Free Republic

As part of its plans to deliver luxury fashion, United States retail giant Walmart is to launch a dedicated online Lord & Taylor flagship store next year, offering premium fashion brands to its customers. The initiative announced Monday will start next spring. "Our goal is to create a premium fashion destination on Walmart.com", said the Head of Fashion for Walmart's U.S. E-commerce Division Denise Incandela in a statement to NBC. "We see customers on our site searching for higher-end items, and we are expanding our business online to focus on adding specialized and premium shopping experiences, starting with fashion", Incandela...

Archaeologists in Boston have unearthed surprising luxury items from the 17th century, shedding new light on the lives of Puritans in the city. Items found include an extravagant fragment of 17th-century Venetian glassware and part of an Italian plate decorated with a flower that dates from around 1630, which may be the oldest piece of European ceramic ever found in Boston. “The items are significant because we rarely see them, archaeologically,” Joe Bagley, city archaeologist for Boston’s Landmarks Commission, told Fox News via email. “Also, Puritan Boston is often seen as an extremely conservative, reserved, and religious location in the...

As marijuana legalization continues across the country, weed is becoming increasingly mainstream. However, as much as the stoner stereotype has evolved into a broader label that also encompasses CEOs, educated millennials, and the Spicolis of the world, it still has a negative connotation. Industry leaders have quickly learned that destigmatizing marijuana use begins with educating the public, but Adrian Sedlin of Canndescent has figured out that, as with anything, it's really all about branding. Sedlin's luxury cannabis company offers premium flower alongside sophisticated packaging that no other company in the current market rivals. One look and I can almost guarantee...

"Teen Vogue takes teen girls seriously and understands that style and substance aren’t mutually exclusive," says the former Democratic presidential nominee. Teen Vogue's "woke" coverage of sociopolitical issues over the past two years has drawn ire from critics (Tucker Carlson among the most vocal), but with its latest cover star, the glossy just proved that its expanded focus is more than just a phase. The title secured Hillary Clinton as a guest editor and cover star for a special edition of the Conde Nast publication, which hits newsstands Dec. 5. Additionally, it was announced that she will serve as the...

Hillary Clinton personally OK’d a plan to have protesters dress in Donald Duck costumes to disrupt Donald Trump’s campaign rallies, a stunt that led to a clash with Donna Brazile, former chair of the Democratic National Committee. Brazile wrote in her book about the 2016 election out Tuesday that she became infuriated by “the idiocy” of the duck plan, according to Yahoo News. Later, when she was told Clinton came up with the idea of using the orange-billed cartoon character to call attention to Trump’s refusal to release his tax returns and was using the impersonators at rallies, Brazile told...

eCommerce has been shaping much of the world’s economy recently. One of those that are profiting from this is the global luxury industry. Further helping are Chinese travellers. This industry is seen to have a recent growth of six percent, after a rather stagnant 2016. Total market value of the industry is at a cool $304 billion. This is in part due to much activity in the Chinese market. China leads the way for global luxury spenders. Also helping this growth are the global millennialMillennials are also known as Generation Y, Echo Boomers or Millenniums. They encompass the age group...

Kevin Spacey has literally found himself in the same company as Harvey Weinstein. The disgraced actor reportedly checked into a private rehab facility to get treatment for his sex addiction–the same one that Weinstein is currently staying at. According to the Daily Mail, Kevin Spacey entered Meadows Clinic last week following a string of sexual harassment allegations made against him by male individuals. Meadows is a luxury rehab center in Arizona, with costs starting at $36,000 per month. It is said to have the best program for sex addiction in the U.S. Other celebrities who have checked into this elite...

This week, the fan-favorite Daredevil creative team of Mark Waid and Chris Samnee bring Captain America out of Secret Empire and into “Legacy.” And despite the initiative’s focus on the past, Waid and Samnee are all about moving Steve Rogers forward - out of Hydra, and out of New York. Starting with November 1’s Captain America #695, Rogers will leave the big city to get back in touch with the heartland of America. Newsarama spoke to Waid and Samnee on the eve of the issue’s release to find out what it takes to get Steve Rogers back in America’s good...

Early on this summer when I found myself down by Santa Rosa, AZ watching a gorgeous hail core fall on the stunning desert landscape, and then later that day staring at a haboob with a stacked shelf cloud above it near the border of Mexico, I had a feeling it would be a unique monsoon. It's funny how every year is different. That's the beauty of chasing the summer storm season out here in the desert southwest. You never know what's going to happen or what you might see.

The CEO of London startup Improbable spoke about the possibility of virtual worlds and gaming being an antidote to a world where jobs have been automated. Herman Narula, the co-founder and CEO of Improbable Worlds Limited, a London startup building the infrastructure for massive virtual worlds to be developed, says that "gaming could be an antidote to a world where jobs have been automated". While speaking at Wired Live in London yesterday the CEO directly referenced science fiction from The Matrix, author William Gibson and Ernest Cline’s 2011 novel Ready Player One. It is this last reference which seems the...

That's the cover of Snoop's newly-released album Make America Crip Again. As you can see, the photo isn't exactly subtle in its anti-Trump sentiment. Paying homage to Ice Cube's 1991 album Death Certificate, Snoop is seen sipping from a Crip-blue Solo cup glaring down at the corpse of the Donald.

A fashion rental service is looking to set up a distribution center in Obetz, which would create 400 new jobs. Fashion service Le Tote Inc. plans to open the center at the CenterPoint Business Park, taking 250,000 square feet, or about half of the space of the CenterPoint #6 building at 5465 Centerpoint Parkway. The company said it will invest about $1.1 million in the project and create $10.5 million in new payroll. “We chose the Columbus Region for its prime access to our customers and to global retail brands,” said Brett Northart, president and co-founder of Le Tote, in...

Do any music-minded FReepers know: does Rush Limbaugh release an official listing of the songs he uses as bumper music? I did a google search on his domain but couldn't find anything relevant. There's a tune he's using that I'd like to identify. It's instrumental -- sounds a lot (but not completely) like the music portion of Whitney Houston's "I Wanna Dance With Somebody," but with a faster and more energetic tempo.

Generations Y and Z are rewriting the rules of the luxury market, according to a report released on Wednesday by the consulting firm Bain & Co. The global luxury market, encompassing goods and luxury experiences, is forecast to grow by 5 percent this year to an estimated 1.2 trillion euros, or $1.4 trillion, according to the study, compiled using market data and interviews with people in the industry. But while older shoppers traditionally have driven the growth of sales in the luxury sector, this time it was shoppers born after 1980 who made the difference. Generation Y provided 30 percent...

Celebrating its sixth year, Halloween ComicFest is an annual event where participating local comic shops across North America and beyond celebrate the Halloween season by giving away free comics to fans. The event takes place the Saturday on or before Halloween each year (October 28th, 2017) and is the perfect opportunity to introduce friends and family to the many reasons why comics and comic shops are great! Comic shops are the perfect location to get into the spooktacular season: from zombies, vampires, monsters, and aliens to costumes and more, comic shops have it all when it comes to Halloween fun!...

Designer Hervé Pierre collaborated with Melania Trump in designing the vanilla silk crepe dress. It's now on display alongside 26 other inaugural gowns in the National Museum of American History's first ladies collection. WASHINGTON — First lady Melania Trump stopped by the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History on Friday to continue a 100-year tradition: presenting the inaugural gown. Trump collaborated with designer Hervé Pierre in creating the vanilla silk crepe dress, which features a slit skirt, ruffled accent trim and a red ribbon around the waist. It’s now on display alongside 26 other inaugural gowns in the...

Trying to find an unused retail version (on eBay, etc.) of older versions of Creative Suite is next to impossible, unless you've got a lot of $$. I read that, if a person has a Creative Cloud subscription, he can download legacy versions of Creative Suite from http://www.adobe.com/downloads/other-downloads.html I have two questions about things that aren't clear: 1. Does the user have to own a previous license for CS6 (or other legacy version), or does the CC license qualify to use both CC and the legacy version? 2. If a user stops the CC subscription after a year, is he...

•A Clemson University teaching assistant recently offered to help a local Antifa organization “produce zines, posters, etc. to help the cause.” •In response to a Facebook post from "Upstate Antifa" soliciting logistical support, Graduate Teacher of Record Brian Gaines volunteered his skills as a "graphic designer." •Gaines is also a member of "Indivisible Clemson," a group dedicated to actively resisting “the Trump agenda” that counts several Clemson professors among its members.....

Talk about the ultimate head fake! C'mon people. With all that's going on out there, THIS story is now grabbing the headlines?? The only two questions about this story is 1) Who did he piss off? and 2) what's not being covered? Let's see, a narrative on a mass-murder that NO ONE is buying, a U.S. protectorate in complete ruin, folks still without power from Corpus Christi to Orlando, sudden wildfires in multiple areas, The NFL saying 'No Mas', dumping the Iran sellout, money for the wall, and oh yeah - the North Korea thing. So, I personally don't give...

Broadway is breaking another price barrier. Producers of “Hello, Dolly!” are now charging $998 for front row seats at many performances between late November and mid-January, when Bette Midler leaves the cast, according to a review of ticket prices on the Telecharge website. With fees, each of those seats will cost $1,009. The price is a record for a non-holiday performance on Broadway. “Hamilton” is the only show that has reached that level before, charging $998 for some seats during the Thanksgiving and Christmas weeks last year. The high “Dolly” ticket, which is for weekend performances, reflects strong demand to...