apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

Please please please...dear apartment therapy, no more "wall decals" please. Hasn't this trend run its course?

Bah! Humbug!!

it looks very cheesy. Too many of such stickers are around. I don't think it is adding to any decor but taking away an otherwise goodlooking room

I second the No More Wall Decals motion. Also? Urban Outfitters is evil. Right wingedly, gay bashingly evil.

ummm...the president of Anthropologie (also owned by Urban Outfitters) is homosexual. Why would you think that Urban Outfitters is gay-bashing?

I will never shop at Urban Outfitters. The president of UO is crazy nutcase.

As for the wall decals, these, in particular, look cheesy in a very very bad way.

I talked to a designer for urban outfitters at a cocktail party last week. I inquired about this republican rumor. Supposedly one of their execs donated to the republican party, and i think specifically it was to an anti-gay candidate. It made headlines, but in general they try to stay in the middle, and most of the company is pretty left-wing.

umm, ok...you seriously can't post something like "Urban Outfitters is evil. Right wingedly, gay bashingly evil" & not explain yourself.

Now I'm not an Urban Outfitters shopper (nor do I dislike it) but where in the world did this theory come from? And do you have any supporting evidence?

There is that $13,000 contribution that the president of UO made to Rick Santorum. It is well known that the president and founder of UO is a staunch supporter of the PA and National GOP.

Also, UO engages in some shifty business practices, including stealing shirt designs from small independent designers. Also, I seem to recall that someone on this website claimed that UO copied some of her crafts and then sold them locally in one of their stores.

There have been a couple of threads where this issue was discussed on AT. The article linked to my name was from one of the earlier threads. I don't know who originally posted it.

i kind of like the idea, but in a off beat way.

i think this would be a great idea for a kids play room, without spending a lot of money you could make the room feel more like a doll house.

i have no idea about the actual people from the company but like every other company they all have wack jobs and they all get some controversy and bad ideas.

ok i agree the deer head was a bad idea. very tacky.

:P

Ugh. Why can't people ever separate the person from the company or the art. I love music ... it is my soul, but if I paid attention to what half the musicians out there were doing in their lives, I couldn't listen to any of it.

So the guy at UO sold out his roots and gives money to a republican moron. So what. As he even stated in the article (which was pretty good, by the way) he's not the one making the decisions on what is carried in his stores anymore, anyway. So it's not like he changed all his merchandise to pro-Bush, anti-gay crap or whatever. I'm sure there are questionable characters in nearly every business that people on this board are fans of. The founder of IKEA was a pro-Nazi teen. So what, he's sorry for it, and the company has nothing to do with that history. Etc.

As for ripping off local artists, not that this excuses it AT ALL, but unfortunately this is true of many large and small retailers. In fact, I just had this happen to me this year with one of the largest. It's not fair, but it will always happen, unfortunately. If I stopped shopping everywhere that knocked off someone else, there'd be few places to shop.

So until the day it's reported that UO is using slave labor in some old warehouse downtown, or something, who cares what the guy at the top is wasting his money on??

And yes, I think the decals here are kinda lame.

I love the idea of the flat fireplace on the wall but hate decals - they are all hideous and look like something a student might have - they are not serious home decor

I am seriously considering doing the firplace in my kitchen though - but I will be hand-painting it on the wall - this way it has a bit more integrity

>So the guy at UO sold out his roots and gives
>money to a republican moron. So what.

So, if you shop at his store, you give him more money to donate to reichwing fanatics like Santorum. Which would be stupid.

See the link for Urban Outfitters' history of copying

1. Make a list of all the places you shop
2. Hire a detective to spy into the books and lives of all the executives to find anything you don't approve of
3. Good luck finding any place to shop


The thousands of other people employeed by them need your dollar too.

How could the president give 13,000 to one candidate when each individual is limited to 2,100 per election cycle? Did he give it to the republican party?

Nathan ... thanks for the link. that was a really interesting and heartbreaking read, although I know a lot about all that stuff that goes on around. As I said before, I'm no stranger to it, nor are most of my designery friends. One girl was actually laughed out of the offices of a huge card company upon her presentation of a new line idea. Strangely, those same card ideas showed up on shelves the next year. My illustration partner and I had a big one this year also with a huge clothing chain, which was particularly hurtful as they had legitimately already done work with us in the past.

If it makes you feel any better, I can tell you first hand that many, many of the large chains knock EACH OTHER off blatantly, and not just the little guy.

Incidentally, unfortunately something you must also understand is that often vendors are part of the problem as well. Many manufacturers will take it upon themselves to get a design, rework it and try to sell it to a retailer. Not saying that's what happened with UO, but when I was in product development in-house, the buyers were sometimes presented with designs that weren't original. If the buyer is really good and knows the market well, they should recognize it and pass.

It's actually not all that difficult to track down the political contributions being made by a particular individual or company. There are links available all over the web, and even websites that rank companies based off of who they contribute money to. You can start at www.buyblue.org

just to clear some things up to all of you who are misinformed. I'm not sure way anyone doesn’t take a few moments to look things up. The founder and CEO of Urban Outfitters is not gay, he is married. He did contribute about 13,000 to Senator Rick Santorim's(sp) campaign. He also denied it even though an interviewer showed him a record which is public information. He has not denied being a Republican or that Urban Outfitters uses sweat shop labor. Rick Santorim who thank god did not win compared homosexuality to incest and bestiality.

Ridge -
The owner of UO is not some film auteur, there is no separation because the money (one of the largest contributions to the republican party ) comes directly from the pockets of the shoppers at UO. Thus a store that clearly markets itself to "hip, liberal" folks, are inadvertantly contributing to something they are seemingly against. It is a big deal, corporations are not individuals, this is not the same as a band. People like to think they have a greater consciousness about certain issues, so pretending like it is not a big deal is to remain ignorant. I do actually shop there on occassion, which pains me to be quite honest.

As for doing detective work at every company you buy from, it is hard given the global scheme of productions and stores these days, but it is not impossible. There are alternatives to the Gap and UO, and the more we continually shop at these stores the more we contribute to a pretty exploitive world of irresponsible corporations. When you are the CEO of a huge company like UO, no there is not a separation of the personal. You shop there you contribute to it. Plain and simple...and my guess is the hipsters who shop there have no idea about this.

lots of people are doing knockoffs of the firelace now, but this store on etsy has the best decals--take a look!

http://www.etsy.com/your_shop.php

they are awesome!