...Galvin Communications. We just wrapped up a 3 month PR campaign with this Portland, OR based PR firm, and let's just say they were terrific. We highly recommend them to anyone or business that wants to create buzz without advertising.

Read the DM Case Study, click here.

The good old friendly rat-race we young, hard-working professionals have come to realize as an unfortunate fact of life in corporate America now appears to be extending its tail to our friends north of the border.

According to Canada's Reportonbusiness.com,

The presence of workplace rivals drives young professionals to work longer and harder, especially in large cities - "a kind of urban rat race."

Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems to me that Canada's cage of office monkeys fit the description of their American cousins: they work hard at their job, put in the overtime and do so because they are committed to producing the best work they can. Unfortunately, this keeps them from spending enough time thinking about the way he looks.

ENTER DRESSMONKEY

We understand the rat race, we respect its results, and we want to celebrate the “headless individuals” who make it possible by allowing them to express themselves, if only from the neck down. These men, like me before them, have love/hate relationships with their jobs, they feel like cogs in a great machine but they also are proud of the small part they play in moving it. We appeal to such men by putting them in control and making them the nexus of the entire blazer-making process.

In the US, most desk jockeys live completely isolated from the processes that make their lives possible. They buy their food pre-made and frozen at supermarkets, their clothes off the rack at stores, and their information from sources over which they have no control. In a land where more people vote for American Idol contestants than for presidents, it is clear that the forces of disenfranchisement are insidiously at work.

Cheers, to our Canadian office monkey cousins...

Spring is just around the corner, and that means a new line of fashion in stores. Listen as Michael Macko (Saks Fifth Avenue) and Adam Rapaport (GQ Magazine) discuss the latest fashion trends for men on NPR.

Notable trends they predict for spring are:
- No socks
- Boat shoes
- slim suits
- slim cut jeans and khakis
- flat-front pants
- Dark/clean denim
- Tucked in shirts

Light gray suit, white shirt, black tie. You're never going to look better. Any guy that can wear that, you walk into a room, you'll be the best dressed guy in the room.

To listen to the entire interview, click here.

GQ gives some nice, practical tips on dressing up (and down) the back-in-style classic navy blazer.

Watch the slideshow

More exciting buzz for DressMonkey (and best of all, we are mentioned first...before Banana Republic and J.Crew).

Go bold.

"Express yourself by choosing a bold color or print on the inside of your blazer such as red, white silk or printed designs based on Chinese textiles," says Horowitz. "Try pairing a neutral gray or camel blazer with a shirt in one of the neon colors that are back this spring, such as orange, yellow, green, blue, pink and purple."

Read the entire article, Spring Into Style

While I wanted my first blog back in a long while to be about Dressmonkey, this is the only creative outlet on the web I have so I felt like publicizing my frustrations on a generally shitty day. I promise more juicy entrepreneur fodder in my next post.

Every so often, the world smiles at you. Unfortunately, today wasn't one of those days. I had to book a flight back to the US and the cheapest one I could find was one for almost 1500 USD. I blame my brother for picking an obscure place like Tampa Bay Florida to get married. Apparently flights to Hartford, where I'm from, are about 300 dollars cheaper; strike one, Florida. I have never made this public before, but I have a profound hatred of Florida. I mean, I don't hate the people or the way of life, I just hate the weather. Really, how can anyone live in a place, especially seniors, where walking out of an air-conditioned house is 1 time out of 4 practically suicide? I think Florida and I fell off while I was waking up at 5am for early swim practice for 7 straight years of winter vacations devoted to improving my freestyle. While Florida can be indescribably hot at times, Florida in December, at 5 in the morning with an unheated pool is something comparable to what the passengers in the Titanic must have been through. Again, this has nothing to do with the people (the last thing I need to do is piss off potential customers from the FINE state of Florida), this is just a general rant about life being poopy for a day.

Well, in addition to getting angry at Florida, today I had to bicker with a supplier who, 2 months after we had bought our fabric from, decided that we hadn't paid her in full. After quite literally an hour on the phone with her, I convinced her to talk to our factory's accounting department and check directly with the source of the payment. An hour later, after hearing the typical whining at frequencies that only certain. Shanghainese women can produce, I got a subtle text message saying "I'm sorry, it was our mistake." Damn right, it was your mistake, now I want my hour back.

The third horseman of the apocalypse of my day today? The fact that my roommate decided that she couldn't afford the rent that she's paying now and that she wanted to live with a friend in the boondocks of Shanghai. This means that now I have to find another roommate, not go to Hong Kong this weekend so I can save money in the event that I have to pay rent myself for a while, and be generally ticked off for an indefinite period of time.

The only thing I could do after a day like today was go to the gym and work out for 2 ours. That really helped, I feel like a train hit me but at least I'm not thinking about how crappy today was. Well, I did just write about it.

I promise more entrepreneurial exploits in my next post. Sorry for the rant!