingerie tends to be less affected by an economic lull than other categories, said Ellen Lewis, a lingerie retail and manufacturing consultant. Lewis has her own company, Intimate Product Concepts, and works with trend-forecasting agency Concepts Paris.

“[Lingerie] should be a recession-proof product in a sense if the store is driven by helping people,” she said. “There is so little [service] out there with this intimate type of product in the bigger venues because of the cutbacks from the recession. I think it’s an opportunity for a customer service–driven business.”

At your service

When Intimacy opened its first lingerie store in Atlanta in 1992, shoppers were hesitant to let a fitter accompany them in the dressing room. But that changed after founder Susan Nethero appeared on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” in May 2005 and showed the masses that the perfect bra could be found with the help of a professional bra fitter’s keen eye. These days, women have embraced the personalized attention.

“Today, women expect that [personal fitting] when they come to Intimacy,” said David Nethero, husband and business partner of Susan. “We take reservations online, so it’s like a spa experience.”

Since 2004, Intimacy has been on a growth spurt and now operates stores in New York, Chicago, Boston, Houston, Miami and Dallas. In Southern California, the company has a store in San Diego and plans to open stores in Los Angeles’ Century City neighborhood and at South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa. Intimacy carries a range of top brands such as Prima Donna, Marie Jo, Lise Charmel, Chantelle and Aubade.

The couple credits their success in part to their business perspective as “a retailer of a service as opposed to a retailer of a product. As a result of the service—the bra fitting, which is free—people buy product,” David Nethero said.

Jenette Goldstein—who opened her self-named boutique in the Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles in May of this year—hinges her business on this same brand of personalized customer service. Her destination shop, which specializes in busty cup sizes D to K and band sizes from 30 to 44, draws customers from Pacific Palisades to Riverside.

“In a recession, you want to buy something that’s of quality and that’s a necessity,” said Goldstein, who opened the store because she had difficulty finding bras that fit her G-size bosom. “Once you come in and you feel how it fits and it will last twice as long as a lower-priced brand, it will make you feel better. That is economic. I don’t have to do any convincing. Once you put it on, you see that it’s worth it.”

Brands such as Freya, Panache, Anita and Le Mystère average at $68, and brands such as Prima Donna and Empriente average $120.

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In the case of Sugar Lilie Dessous Prives, located in West Hollywood, Calif., owner Stacy Shakoor’s young designer brand selection boasts a dual purpose of beauty and functionality catering to the delicate female taste.

“Our emphasis is on fit, quality, great fabrics, and value. If you spend money on something, you want something that’s going to last you,” said Shakoor, who stocks Hot Milk fashion maternity lingerie, Araks, Marlies Dekkers and Timpa. In comparison to some shops that play to the male desires of bedtime wear, Sugar Lilie’s pretty unmentionables are chosen for a combination of exquisite design that also passes the comfort test. “How do you feel when you put it on? It’s all about you,” Shakoor said. “In our neighborhood, women tend to be more practical and not so much on the ‘va va voom’ side.”

The sagging economy and abundance of “for lease” signs proved favorable for local designer Maria Paz Navales, who was able to negotiate an affordable temporary lease for a pop-up shop on the high-profile shopping block of Robertson Boulevard. The boutique showcases her Undrest Supima cotton knit and cashmere crochet loungewear; her higher-end line, Undrest Haute Couture; and her swim line, Undrest by the Sea.

Following brisk holiday sales of her cotton and cashmere lines and the presentation of “a deal by the owner of the building I couldn’t refuse,” Navales decided to make the pop-up shop permanent.

“Seeing the retail aspect has made me a better designer. I am able to kind of get a sense of what the retail buying pattern is. I’m able to listen to what the general public wants, and I design with their needs [in mind],” said Navales, who is in the store at least three times a week. She plans to use the store as a testing ground for a ready-to-wear line of Supima cotton/Modal/spandex leggings and Liberty of London print dresses in spring 2010. Still, veteran lingerie retailers warn these newcomers that the lingerie sector is not an easy niche to break into.

“Lingerie is very hard,” said Jason Amirmajdi, who owns high-end lingerie store Le Bra in West Hollywood. “You have to have a great deal of inventory. Everyone who walks in has a different size, has a different need, has a different taste.” Le Bra stayed afloat through the tough times by offering studio services and incorporating authentic vintage lingerie with collectible quality, Amirmajdi said.

Le Bra carries the crème de la crème of European brands such as La Perla Black Label, Eres, Chantal Thomass and Made by Niki that average in the $200–$500 price range. He added that customer service is essential to success. “Ninety percent of my clients come here because of me.”

With the knowledge that each specialty store commands its own niche of taste and price, Amirmajdi welcomes the addition of more lingerie stores in Los Angeles. He even says that the influx of small specialty stores may provide more opportunities for new and independent designers. “It gives the public a choice,” he said. “You go to Paris, every block has a lingerie store.”

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My Take: One thing is positive; at least 50% of the world population wears underwear. That was proven on a certain airline on Christmas day. I will never understand how somebody can sacrifice their life to make your point, whether that is religious or political one. I am very glad that I do not fly anywhere. If you ask me, I think airlines in California should have security guards. Of course, they probably would not want the armed guards on a plane. They could get Sacramento CA unarmed security though. They could at least get CA vehicle patrol for parking lots.

Okay, I am off my soapbox about the security of our country. Back to the subject at hand, the article is very right in that people always want underwear. Guys love to see women in sexy underwear and women love to see men in sexy underwear as well. Underwear is one of those products that everybody will want at some point in their life. Another business that is good is landscaping. If people own a house and they having a hard, they need to have it mowed some point.

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Cited: Associated Press

Fashion has seen a tough year in 2009. Luxury retailers are seeing their profits slowly disappear just like the beaches eroded by the ocean. Retailers are depending on designers to slash their prices so that they can make a profit. In fact, many of the design houses are now promoting value instead of quality. The image of self-inflicted misery, listless, half starved models could be the perfect thing after all it is fashion chains reproduce runway looks in about six weeks.

Working women can identify with Sarah Palin’s style. Michelle Obama’s closet includes high fashion and dresses like a Sophie Theallet. Michelle Obama often projects a glamorous aesthetic, whether with her husband or with the French first lady, Carla Sarkozy, right.

At least the fashion world had Michelle Obama and Sarah Palin to help avoid the impression that, you know, nobody cares about clothes and big dangly earrings. It’s hard to see now why so many columnists got their tights in a twist over Ms. Palin’s spending $75,000 of perfectly good Republican money at Neiman Marcus during the 2008 Republican convention. Have you seen Neiman’s numbers lately? After 18 straight months of declines, it wouldn’t be surprising to find a little shrine erected in Ms. Palin’s honor.

Editors and designers love Michelle Obama, of course. All those magazine covers; the Flotus Tactical Cardigan Collection at J. Crew; her glamorous face-off with Carla Sarkozy, the former model, in France, when both women dressed for the evening in French clothes (Mrs. Sarkozy in Dior, Mrs. Obama in Azzedine Alaïa). Jackie Kennedy, the other White House deity, had to give up her beloved Givenchy because her husband, seeking the support of labor unions, needed his wife to be seen in American-made clothes.

Mrs. Obama, though, has successfully separated the personal from the political. Indeed, the only thing more surprising than the storm over Ms. Palin’s “Pretty Woman” makeover is that almost no one has raised an eyebrow over Mrs. Obama’s wearing of non-American labels, which include Nina Ricci and Junya Watanabe, and some of the most expensive at that.

Maybe the politicos don’t know a Junya from a Juicy, though you can bet that Mrs. Obama and Desirée Rogers, the White House social secretary, do. And maybe the world has gone flat, largely paving over the distinctions, geographical as well as moral and ethical, about where clothing is made. But with garment factories in New York closing on a steady basis, with people losing their jobs in retail and fashion, it’s a hard distinction to sell this year.

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Anyway, Mrs. Obama has made it clear that her well-stocked closet is her business. Last March, in an interview about the new White House organic garden, she took a playful poke at her husband. “He doesn’t understand fashion,” she said. “He’s always asking, ‘Is that new? I haven’t seen that before.’ It’s like: ‘Why don’t you mind your own business? Solve world hunger. Get out of my closet.’ ”

Lots of working women who spend their own money for their clothes would identify with that. But I’ve been thinking about those women, and it seems to me that Sarah Palin, and not Mrs. Obama, is closer to how most of them dress. (Obviously this is not a discussion about Ms. Palin’s political views or intellectual gifts, so stay out of my fashion story.)

I like the way she dresses. The straight skirt and white blouse, the trim jacket with an open neck and three-quarter sleeves — the look is clean, tailored and energetic. It’s businesslike without being boring, smart without being insider. You don’t need to read a fashion magazine to understand it. That was how Ms. Palin dressed on her book tour. And it’s the way a lot women would like to dress, and probably do, when they don’t have time or many choices and think that accessories always wind up looking prissy.

Mrs. Obama’s choices are all insider, apart from her shorts and those strategically worn plebe numbers from Target and Talbots. If she got any more insider she’d be backing down a runway. She wears Rodarte, Jason Wu, Sophie Theallet, Narciso Rodriguez, Thakoon, Isabel Toledo and Rick Owens, labels that in terms of creativity and price are at the highest level of fashion. Go much higher and you hit couture.

In Mrs. Obama, the fashion industry has found a woman it can admire but cannot completely possess. That’s because she doesn’t favor only one designer or a clique, as her predecessors did. Also, she avoids the appearance of being cozy with designers. That’s why she’s often described in terms reserved for a 1930s screen goddess: “regal” and “dazzling,” a woman not to be contended with so much as worshiped from afar.

But make no mistake: the Obama White House has its fashion addicts. When Robin Givhan of The Washington Post asked Ms. Rogers if her dress at the recent state dinner was by Comme des Garçons, she replied, “Of course.” Of course because her dress was kooky Comme? Or because Ms. Rogers is in the club? Maybe a simple “yes” would have been better.

A year ago, Ms. Palin was whacked for being a pretender in plushy clothes, and for not having the presence of mind to tell the McCain campaign handlers to buzz off. She may have needed some new clothes, and an update to her beehive, but Ms. Palin already looked great — a babe in jeans, a pro in a suit. As with many women her age, a well-tailored jacket did more for her than a closet full of designer clothes. How can you tell? Play a mental game of paper dolls and put one of Mrs. Obama’s printed or belted dresses on Ms. Palin. She looks frumpy.

Now you look at it, what you wear sends a message. Do I look rich? Do I look available? Do I look like I get it? Does the industry really want people to think of Mrs. Obama and her wardrobe when they go to buy their own fashions? Does Mrs. Obama want to be viewed as a maven, an icon or as a modern, educated and working woman? You decide.

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My Take: I really do not care what fashion anywhere! I know the designer is in the other businesses in the fashion industry want them to wear their style or whatever. As long as they are wearing clothes I do not care. I do not believe that clothes must cost an arm and a leg!

It is like remodeling your house, you put in new exterior doors and it makes the house look fantastic; but, what about the inside? Well, you could put wooden doors in to make the house look great. However, the only people that see the inside are the residents. You could go all out and get custom made doors that look just as good as a manufactured door, which is a lot cheaper.

Would you think less of a Solana Beach CA real estate attorney who wore Kmart clothes? I would not be paying for the San Diego real estate lawyer to look fantastic, just to represent me in a matter of law. Hopefully, I have been able to get my idea across that it does not make any difference the exterior looks like, just what is on the inside.

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Cited: The New York Times

“Living well is the best revenge,” is an ad slogan launched for B & B by the makers of Bénédictine liqueur back in the 1980s. Now there is a new drink that blends Bénédictine with orange bitters and champagne.

Bénédictine, which celebrates its 500th anniversary in 2010, has done both: It has lived well, having evolved from a bitter medicine formulated by French monks into a fancy-schmantzy after-dinner liqueur, and crammed two or three lives into its half-millennium history. Its latest life — as a rediscovered component in haute cocktails — is currently unfolding, particularly in New York City, where craft bartenders have latched onto the liqueur in much the same way they’ve taken up Chartreuse, another herbal, monastery-derived liqueur.

“It’s got serious street cred,” said Damon Dyer, a bartender at Louis 649 in the East Village, “and brings a certain something-something to a drink.”

That certain something-something comes from a blend of 27 herbs and spices that a monk named Dom Bernardo Vincelli distilled in 1510 at a Bénédictine monastery in Fécamp, France, in Normandy. Dom Vincelli’s Elixir, as it was called then, was a hit until the French Revolution, when the monastery was destroyed. In a Dan Brown-worthy plot twist, the recipe was lost until an art collector and wine merchant named Alexander Le Grand discovered it within a trove of old books he bought in 1863. After toying with the recipe, Le Grand began selling the elixir as Bénédictine — for pleasure, this time, rather than for medicinal reasons.

It was a minor player in the United States until the 1930s, when a brushfire of a drink called a B & B — equal parts Bénédictine and brandy, created at the “21” Club — swept the nation. The Le Grand family’s response was to bottle the cocktail itself, mixing Cognac with the liqueur and selling it as B & B.

B & B still outsells Bénédictine nine to one in the United States, according to a company spokesman, but it is the original undiluted product that has lately been stoking the curiosity of bartenders. As Mr. Dyer put it, “I don’t want my peanut butter and jelly in the same jar, you know?”

A little advice for those who partake of these new or old drinks . . . As a former Deputy District Attorney, these Redwood City CA criminal lawyers have an advantage over other attorneys who do not have a similar background. Ultimately, there experience could help you avoid jail time and expensive fines. These Redwood City CA criminal attorneys can help as only a successful and knowledgeable criminal lawyer can against charges of domestic violence, shoplifting, traffic violations, burglary, drunk driving and other criminal offenses.

Mr. Dyer showcases it in a drink he calls a Monte Cassino, in which he mixes equal parts Bénédictine, lemon juice, yellow Chartreuse and 100-proof Rittenhouse rye whiskey. “I wanted to take a complex ingredient like Bénédictine and make a simple drink out of it,” he explained. “No bitters or esoteric infusions or egg whites or any other silliness.” Cocktail aficionados familiar with a cult drink called a Last Word will recognize the template here: a round, earthy cocktail in which a whole gamut of flavors — bitter, herbal, sweet, sour, spicy — are eerily balanced.

The moral of the story, according to Mr. Dyer: “We don’t always need to reach for the newest, shiniest, flashiest-labeled product on the shelf. Shiny and new aren’t always better.”

Served at the rooftop lounge of André Balazs’s Standard Hotel is a simpler and more celebratory option called the Benediction, which is a half shot of Bénédictine in a champagne flute with a dash of orange bitters and topped off with Champagne. Another similarly festive drink called the Wisco Country Club is served at the Joseph Leonard on Waverly Place. This one is very similar in the fact that it uses orange bitters and is topped with champagne; however the remainder is 1 ounce of gin, 1 ounce of fresh grapefruit juice shaken with 3/4 ounce of Bénédictine. Sometimes the old is as good as the new.

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My Take: I am not a big drinker so I really am not interested in liquor. Besides, I am just a little fashion and believe that if you want to get drunk just drink a shot. It gets you drunk faster and it is cheaper. However, if you do get drunk and fall down might want to cut to a personal injury attorney Denver CO to find out if you have a case because if you fail because of something wrong with the building, it may not have been your fault.

On the other hand, it is not smart to drink and drive because then you will need a criminal lawyer. Because depending on the situation, you could be looking at some jail time and nobody wants that. Of course, if you are on the West Coast you would need to talk to LA personal injury lawyers. Then again, if you are so drunk that you run from the cops when they try to pull you over you may need Los Angeles criminal attorneys instead.

Drinking in excess leads to many problems, not only can you get tickets, you can lose your family, which means you would need a divorce lawyer Denver, business and yourself. That is why I believe you should not drink more than 2 drinks at any given time. That is enough to help you relax and give you enough brain function to get home before you make a big mistake.

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