Coolhunter

Persona que se dedica a identificar estilos punteros y minoritarios, y a vender su talento convenciendo a empresas de que esos estilos elitistas son potenciales modas masivas.

Existen diversas categorías de coolhunters, con diferentes niveles de compromiso y experiencia: están los gurús que cobran enormes cantidades de dinero por informes que venden a grandes multinacionales -y no se limitan a influenciar a empresas sólo de moda, sino de múltiples sectores de consumo: automoción, decoración, alimentación etc.- los que observan a pie de calle y cobran en cheques-regalo por informar sobre sus sensaciones, los que viajan constantemente a capitales del vanguardismo en búsqueda de lo último en streetwear, los que se mueven en exclusiva en un determinado ambiente, ...

Para ser un coolhunter de éxito no es suficiente con tener intuición, ser creativo o tener estilo propio. Los consultores exitosos son multidisciplinares y no sólo tienen visión y se alimentan de múltiples estímulos a nivel internacional, sino que dominan conceptos de historia del arte, comunicación, psicología, escenografía, sociología, marketing y diseño gráfico e industrial.

A nivel europeo el nombre de referencia es Nelly Rodi, fundadora de la consultora de su mismo nombre que ofrece servicios de asesoramiento creativo a empresas como L’Oreal desde 1985. Cuenta con 30 profesionales multidisciplinares exclusivos y multitud de colaboradores freelancers que interactúan creativamente y viajan constantemente por todo el mundo para imaginar y anticiparse a las marcas, conceptos, estilos de vida y modos de marketing y distribución del futuro.
Y a nivel español, hace algo más de un año Daniel Córdoba creó en Barcelona la consultoría The Hunter, con 12 profesionales locales más 8 corresponsales por el mundo: en Madrid, Bilbao, Valencia-Palma, Londres, París-Berlín, Nueva York-Las Vegas y Tokio.

Para Bill Tikos, fundador de The Cool Hunter, "un buen coolhunter debe tener un buen ojo y un fuerte sentido de intuición sobre lo que la gente quiere. Necsita observar el mundo a su alrededor y procesar mucha información que, en principio, no está relacionada entre sí y descubrir una tendencia dentro de eso. Es básicamente juntar cosas y encontrar paralelismos".

Enlaces recomendados: http://www.nellyrodi.com/ http://www.thecoolhunter.net/

Fashionista

This is a gently sarcastic term for a person who is an enthusiast for fashion. It covers not only the dedicated followers of fashion who wear the clothes, but also those who write about them. And it can refer to those who design, make, model and publicise clothes, and the fashion buyers whose decisions determine the success of a collection.

I’m told by researchers at the Oxford English Dictionary that it goes back to 1993, to a book by Stephen Fried entitled Thing of Beauty: the Tragedy of Supermodel Gia. The word began to become more widely popular from about 1998 onwards, has just started to appear in dictionaries, and looks set to become a permanent part of the language.

It’s formed from fashion by adding the suffix -ista from Spanish, equivalent to our -ist ending. English has only comparatively recently borrowed this from familiar Spanish-language terms such as Sandinista and Peronista. Such words have often had negative associations in English and new words using the suffix are usually derogatory, like Blairista for a supporter of the British prime minister, Tony Blair. Fashionista was one of this type, and it has not yet entirely lost its disparaging associations with triviality.

Last week I finally realized that no matter how hard I try, I’ll never be a true fashionista -one of those guys and gals who can stumble out of a swamp covered with leeches and still look like a million bucks- [Denver Rocky Mountain News, 09-1999].

As founder and editorial director of Wallpaper magazine, the style and design bible for the fashionista, he is a man on first-name terms with good taste [Daily Telegraph, 02-2000].

Enlaces recomendados: http://www.fashionista.com/ http://www.be-a-fashionista.co.uk/

Recesionista

A person who is able to dress in a fashionable way even though they do not have a lot of money to spend on clothes.

‘Modern takes on glamour are about deceiving the eye while preserving the purse, demanding all the imaginative skills of today’s artful recessionistas. In short, getting the high-fashion look at a low-down price …’ Irish Times 29-11-2008.

It’s a real problem. You want to look glamorous for an office do, but every bit of party gear in your wardrobe has been seen by your colleagues at least once before. Unfortunately, a trip to your favourite boutique doesn’t seem a realistic option either, because the credit crunch is nibbling away at your festive budget. The solution? – join the ranks of the recessionistas.

Recessionista is a popular new term for a person who manages to dress stylishly on a tight budget, and it gained currency rapidly in the pre-Christmas weeks of 2008, when people’s disposable income was seriously curtailed by the knock-on effects of an ailing economy. ‘Shoppers guilt’ is worse than ever in the current financial climate – with people losing their jobs left, right and centre, there seems to be no way of justifying frivolities such as clothes, shoes and handbags. So, instead of satisfying her fashion needs with a trip to the local shopping mall, the recessionista adopts a different strategy to replenishing her wardrobe. Typical activities include swapping clothes with friends, hiring rather than buying, or trawling the charity shops to find designer garments at a fraction of the high street price.

Though the stereotypical recessionista is female, the term does not apply exclusively to women -a male, budget-conscious, style maven can also be described as a recessionista. Nor is current usage restricted to clothes purchases, recessionistas might also track down the most budget-friendly ways to doing hair and make-up, adding stylish décor and furnishings to their homes, purchasing gifts, dining out and entertaining. If you’d like some tips on how to be an effective recessionista, check out this dedicated blog of the same name.

Recessionista is a clever blend of recession (defined in Macmillan English Dictionary as ‘a period when trade and industry are not successful and there is a lot of unemployment’) and the noun fashionista, which was coined in the early nineties to describe a person who wears fashionable clothing or works in the fashion industry. The suffix–ista, taken over from Spanish, has entered productive usage in English in recent years to describe a follower or devotee of someone or something. It regularly pops up in political commentary for example Blairista, Bushista, Palinista. A related neologism in this context is the expression recession chic, coined in the early nineties to refer to the concept of style and elegance within the constraints of a tight budget. The recessionista then, is the personification of recession chic, emerging some years later against a backdrop of economic downturn in 2008.

Also at the interplay of fashion and finance, though with an ecological twist, is the related expression slow fashion.Taking inspiration from the concept of slow food, advocates of slow fashion invest in pieces of clothing which will last a long time, and are often made from locally-sourced or fairly-traded materials.

----

Cinco Días - Madrid - 06/02/2009

Tendencias
Las 'recesionistas': esclavas de la moda a la caza de gangas
Se llama recesionista y le encanta gastarse 70 dólares (unos 54 euros) en lugar de 700 dólares (unos 544 euros) por un traje moderno. O ponerse una máscara facial de fruta de kiwi en lugar de pagar 100 dólares por una sesión diaria en el spa de moda.

Mientras se hunde la economía mundial, las recesionistas descubren el placer de encontrar gangas en lugar de derrochar, en un tiempo en el que el consumo ostentoso -incluso para los ricos- empieza a parecer una tontería.

'Hay algo grotesco en eso de pagar el precio total, como 2.500 dólares por una cartera. Es una tontería', asegura Mandi Norwood, ex editora jefe de las revistas Cosmopolitan y Mademoiselle. 'Es muy chic ahorrar y muy chic comprar una ganga. A cualquier mujer le gusta estar a la moda, pero también quiere que perciban que es inteligente', dijo.

La palabra recesionista -que originalmente quiere decir que disfruta vistiéndose a la moda teniendo en cuenta su presupuesto- se ha extendido rápidamente y ahora incluye el mundo de las cenas, el entretenimiento y la belleza. Ha sido declarada la palabra de la semana en el sitio de Internet Macmillan Dictionary Web la semana pasada y es uno de los tópicos de alta moda de 2009, junto a su palabra hermana chiconomics, según la publicación Global Language Monitor.

Las recesionistas disfrutan buscando gangas en páginas de ventas en internet, tiendas de consignación y almacenes de descuento.

Fuente y libro recomendado: Brave New Words (Kerry Maxwell).

Enlaces recomendados: www.macmillandictionaries.com/resourcenew.htm

http://recesionista.blogspot.com/

Framily

People who are not related to you but are your very close friends and are as important to you as your family.

‘Friends are increasingly becoming our framily as we search for another support network … A study has found that we are increasingly making framilies for ourselves by surrounding ourselves with friends.’ (Daily Mail 22-09-2008).

You might be familiar with the old adage ‘blood is thicker than water’ (basically, the idea that family relationships are stronger and more important than friendships). If however, in the aftermath of the Christmas holiday period when you’ve had enforced and concentrated contact with your parents, siblings or other relatives, you feel that a saying such as ‘you can choose your friends, but not your family’ seems more appropriate, then maybe you’re the sort of person that would favour framily over family.

Framily is a new social group underpinned by the principle that good friends are the family that we can choose for ourselves. Framily, our closest, hand-picked friends, contrasts with our actual family, those individuals who we may or may not like, but to whom we are inextricably and permanently linked by virtue of simple biology. Recent research suggests that many of us spend more time with friends than we do with family, and that we consider our most special friends to be as important to us as our actual family members. Indeed for some, these friendships mature far beyond familial relationships. The word framily therefore fills a gap in the lexicon for those friends we hold in such high esteem that we think of them as family. The concept of framily is thought to have arisen largely because of changes in the structure of society. In contrast to previous eras, people no longer routinely live close to other members of their family, and therefore need to create an alternative ‘support network’ – friends who they can rely on for company and support through life’s ups and downs.

Framily is of course a new portmanteau word, blending friend(s) and family. It first hit the spotlight in 2006, in the context of research commissioned by UK food manufacturer Dolmio (picture the well-known advertisements featuring members of a puppet family gathering happily together over a steaming dish of spaghetti bolognese!). The research also showed that, within framily groups, individuals sometimes take on roles that they would otherwise perform in a family – there’s often an organiser, a caring, motherly figure, a person who’s always having problems, and someone who behaves more like a child and needs ‘looking after’. Though only recently acknowledged in the UK, the concept of framily has existed in the United States for some time, especially among the younger, city-based generations, as caricatured in popular TV shows such as Friends and Seinfeld.

In a related context, those of us who are happy to be in the company of both framily and family might galvanise the recently coined trend of togethering. This is the practice of going on holiday with extended family and friends – imagine one big, happy crowd of your pals, parents, grandparents, kids, siblings and all related off-spring!

Fuente y libro recomendado: Brave New Words (Kerry Maxwell).
Enlace recomendado: www.macmillandictionaries.com/resourcenew.htm