Grooming
How did Jeans become so popular when nobody was wearing them before?

Now that summer is over, it’s time to pack up our beloved vintage jeans and bid a fond farewell to summer shorts.

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There is a denim fit for every taste when it comes to boot cuts, boyfriend, high-waisted, slim, or flared styles. But have you ever pondered where this environmentally friendly product comes from?

Unquestionably, jeans are a wardrobe must, but that wasn’t always the case. Indeed, there have been ups and downs with jeans over time, and they have changed tremendously. To honor our most fundamental component, let’s discuss the key moments in its history!

1873: for ranchers and miners

The indigo-dyed denim and pockets that have become the quintessential blue jeans were created in 1873 by San Francisco wholesale fabric shop owner Levi Strauss and tailor Jacob Davis.

Blue jeans were the ideal clothing choice for both miners and cowboys between 1920 and 1930. As a result, it gained popularity among Westerners in the US who were employed as male workers and required robust apparel that could resist severe abrasion.

Otherwise, no one was seen in jeans on the street! They were stiff and really unpleasant as well.

1950′: stepping into the film sequences

Our favorite jeans began to become so popular in the 1950s that they appeared in motion pictures. In the 1955 film Rebel Without a Cause, one of that era’s most well-known actors, James Dean, helped to popularize blue jeans. His “bang” outfit of jeans, a leather jacket, and a basic t-shirt was instantly copied by other males.

Not only did JD drop the first clue, but pop culture hunks like Marlon Brando, who wore denim while shaking up the squares in movies like The Wild One in 1953, also pushed jeans. As a result, blue jeans were outlawed in certain American public schools due to their excessive provocativeness.

1960s: The Freelove Era

The 1960s hippie movement, which was characterized by freedom and youth, welcomed casual blue jeans as a means of expression. “Personalized jeans” were especially trendy at this time. While women’s liberation activists and feminists like Gloria Steineman, the head of the American feminist movement, wore blue jeans to symbolize gender justice in the early 1970s.

Late 1970s: elegant attire

Denim toon began to pique the eye of high fashion during the late 1970s and early 1980s.

The first designer to feature blue jeans on the catwalk was Calvin Klein in 1976. When 15-year-old Brooke Shields appeared in one of the most well-known and controversial Calvin Klein commercials, stating, “Nothing comes between me and my Calvins,” just four years later, denim became the top priority for all fashion designers. With the grunge movement in the 1990s, denim fashion saw yet another shift. During this decade, jeans were more associated with informal wear than formal occasions. Trendier styles included multiple-pocketed Carpenter jeans and denim overalls, which were popular with younger ladies.

What has altered?

When we’re not sure what to wear, jeans are undoubtedly our go-to solution because of their increased versatility. However, the process of making jeans may be quite environmentally harmful: did you know that one pair of jeans requires 10,000 gallons of water?

Grooming
How photos of “flying dresses” got so popular on social media

With the vivid blue sky, white walls, and a ruby-colored dress flowing gracefully in the wind, it appears to be a picture perfect for Instagram likes.

Read More: Flying dress dubai

Originally taken on the gorgeous Greek island of Santorini, these photographs—known as “flying dress” photos—have since gained popularity in other travel destinations, including Dubai, Tulum, and Italy.

Though the images appear as though they were shot for a high-end fashion magazine, the photo shoots are actually quite inexpensive and are increasingly available on websites that let users book travel experiences, such as Viator and Klook.

A Greek island native

Evgenia Volokitina, who co-founded SantoriniDress with her husband Kirill Babenkov in 2016, is without a doubt the queen of flying dress photos.

The couple worked as both wedding and portrait photographers, and Babenkov was supposedly working on a shoot in the Dominican Republic when a stylist gave him the idea to recreate the look for tourists by adding a long train to a gown to add more drama.

They have since grown their company to include Dubai, Italy, and Cuba.

Since Volokitina and Babenkov used search engine optimization (SEO), which is a technique to stuff a website full of keywords to make it easier to find in a quick Google search, it’s nearly hard to find a flying dress photo online that doesn’t somehow link back to their website or social media profiles.

However, success has inspired others in other markets to test out a comparable business plan for photography.

When the coronavirus pandemic struck, she was employed as a wedding planner in Montego Bay, Jamaica, her hometown.

Rather than following her own travel ambition of staging a flying dress photo shoot in Santorini, she chose to take advantage of the trend back home.

She was also fortunate. Jamaica has mostly remained open throughout the pandemic, despite a few brief lockdowns and curfews. Hunter was still able to draw clients because travelers from the US and Canada kept coming to Jamaica for vacations.

Ironically, a good number of her clients were individuals whose vacation plans to Greece had fallen through due to changes or restrictions on travel.

Inside the action

Hunter offers everything from the dress itself—which comes in a range of inclusive sizes for women of different body types—to hair, makeup, and styling assistance upon request. Clients who schedule a photo shoot with Her Dress Jamaica, Hunter’s company, get to select from five different photographers based on whose style they like best.

Whether she owns a wind machine to get the dresses to swirl so dramatically is one of the most frequent questions she receives.

“We always have an assistant on every shoot,” says Hunter. “After getting our clients ready and getting everything in place, we work with the photographer to schedule a 1, 2, and 3 count. We toss the dress, and he quickly makes the shot.

These days, flying dresses have transcended solo experiences, just like most trends. Hunter has organized multiple maternity shoots and group photos for up to 14 women wearing various dresses.

Several analogous photography enterprises have had to devise unique strategies to elevate their game.

Dresses That Fly Based in the well-known resort town of Tulum, Mexico, the company has extended its product line to include waterproof “flowing dresses” that are ideal for floating in cenotes, the vibrant sinkholes filled with water that are scattered throughout the Yucatan peninsula.

In order to ensure that the ring photos are equally Instagram-worthy, other businesses can arrange for a proposal to take place mid-shoot or use a drone to capture the images.

Every flower has a thorn.

However, there are some things that are difficult for even the most exquisite dress to conceal.

One of these shoots was done in the California desert by Christina Kumar.

She tells us, “There were thorns all over my dress because it was in a location with very dense nature, and it was very hot.” The cameraman “had to do a quick rattlesnake check at my standing location.”

During the shoot, she opted to minimize her movements and let the dramatic dress do the talking.

Kumar’s shoot went really well, and she was thrilled with the outcome despite the possibility of catastrophe.

Hunter claims that the unpredictability of Jamaica’s weather is one of the main obstacles to her business. However, models can always wait out the storm in a covered area, and a local photographer accustomed to the weather can quickly take a few stunning images.

Technology
Why Outsourced Product Development Is So Popular With Startups

Although it was formerly an unusual business strategy, organizations of all sizes today routinely employ outsourced product development. This tried-and-true method frees up company founders’ time to concentrate on other essential business duties while enabling them to quickly bring usable software to market.

Read More: Outsourced Product Development

The application outsourcing sector generated $109.10 billion in sales in 2021, according to Statista, and is expected to continue growing in the years to come. I’ll teach you how to effectively outsource software product development in this post so you can compete in the market.

Outsourced Product Development: What Is It?

Outsourced product development, as the name suggests, is the process by which a business hires an outside provider to handle software development and associated work. Product managers or non-technical founders can effectively launch software products without delving into the technical details thanks to product development outsourcing.

Although they have gained popularity during the epidemic, outsourced software product development services have long been a standard practice in the commercial world. At different periods of their development, a few multinational firms, such as Microsoft, Google, and Whatsapp, outsourced their software development requirements.

For instance, in order to save money and acquire access to elite talent, WhatsApp hired engineers from Eastern Europe to work on its app during its early stages. While this is going on, Google continues to outsource its product development in an effort to support its own staff and access potential worldwide talent.

Benefits Of Outsourced Product Development For New Projects

When starting their innovative initiatives, entrepreneurs are frequently faced with the decision of whether to hire a team internally or hire outside help for product development. Based on uptech experience, working with an outsourced product development business instead of hiring new employees is quite beneficial for founders.

A company needs to be flexible and prepared to change with the market fast. The outsourcing strategy benefits founders more, even though an in-house staff gives them more control. The latter enables them to maintain a lean team structure while keeping overhead low.

Founders opt to outsource software product development for the following main reasons.

Domain & Technical Expertise

Creating a useful and entertaining app requires more than just coding expertise. A UI/UX designer, front-end developer, back-end developer, database engineer, project manager, and QA test engineer may be needed, depending on the kind of project.

Every function requires a different set of skills that require years of experience to become proficient in. For instance, although some backend engineers are skilled in ExpressJS and Ruby on Rails, others are more familiar with Laravel and Django.

Founders may use the wide pool of diversified talent across several areas and overcome the shortage of local skills by outsourcing software product development. Hire talent that would otherwise be hard to come by or prohibitively costly in the local market by using outsourcing.

IT Procedure Enhancement

It requires more than just writing code to create an app and assembling various software components. Every successful app goes through efficient procedures, which begin with conception and continue long after the app is released.

An app’s usual development process at Uptech includes discovery, testing, development, prototyping, and post-release enhancement. Every software phase is further divided into more manageable, intricate subprocesses. This is a comprehensive overview of the services we provide for outsourced product development.

When integrating recently hired engineers into an unproven process, inexperienced entrepreneurs are likely to encounter difficulties. Rather, outsourcing guarantees that the software development is handled by a well-organized team that is conversant with standard operating procedures and industry best practices.

For instance, our staff is experienced with the Agile process, which enables us to implement changes based on customer input quickly.

Lowering of Expenses

Hiring local software engineers in rich Western nations might put a strain on the budget. For firms that are bootstrapped, this is a bad idea because the money is just as important for operations, marketing, and other needs. Reaching predetermined financial targets when creating an app is more affordable when outsourcing is used. 70% of businesses polled by Deloitte stated that cutting costs was a primary driver of outsourcing.

You can avoid giving the internal team a set wage and other benefits, to start. Working with outsourced product development businesses also saves money on software licensing, gear, and workspace costs. The majority of companies go to Eastern European developers for their outsourcing needs since they provide a developer’s balance of price, cultural resemblance, and quality. Eastern European product development outsourcing businesses charge $35–60 per hour, which is reasonable when considering the greater expense of recruiting developers in Western nations.

Services
Why are Elf bars so popular with people?

They are dispersed throughout. Perched on the terraces of visually appealing cocktail bars, they are in the well-groomed hands of youthful professionals. Suckled covertly by students gathered in the nooks of neighborhood bars. They are the cause of the miasma with a cherry aroma that permeates smoking locations all around the country. Of course, they’re elf bars.

Read More: ELF BAR

The popularity of disposable vapes has skyrocketed in the last few months. Sales of disposable vapes increased by 279 percent in the last quarter of 2021 on IndeJuice, the top online vape platform in the UK. The most popular brands were Geek and Elf bars. Disposable vapes are especially popular among young people; according to a recent survey, less than 1% of 18-year-old vapers used disposables in the beginning of 2021, and that percentage rose to almost 57% in January 2022. The hashtag #elfbar has received close to 600 million views on TikTok thus far.

Twenty-six Elf bars were first used by Elle in December. She says she used to use a reusable Juul, but it got pricey very quickly since she had to keep buying fresh pods, so she started looking at disposable choices. She continues by saying that she has discovered that Elf bars have made it simpler for her to give up smoking. She informs me, “I had smoked since I was about 18.” “But I’ve completely given up smoking since I started consuming Elf bars. It’s odd that I’ve only had two cigarettes in 2022 because on nights out, I used to chain smoke thirty cigarettes.

Nikita, 22, gave up smoking cigarettes in February of this year and started vaping. “A vape would last me nearly two weeks, and elf bars weighed about six pounds.” Compared to cigarette smoking, it was far less expensive, she claims. In addition to trying vaping to wean himself off of cigarettes, Andrew, 24, initially purchased an Elf bar three months ago. “In 2018, having a vape pen was ‘uncool,’ but now that everyone has one and it’s socially acceptable,” he remarks. “It’s not bait; you can chuff one in the smoking area.”

Cigarettes continue to maintain their status as a cool thing even after it has been established that they are linked to health issues including heart disease and lung cancer. John Orvted stated earlier this year in the New York Times that “despite the science, or the times, it’s one of those things, like bluejeans, that has always been tinged with a sense of cool, and will always [symbolize] renegade urges in some form.” On the other hand, vaping has been compared to smoking’s sanitized, goofy little cousin.

However, Elf bars have succeeded in entirely flipping the sometimes negative perception of vaping. The chunkier, ugly vapes from the mid-2010s stand in sharp contrast to their streamlined, ergonomic, and colorful design. Additionally, they are available in a variety of nostalgic, sweet flavors, such as cotton candy and cola, which are perhaps more appealing to younger customers. With lower retail costs and better functionality than the majority of other vapes, they’re also more accessible. With Elf bars, there’s no need to fuss about purchasing liquids or charges; you can simply take them out of the package and start smoking. One of my friends tells me, “I remember thinking, ‘This is a bit of me,’ when I first tried one.”

The increasing popularity of elf bars is being driven by their ubiquity. “Elf bars or vapes are now used by the majority of my smoking pals. It’s similar to having a herd mentality, says Elle. “A few of us began doing it, and now we’re all doing it.” Elf bars aren’t just for heavy smokers; according to Liam Humberstone, technical director of Totally Wicked, they’ve “undoubtedly attracted many more social smokers, regular smokers, and in some cases, people who would have otherwise found themselves trying combustibles.”

In the past several years, red top newspapers have fueled moral panics about vaping, and there has been a debate over whether or not vapes might serve as a gateway to cigarettes. Contrary to popular belief, evidence indicates that vaping is 95% less dangerous than smoking cigarettes, and less than 1% of vapers today have never smoked. “Vaping has become a problem for public health. Thanks to their conversion to vaping, thousands of individuals who would have been smokers today are not, according to Action on Smoking and Health’s deputy chief executive Hazel Cheeseman (ASH). “National data on vaping has consistently demonstrated extremely low levels of use among nonsmokers.”

This is not to suggest that vaping is inherently acceptable or beneficial. Nikita expresses anxiety about her increasing reliance on disposable vapes, saying, “I’ve just become more and more addicted to it.” Each week, I would purchase an Elf bar. then every few days or so. It used to happen once every 24 hours. She continues, saying that she has since switched to larger, stronger Elux bars, which have 48 cigarettes’ worth of nicotine in them. She claims, “My boyfriend and a lot of my friends have all gone through the same thing.” “A few have returned to smoking cigarettes due to their lower cost.”

“After three months of vaping, it’s more difficult for me not to reach for an Elf bar than it was for me to give up cigarettes after four years of smoking.” Never had a vape juice that was even remotely as addicting as an Elf bar, says Andrew. “My buddies and I refer to them as ‘crack sticks.'” They should only be tobacco-flavored, behind the counter, alongside cigarettes, and in a filthy green packaging, in my view. Situated directly in front of the counter, they resemble toys in every way. It should be subject to the same limitations as cigarettes.

Cheeseman notes that vaping is not risk-free but emphasizes that it may still be a very helpful tool in helping smokers stop. “This is something new and needs to be closely monitored if products are hitting the streets that have a big appeal among never-smokers,” she adds. “Vaping is not risk-free, even though it is far less dangerous than smoking—one in two smokers will pass away from a smoking-related ailment. To ensure that the enormous benefits that smoking cessation offers to society are not negated by non-smokers starting to vape, the government must continue to keep an eye on this.