The Birth of Bronx Fashion Week: Flora Montes Hit the Ground Running

Thanks to Flora Montes, The Bronx has its own biannual Fashion Week, which coincides with New York Fashion Week. Although the Bronx native doesn’t have a background in fashion, as a 15-year marketing veteran and executive chef, she had the necessary skills to get the borough’s Fashion Week off the ground last year.  “Bronx Fashion Week was born from an idea I had after going to a fashion show in Manhattan,” she told me recently. “When I...


Dean Landsman: Insight on best business books for summer reading

The question was this: what is your opinion about business books and what do you prefer to read for insights?  Crafting an answer was a challenge; it stimulated much thought, the sort of thought and insight one might anticipate receiving from a business book.

More often than not, it isn’t business books from which I derive insight. Life — and thus business — is about the human condition.  Insights and thought provoking content...


Dean Landsman on Digital Strategy

Digital Strategy encompasses many things: planning, tactics, metadata.  We can speak of algorithms, of search, connectivity. But none of that addresses a critical truth: the internet is a visual medium — visual, as in graphics, pictures, charts, illustrations, artwork, infographics, animation. There’s even a bona fide digital era category, CGI — computer-generated imagery. 

Strategic digital actions are wisely taken when using...


Tiny Fashion Business Explodes with BIG Personality and Social Media

One thing you can’t miss about Monroe’s House of Marvels fashion microbusiness: the owners have BIG personalities. It shows in their funky fashion products, from vintage pinup headbands and pet bowties to tulle tutus and handkerchief baby bibs. Partners Amber Harm and Mallory Cornelius attribute their fast success to a combination of big personality and diligent social media posting.

The company began with the women’s love of...


Jay Calderin, Author, Designer and Leader in Boston’s Fashion scene at the School of Fashion Design

Boston’s Newbury Street, dotted with art galleries, fine eateries and eclectic shops, provides the perfect setting for the region’s only educational institution devoted entirely to fashion, The School of Fashion Design. The windows draw spectators with themes that range from popular culture to classy throw-backs. Jay Calderin, fashion author, designer and instructor at the school, is a fashion icon himself as he’s the founder of Boston’s...


From Denver: It All Started in a Barn

Debbie Dygert, who hails from Kansas and whose family used to summer on their ranch in Toponas, Colorado, met her husband, Andy, who comes from upstate New York, in Colorado. When the two of them got married, they took a job as caretakers of a 300 plus acre ranch in Northwest Colorado located near the Moonhill one room schoolhouse, which is still in use, minutes from Clark’s general store and the village of Hahn’s Peak. They both love the...


From Medford, N.J. -- Beauty’s Edge

Days had passed since I felt myself at the precipice of shutting down and complete invisibility. Darkness replete with questions unanswered, nay questions obscured, and perceived resolutions painstakingly distant, left me dulled to the point of paralysis. Initially, an inner call to reach out to my community and return to the inner breath and fire of a lapsed yoga practice had me slowly rising from the abyss. Finally, I arrived at a place...


Sunny Murthy—The Well Dressed Student

“It's not about where you come from,” Sunny Murthy says, “it's about where you want to go.” Sunny Murthy is more than a student studying biochemistry at Virginia Tech. He’s an extraordinary young man who provides fashion advice to students through his popular blog The Well Dressed Student.

The launch of Sunny’s blog evolved from his...