Bluebird Days in Jackson Hole

Here's Rita helping a customer a the Jackson Art Association Art Fair this weekend.

With a lot of our product line devoted to warm clothing for winter, it is difficult to interest people in our things in the summer. Regrettably, in the Rockies where we live, summer time is the only time high quality art fairs are held, so we have to grin and bare it and try our best to help people remember that summer is transitory and winter will soon be back-- and that it lasts longer in this part of the world than summer does. Frankly, that is a very hard sell when it is ninety degrees in the shade. The last thing a sane person wants to do is try on a fabulously warm winter coat.

With the weather providing spectacularly blue and cloudless skies, and with temperatures only in the seventies, we had high hopes for an unusually successful summer show in Jackson, Wyoming this past weekend. It just goes to show...not much in life can be counted on to do what you expect.

Maybe if it had snowed the number of people interested in warm clothing might have been higher, but it seems the economic woes of the nation have crept into very affluent Jackson Hole now too. We were fortunate enough to find old and new customers enough to make the show a success for us, just not the type of success we had hoped for considering the gorgeous cool weather. However, many of our fellow artists suffered great disappointments. An extremely gifted raku sculptor, who traveled all the way from Michigan, was exhibiting next to us. He failed to make a sale all weekend and he wasn't alone. Another artist who makes beautiful dulcimers and who has exhibited in Jackson for many years suffered a similar fate. Hat designers, weavers, jewelers, painters, all friends of ours, and virtually all left for home disappointed by sales that were far below normal. It appears that the discretionary income that supports the arts may be shrinking.

But, is the size of the financial trouble mere perception, or is it reality? We had a lady decline to purchase something that was a couple of hundred dollars, saying she just couldn't afford it. She said that after she had told us she has a home in Washington, DC and she also has a second home in Jackson. It's hard to believe anyone who can afford a multi-million dollar second home in Jackson can't afford to spent a couple of hundred dollars at an art fair. Perhaps perception can be reality.

Dramatically reduced sales and what appeared to be a fall off in attendance was a hard reality for many of our fellow artists. With so many artists striving to make a difficult and precarious living, we sincerely hope this show was an aberration.

We have ten days to spend at home now. Fred will be putting a new roof on the house some of those days. A slippery metal roof, so he won't have to climb up on the roof in the winter anymore to shovel off the deep snow. We'll try to get caught up on our custom orders and maybe make some new hat and handbag designs become reality instead of just potentially good ideas floating around in our little gray cells.

Sun Valley

After years of hearing about a fabulous art show in Sun Valley, we finally made the pleasant trip to Sun Valley to participate this past weekend in this year's show. Artists have told us about all the Hollywood people summering in Sun Valley that come to the show and how wonderful sales are at this show, so we went hoping for a fun weekend spiced up with a little celebrity sighting.

We did see stars, but only the celestial ones on the clear cool nights. When the Sun Valley Center for the Arts, which puts on this annual art show, had to move the show's location from a site next to the Sun Valley Resort's Lodge to park in downtown Ketchum (only about a mile away), it seems they lost the loyal following of celebrities and other guests staying at the posh lodge. Oh well, our regular customer's are the true stars in our life.

As always we met some wonderful people and found good homes for many of our creations. We also found time to soak in a delightful natural hot spring a few miles up the road from Sun Valley. We could have gone to a free symphony concert that night at the new $30 million concert venue (built on the site where the art show used to be held), but we were too tired and thought a hot spring soak would be more our speed that night.

Maybe it is because summer is past it's prime, but we noticed a clear up tick in interest in our shearling garments at this show, as opposed to our leather garments at previous shows. Perhaps it was due to evening temperatures in the low 40's? We just hope that anyone interested in a new shearling coat for this winter plans ahead and places their order early so we have time to make what they want. With the rising costs of shipping leathers and skins from Europe to the U.S., our suppliers in NYC are not willing to fly in supplies like they used to, so delivery times are getting slower.

A Trade Secret

Here's Rita with a happy new coat owner!

We were in Park City, UT for the Kimball Art Center's really big Festival of the Arts last weekend. This show is the most amazing show we do all year, from a sponsoring organization's logistics point of view. Several blocks of Main Street (the heart of old Park City) are blocked off to traffic for three days, most alleys and side streets are fenced off to control admission to the festival, parking for thousands of cars in out-lying lots is secured and dozens of buses run on time at mere five minute intervals to transport the 40-50,000 festival visitors to and from Main Street. Police and hundreds of volunteers keep the city and festival running with very few glitches over the long weekend. We're reminded of a major military operation.

This year the weather was spectacular summer sunshine and NO RAIN! We saw many happy customer from previous years and made new friends and customers to look forward to seeing again next year.

One old friend stopped who by to say hello is the vice-president of Overland Sheepskins and Leather, a national retailer of men's and women's shearling and leather garments with 13 stores from Vermont to California. We had been noticing that Overland, like most other shearling and leather stores, has been carrying ever higher percentages of non-American made products. Our friend informed us that they were lately finding that their customers were preferring to buy the American made goods they still carried, over the cheaper imports, so they were trying to shift their inventory to reflect this trend. Music to our ears.

He also told us that he was very frustrated with his foreign leather manufactures. It seems that they are constantly trying to save money by trimming their pattern pieces smaller and smaller to save on material costs. This obviously changes the sizes and the fit of the garments they send him- much to his consternation.

So, if you ever have wondered why something you bought fits "funny", or if you had to go up a size, it might merely be a "trade secret" of higher profits for the off-shore manufacturer.

We arrived home at 2:30 a.m. on Monday morning, and will be leaving at 4:00 a.m. Thursday morning for our next show in Sun Valley, so we're really cramped for time to restock and get ready. Days off? What are those?

Here's Rita assisting more clients in Park City.