College Family Catches New Wave in Clothing, Body Awareness, Erotic Art While Playing the Horses* * * Startup Succeeds in Five Specialty Retail Markets, Finds Time to Horse Around______ BY SANDRA FELLING Staff Reporter NEW YORK– The new wave in fashion isn´t really there. Virtual clothing in many forms has made it difficult to tell whether Americans are dressed to the nines, or just kidding. Virtual clothing, jewelry, stockings and now, lingerie, is gaining surprising acceptance throughout America, a society once known for its body taboos. Behind the trend is a group of university students who have taken the retail world by storm this year, managing a start-up business in a half-dozen markets and calling it fun. Not yet out of college, they forecast leading their class academically while grappling with new products and new markets. Following the introduction of virtual clothing by Still Waters Fashions last fall, women have begun wearing virtual fashions widely in public, and if sales are any indicator, extensively in private. Men have not taken up the trend as widely because body hair makes use of the technology troublesome. A recent fashion show staged by Still Waters on the popular “After Oprah’ TV program presented women´s daytime wear that appears to be normal clothing, but is simply coloring on bare skin. Still Waters´ executives, Anne Stilwell, company president, Heather Huxley, originator of the concept, and Iris Schmidt, designer of the current line, all dressed fashionably, if virtually, in the company´s products. The show presented a summer line that includes Breastworks, a product that adorns the wearer´s breasts with artistic ornaments. The hit of the show, however, was the introduction of virtual lingerie, which looks like it is there, but is not. The line is now available in many retail outlets as well as through several catalog offerings. At Christmas, Still Waters warned of a possible slump in sales of virtual stockings, the company´s biggest success, due to winter weather. The forecast turned out to be wrong, although sales of the L´Eggs virtual stocking product, sold from racks shared with Still Waters´ VeeSes, did dip substantially. “Virtual L´Eggs hit a slump,’ said a recent article in Supermarket News, “because in cold weather, women want the relative warmth of panty hose. Still Waters´ fancy stockings sell from the same racks, but when it comes to sexy leg-ware, it looks like weather is not a factor. And, what L´Eggs lost in virtual stockings, they made up in the traditional market.’ The result has been a precedent-breaking agreement. L´Eggs markets almost exclusively in supermarkets and discount stores; Virtual L´Eggs are often bought as an add-on to Still Water´s fancy designs. Now, L´Eggs has agreed to offer their Virtual L´Eggs alongside Still Waters´ products on Still Waters´ racks in department stores, boutiques and in mall shops like Victoria´s Secret. “We wouldn´t be doing this if it weren´t so much fun,’ Stilwell, 22, told WSJ. Still Waters Art, the parent company, has already been approached by would-be purchasers. “We´re not interested,’ Stilwell says, “We´d have to get serious.’ Still Waters Art markets a variety of products at retail and by mail order, most of them sexy and humorous. Only their business sense and aggressive marketing are serious. Their first products were low-cost prints of nude drawings of Stilwell and her fellow family member Mary Travis. Sold by the Still Waters Graphics division through a local storefront, the artwork line was combined with personalized stationery featuring digital sketches that appear to be nude outlines of the customer. The Graphics products are franchised on 30 campuses. Still Waters Erotic Art, another division, markets erotic art by mail order to collectors and dealers around the world. The material consists of Nudes by family members Will Spector and Heather Huxley, both art students at the university. An ‘Erotics´ line consists of anonymous, highly erotic drawings. ‘Explicits´, are hard-core erotic art. Other products include oriental erotica obtained under a cross-marketing agreement with Asian Erotic Arts of San Francisco. It includes sculpture and jewelry produced by Mei-Ling Lin, an American-Chinese artist who specializes in erotica. Will Spector, the creator of Still Waters´ Nudes, is also well known as a painter of horses, having completed a number of commissions for owners and breeders. His equine acrylics are another major Still Waters product, selling for “several thousand dollars’ each. He is working on a one-man show at the Chicago Institute of Art to open next fall, not long after he graduates from college. Heather Huxley, the other artist member of the Still Waters family, is credited as the inventor of Virtual Clothing. The product line is based on a colored adhesive, applied from paper transfers, that bonds to the skin on reaching body temperature. The color washes off with a special soap. Huxley says the technology, now company-owned, came from “one of those neglected 3M inventions.’ Huxley, meanwhile, has returned to her original art field, drawing nudes and erotica using a computer, not a pencil. Under the direction of Iris Schmidt, a Fashion Institute of Technology graduate and family member, Still Waters Fashions´ line of virtual clothing, jewelry and stockings has rocked the fashion and retail scenes since their introduction last fall. The line is being constantly up-dated and re-designed, like any mainstream fashion line. As if four or five major endeavors were not enough, Mary Travis, a founder, and Ken Chance, also a family member, are developing a major breeding and training facility for western horses, known as Still Waters Farms. Their group of 20 teen-age girls, the Still Waters Riders, are known in Western Pleasure Riding circles as up-and-coming competitors and perform regularly at horse shows with a demonstration of horsemanship that leaves the audiences cheering. Next January, they expect to appear at the National Western Stock Show in Denver, one of the largest shows in the country. Ms Stilwell and Saul Katz, Still Waters´ Chief Operating Officer, told WSJ, “We became friends our first year in school. We decided we wanted to do well in school, so we formed a study group, and just went on from there, doing things we sort of stumbled over and that we all enjoy doing.’ “The reality,’ Stilwell says, “is we get so many laughs out of Virtual Clothing we just have to keep playing with it. Clothing has always had an element of fun to it, and this takes it right over the top.’ The ten-member group lives in two houses not far from the university. “We´re not a commune, as some have suggested. We´re a family,’ Katz insists, noting that a number of non-residents are part of the ‘family´. “All our parents, of course – we couldn´t have done this without their support – and several others who really add value to the group with special skills.’ Stilwell and Katz were competition swimmers in high school and continue to work out in their pool at home. The company moved into a new office building this winter and is pursuing a ‘highly selective´ hiring program. Stilwell says, “We´re not looking for new family members. But anyone who works with us has to meet the family´s standards of excellence, of enthusiasm. They need to be people we can get along with, with whom we can go on having fun and laughing a lot.’ One aspect of the fun at Still Waters is setting the fashion world on its ear. Its introduction of virtual clothing last fall received national television coverage, and the popularity of virtual clothing has grown steadily, despite winter weather. New racks for the combined virtual L´Eggs and VeeSes products will be in the stores for the summer trade, when it is expected that all forms of virtual wear will start a warm weather climb that could surprise the forecasters. |