If Bill Gates bookshelf could talk, it would have a lot to say about how to create a better society.

The billionaires reading recommendations for 2019 offer lessons on how to sleep better, raise children to be successful, and empathize more often.

In true Gates fashion, the list also includes more than one book about American history though nonfiction books were surprisingly sparse this year compared to Gates previous reading lists.

This year, I picked up a bit more fiction than usual, Gates wrote on his blog, Gates Notes. It wasnt a conscious decision, but I seemed to be drawn to stories that let me explore another world.

Here are the books Gates has recommended in 2019.

Jared Diamonds nonfiction book Upheaval argues that personal crises, such as losing a loved one, can produce valuable lessons for nations as well. Using individual problem-solving tactics, Diamond develops 12 factors that could help countries navigate major challenges.

The book was panned in a New York Times review, which argued that Diamonds case studies were riddled with inaccuracies and tailored to meet his specific framework.

If younger writers were ever this sloppy, their career would be over before it had even begun, the reviewer, Anand Giridharadas, wrote.

But Gates had a different take when he recommended the book in May.

I admit that at first I thought it might be a little strange to borrow from a model of a single persons emotional turmoil to explain the evolution of entire societies, he wrote. But it isnt strange at all; its revealing.

Gates seems to be interested in blood lately. Last year, he recommended Bad Blood, the story of Theranos, the blood-testing startup that deceived investors, patients, and business partners into believing its technology actually worked. Gates has also invested money in blood tests designed to detect diseases like Alzheimers and cancer.

Over the summer, he recommended Nine Pints, a book about a woman with premenstrual dysphoric disorder, a condition that prompts severe pain and mental anguish before ones period. The book demonstrates how regressive some societies are when it comes to providing safe, sanitary conditions for menstruation, though it also takes note of innovative ways to diagnose people through blood tests.

Gates wrote in a blog post that some anecdotes in Nine Pints would capture your imagination and make your blood boil.

The Future of Capitalism identifies three major divides in our modern society: cities versus small towns, college-educated citizens versus those without a higher degree, and wealthier countries versus fragile states. Based on these problems, Collier devises a potential solution for a fairer version of capitalism.

Gates said that while he agrees with Collier that citizens need to feel obliged to help one another, he doesnt necessarily believe that companies would ever volunteer to improve their communities.

When we want companies to act a certain way for example to reduce pollution or pay a certain amount of taxes I think its more effective to have the government pass laws, Gates wrote.

Having just missed the cutoff to serve in the Vietnam War, Gates said he has often questioned how he might have performed in combat.

Would I have showed courage under fire? he wrote. Like many people who have not served, I have my doubts.

These questions prompted Gates to pick up Michael Beschloss Presidents of War, a nonfiction account of how US presidents handled major conflicts from the turn of the 19th century to the 1970s.

Gates said the book taught him that the US often goes to war based on wounded pride and that each war is connected to the one before it. He said he also learned how his favorite commanders, such as Abraham Lincoln, were wracked with anguish during wartime.

A Gentleman in Moscow is fiction, but it draws much of its inspiration from historical events. The book tells the story of a Russian count who is sentenced to house arrest in Moscows Metropol Hotel following the Bolshevik Revolution.

The book came out in 2016, but Gates got around to reading it this year, after his brother-in-law sent him a copy. Gates said he and his wife, Melinda, pored over the title at the same time. He added that he teared up at one of the plot lines while he was a few chapters ahead of Melinda, tipping her off that something bad was about to happen.

Gates said he thinks all readers will enjoy Towles quirky details and genre-bending storylines.

Gates oldest daughter, Jennifer recommended An American Marriage to him.

Jones is such a good writer that she manages to make you empathize with both of her main characters, even after one makes a difficult decision, Gates wrote on his blog. The subject matter is heavy but thought-provoking, and I got sucked into Roy and Celestials tragic love story.

The novel follows the story of a black man and his wife after he is convicted and imprisoned for a crime he did not commit. It also chosen by Oprah for her book club in October 2018 and received praise from Barack Obama.

These Truths will teach even the most astute historians something new about American history, according to Gates. He praised Lepore for her use of diverse perspectives in the 800-page overview of the United States rise.

Its the most honest account of the American story Ive ever read, Gates wrote. But he wasnt a fan of the books final section, which he said reads like the work of a critic who is caught up in the passions of the moment.

Gates said University of Manitoba professor Vaclav Smil is one of his favorite authors.

Two years ago, I wrote that I wait for new Smil books the way some people wait for the next Star Wars movie. I stand by that statement, Gates wrote on his blog.

In his newest book, Smil explores societys obsession with growth, through the lens of everything from microorganisms to cities.

As always, I dont agree with everything Smil says, but he remains one of the best thinkers out there at documenting the past and seeing the big picture, Gates wrote.

Diane Tavenner founded the charter-school network Summit Public Schools. In Prepared, she uses her experience as an educator to explain how to raise children who can succeed in life after high school.

Gates called the book a helpful guidebook about how to make that process as smooth and fruitful as possible.

Gates described Why We Sleep as one of the most interesting and profound books on human behavior.

Walker, the director of UC Berkeleys Center for Human Sleep Science, explores both the physical purpose of sleep and how to improve your own shut-eye.

The book persuaded Gates to change his nighttime routine by getting to bed a bit earlier, he wrote on his Gates Notes blog.

Unsurprisingly, one of Gates top picks of the year was written by his wife. The debut New York Times bestseller shares the story of the inspiring women Melinda has met while traveling.

The message of her book is simple: Lifting up women can lift up entire societies. She has the data to prove it.

Gates isnt alone in his recommendation of Loonshots. It was the years most recommended book among CEOs and entrepreneurs, according to a Bloomberg survey. The books fans also include writer Malcolm Gladwell and organizational psychologist Adam Grant.

The book studies group behavior specifically, how it can change at the drop of a hat. In theory, that means companies can quickly adjust their structure to champion out-of-the-box ideas (what Bahcall refers to as loonshots). These ideas, he argues, lead to important breakthroughs not just in business, but in war and nature, too.

The Rosie Result is the third and final installment in Simsions trilogy. It picks up with Don Tillman, a geneticist, and his wife Rosie deciding whether to test their son for autism.

Gates said he sent the first book in the series, The Rosie Project, to about 50 friends. The second book, The Rosie Effect, taught Gates a lesson about relationships.

In the back of the mind, youre thinking about the relationships you have, Gates said in a conversation with Simsion, which he documented on Gates Notes. You get to laugh, but you also get to think, Hey, some people are good are this stuff. And some people are good at this stuff because they put the energy in.'

Gates hasnt tackled the 1,079-page Infinite Jest, but he does recommend a shorter read from David Foster Wallace. The short story collection, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, uses parody to critique toxic masculinity.

It was published in 1999 and adapted into a film in 2009, less than a year after Wallaces death. Savvy readers will hunt for a particular story, Brief Interviews With Hideous Men #6, which won the Aga Khan Prize for Fiction.

Cloud Atlas was first published in 2004; a 2012 movie version stars Tom Hanks.

The story begins in New Zealands Chatham Isles in 1850, flashes forward to Belgium in 1931, then sharply transitions to the West Coast in the 1970s all before jumping back to the place where it started.

Gates said hes trying to finish the book by the end of the year.

Its amazingly clever but a bit hard to follow, he wrote.

Gates owns two dogs, Oreo and Nilla, so it comes as no surprise that he was drawn to Sigrid Nunezs The Friend the story of a woman who inherits a Great Dane after her best friend passes away. The novel won the National Book Award for Fiction in 2018.

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16 must-read books that Bill Gates recommended this year - Business Insider

From the seismic effect of social to the polarising of public opinion, PRWeek talks to Nik Govier about PR in the 2010s.

Social media, reflecting growing distrust and polarisation of public opinion, has contributed to a shift toward corporate honesty and brave campaigns as PR embraces equality, purpose and sustainability.

When Dominos Pizza admitted that its product was crap in a campaign at the beginning of the 2010s it was, perhaps, the start of a different approach to PR and communications in this case, brutal honesty in an age when the public increasingly distrusts companies, politicians and even the institutions on which society is based.

For Nik Govier, founder and chief executive of corpsumer agency Blurred, this honesty, coupled with the rise and rise of purpose-driven campaigning, is one of the trends that will come to define this decade.

The best PR campaigns of the decade

Before launching Blurred in 2018, Govier was co-founder of multi-award-winning firm Unity, with her then-business partner, Gerry Hopkinson; she stayed for 12 years.

Unity was the agency behind Marks & Spencers ground-breaking, big-budget 2014 Christmas campaign Follow the fairies the epitome of a modern integrated campaign, led by PR.

Were in an airy, plant-filled room on the top floor of the latest, Mayfair-based incarnation of women-only members club The AllBright.

The club and its members are themselves a reminder of the decade we are living in; a departure from the stuffy establishments of another age.

Govier, an early investor in the enterprise and a firm supporter of its ethos, is unapologetic about the relentless rise of purpose in PR and comms.

She says: "It massively makes people roll their eyes, but theyre going to have to just suck it up, because its not going anywhere and it will continue to be a huge thing for decades to come."

There are strong drivers for this purpose-driven atmosphere, not least of which is the environment and a new generation of consumers who understand the power they wield.

"Were on the cusp of climate disaster and everyones waking up to that, not just consumers," says Govier. "Pressure is coming from markets, and shareholders everyone wants to know how [businesses] are contributing from a sustainability perspective."

But back to that crap pizza, and Govier is recounting some of her favourite PR and communications campaigns of the decade to date.

"Dominos had a huge market share but its product was quite shit," she says. "It put out a series of campaign films in which the CEO said: Weve let you down, our pizza is crap and we should do better. It turned that business around, absolutely revolutionised it and nobody really knows about it."

For Govier, this was the start of something new, and its influence continues to reverberate in campaigns at this end of the decade one being last years KFC FCK crisis comms exemplar after its chicken distribution failed, another being Carlsbergs campaign quoting consumers insulting its standard lager for example, saying that it tasted like "cat piss" earlier this year.

"Its that notion of honesty in an age of distrust thats the age were in now," says Govier.

By 2010, platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn were already established but, as a comms tool, social media was still in its relative infancy. Govier has enjoyed watching the evolution in its use by the industry, in particular the shift away from a fear of giving offence.

"A few years ago, brands would have thought: We dont want to offend people, but in a world where theres such division now, globally, I love it when people know who they are and theyre brave enough to say that on social."

Govier cites campaigns by Nike, featuring the American footballer Colin Kaepernick, Adidas There Will be Haters and Are You Beach Body Ready? by Protein World, which was banned from poster sites on the London Underground after a public backlash.

'You probably couldn't get away with that now' - Neil Hedges on PR in the 2000s

"[The campaign was] used as an example of how not to do it then lo and behold, six months later, [Protein World] released its figures and theyd gone through the roof. It realised its not for everyone and didnt care about offending some people My point is, know who you are and dont be afraid to say it."

The polarisation of public opinion is not just a characteristic of social media, of course; it is, for Govier, a defining aspect of the 2010s.

"We have never been more divided," she says. "We have Trump versus The Squad in America, Brexit here and just this notion that were trying to break ourselves up into little pieces."

Reassuringly, Govier thinks we are on the cusp of a backlash against this sense of division, anger and polarisation, and raises HSBCs campaign in the UK, We are not an island, as an example of brands responding to this sentiment.

"Of course, [HSBC] tried to claim it didnt have an underlying political message, but I loved the bravery of that campaign," she says.

For Govier, equality is another thread running through the decades public discourse, as well as the industrys work.

"Were seeing that run through all sorts of marketing and, while none of this is new, I think weve arrived at a tipping point," she says.

Equality has also had a hand in the evolution of the agency model, with the rise of virtual agencies such as The Difference Collective, headed by Angie Wiles, as well as others set up by and specifically targeting members of ethnic minorities, such as Asad Dhunnas The Unmistakeables.

"Angie would have been laughed out of the room a decade ago, but now people realise its a great way to tap into a talent pool of smart women who have to juggle work and childcare," says Govier. "Its a way of tapping into social situations that the world has led us to. Likewise, I think what Asad is doing is brilliant creating an agency around something thats crying out to be addressed."

Govier predicts that in the 2020s brands will place an even sharper focus on purpose and the global issue of sustainability, and that it will be not just conscious consumers who demand it, but every type of audience.

Another trend for the industry will be a talent flight from the capital to regional agencies and outfits that are a better fit for their work-life balance.

This decentralisation is unlikely to prove as much of a problem as one might imagine, however: Govier doesnt believe clients will care, because they dont want to pay exorbitant fees in order for agencies to have a Covent Garden office and beautiful flowers in reception "as long as they can get access to smart people who can change on a dime".

What will we think was quaint about this decade in PR in the years to come?

Govier says: "Well laugh at the fact that we thought that the channel or the type of marketing was the idea."

Thumbnail image GettyImages

See the article here:
Nik Govier's PR review of the decade - PRWeek

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The sharing economyhas touched almost all corners of U.S. business, from how we use cars,book vacations andtake office space.One of the cornerstones of consumer ownership that of owning one's own clothes is also losing ground.

Clothing rental companies are gaining significant influence in the apparel market, forcing big retailers to follow suit and creating a whole new set of complexities, and potential opportunities, for brick-and-mortar real estate.

The rental clothes subscription market was valued at $1B last year, according to data analytics firm Global Data, and is projected to hit $2.5B by 2023. Anxious to not miss out, multiple traditional retailers, including stores like H&M andBanana Republic,have launched clothing rental programs in the last few months.

Retail expertssay that the trend, though still in its early stages, is part of a seismic shift in consumer tastes, and landlords of retail spaces need to take notice.

We believe that 50% [of a womans closet] will be owned and 50% will be either rented or part of the shared-circular economy, Rent the Runway Senior Vice President Gabby Etrog Cohen said. "Look at Airbnb. They didn't think they'd share music and look at Spotify. Everyone thought they'd own DVDs, and look at Netflix. If you look at what's happened in the macro market, we are all moving towards a cloud-based, shared system.

Bisnow/Ethan Rothstein

A Rent the Runway drop-off box at a WeWork in Washington, D.C.

Rent the Runway, which hit a$1B valuation in March, started a decade ago. Over time it has evolved from occasion-focused rentals allowing women to rent gowns forformal occasions toward a subscription-based model that provides women with a set number of pieces each month, depending on their plan.

This month, it expanded its reach even further, launching a partnershipwith Marriotts W Hotels that allows women to have apparel waiting for them in their hotel closet when they arrive.

Rent the Runway isn't alone in the clothing rental space. Companies like Gwynnie Bee and Le Tote, which bought Lord & Taylor's U.S. department storedivision this summer,are major players in the space. Meanwhile, Ann Taylor, Vince and Anthropologie have all launched their own rental clothing lines.

We were driven by fast fashion in recent years, and that has shifted so much; I think consumers are wanting to be more fashionable than ever because we're living in a social media world [but] I think the mindset has shifted where a lot of the consumers are more environmentally conscious, CBRE Global Head Of ResearchMeghann MartindaletoldBisnow at ICSC's New York Expo last week. "They are looking at coming away from disposable fashion, and looking at kind of resale market and kind of circular economy. And I think that is opening the doors for a lot of new access to different consumers in different brands.

Bisnow/Miriam Hall

CBRE Global Head of Research Meghann Martindale

The groundswell of support for this shift is coming fromGeneration Z,of which the oldest members turned22 this year,according to EY Executive Director Marcie Merriman, a cultural anthropologist and retail strategist.

Its not that [consumers]arent going to continue buying, [but] they will be much more intentional about it, Merrimansaid.

She said traditional retailers are dabbling in rentals,but the startups focused on this type of business have a clear advantage. And she is urging landlords to pay close attention to the types of rental companies that are gaining traction in the market.

Look at these startups [ask] 'how can I grab onto a trend, invest and help them grow as a company? she said. Its only just starting.

But providing a rental service particularly as a company that has been focused on selling product for decades presents a unique set of challenges on the back end.

The whole area of returns is very, very difficult, said Ben Conwell, Cushman & Wakefields eCommerce and Electronic Fulfillment Specialty Practice Group leader.It remains to be seen if fashion retailers that do both for-sale and rentals, how effectively they can do that in the same building."

The mixmay result in some retailers creating dedicated processing facilities, but the whole market is still young and the logistics part of the equationis rife with unanswered questions, Conwell said.Hedoesn't believe the growth of rental and the growing push toward resales will result in the erosion of brick-and-mortar, and said the trend is more of an extension of the legacy brands.

Bisnow/Miriam Hall

Eastbanc principal Philippe Lanier, Rent the Runway Senior Vice President Gabby Etrog Cohen, Rebag Vice President of Retail Expansion Michelle Zhao and Feather Head of Merchandising Kendra Ovesen

But it is hard to imagine that the concept of consumers buying less and renting more doing so largely online would not be somewhat unsettling news for owners of retail retail estate.

Real estate players likened the clothing rentals to the evolution of online retailers movingtoward physical real estate.Increasingly, real estate players say, digitally native brands need a real-life store toturn a profit,driving more tenants to what has been a vacancy-plagued market in places like New York City.

I think it's an incredibly exciting time for experiential retail and using spaces differently," Rent the Runways Etrog Cohen saidat a panel at the ICSCNew York expo last week.We are really thinking differently around how we can expand our physical presence and drive traffic even to the center of a shopping center.

Rent the Runway has some 25 drop-off points in Nordstrom stores and WeWork locations around the country. Those drop-off points are an opportunity to pull shoppers into physical locations, she added.

I think Nordstrom is really ahead of the curve to say, 'We know that people are going to want to rent some of their things and want to own some of their things,'" she said. "We're driving traffic into their stores."

Rebag, an online-native company that buys and sells high-end designer handbags, now has nine physical stores in Los Angeles, Miami and New York, and plans to open another 10 across the country in the next two years. The companyraised $25M in February and announced its plans to significantly expand its physical retail presence.

The sweet spot, where I'm looking across the country, are spaces around 1,500 to 2K SF, said Rebags Michelle Zhao, who is overseeing the companys physicalexpansion. We definitely see a halo effect each time we open a retail location [and] a surge in terms of sales, and then an increase in the number of bags we source from that ZIPcode.

Nevertheless, thegrowth of clothing rentals could mean landlords will have to continue to be more flexible in the way they create and offer space.

I think were still sort of early in what it means, Martindale said. I think there's an element of creativity and patience on the landlord part that has to happen in this new retail paradigm."

See the article here:
Clothing Rentals Have Long Runway To Impact Physical Retail - Bisnow

Rick and Morty concoctions like Pickle Rick may make for wonderfully preposterous TV, but they also make things very, very hard for the people tasked to get it done. Photo: Adult Swim

On a recent episode of Adult Swims popular animated sci-fi comedy Rick and Morty, a nefarious robot programmed by mad scientist Rick Sanchez using an algorithm derived from the plots of heist movies orbits an alien planet in a spaceship half the planets size, disguised as a construction worker. In a bid to case the planet the way a con artist might scope out a big score, the robot drops a comically oversize hidden camera on the planets surface, leveling a city and killing tens of thousands. As the planets bewildered alien residents scramble in terror, the robot transforms into a pizza guy, and blithely proceeds to deliver a continent-size pie. The pizza turns into an enormous drill; the drill digs to the centre of the planet; the robot makes off with the planets core, as the planet itself collapses. I think we got away with it, declares the robot, fleeing as pieces of the broken world float around it.

This entire sequence spans about 60 seconds, beginning to end. In addition to the transforming spaceship, the heist-loving robot, the camera, the pizza, the drill, and the molten planetary core, the scene includes an alien news program, a collapsing beach, a tidal wave through a dying metropolis, a menagerie of terrified animals, a huge origami calling card left behind by the robot at the scene of the crime, and of course an entire alien species never seen before on the show, which has its own original and interesting features. The idea of an evil robot capable of heisting whole planets is so hilarious and absurd that its possible to spend this minute-long scene in a fit of outrageous laughter. But then it occurs to you that someone had to make all this not simply dream it up, which is amazing enough, but actually animate this madness from scratch.

Im sort of fighting myself when I watch an episode, Nathan Litz, animation director at Bardel Entertainment, told me recently from his studios headquarters in Vancouver, British Columbia. You see all the great action go by and it looks fantastic. But you look at it and you think, That took four weeks to do, and it played out in one minute.

Litz heads the team of nearly 50 artists and animators responsible for realizing the vision of Rick and Mortys co-creators and showrunners Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland week after week. He knows better than anyone how much work goes into making it happen and how swiftly Rick and Morty dispatches even its most elaborate flights of blockbuster fancy. The people at home have a nice laugh and they enjoy it, he says. But you just dont get the full feeling of how much effort goes into every episode by watching the 22 minutes fly by on the TV.

Rick and Morty is one of the strangest and most consistently audacious comedies on television. A science-fiction extravaganza that routinely involves interdimensional travel, earth-invading aliens, and planet-hopping adventures, it follows the ludicrous exploits of the so-called smartest man in the universe, Rick Sanchez, and his hapless, plucky teenage grandson, Morty, as they pursue obscure quests, run afoul of galactic law, and otherwise riff on the conventions of mainstream genre fiction, such as the heist movie. One of the most appealing things about Rick and Morty and what has endeared it so intensely to so many fans is that whenever it introduces an intriguing concept, it goes on to explore its own limits, often pushing ideas to their logical extreme. But while that creates some wonderfully preposterous TV, such as a beloved episode in which Rick turns himself into a pickle, it makes things very, very hard for the people tasked with getting it done.

If you work on a fire-rescue show, youve got fire and water and smoke to deal with, Litz explains. On Rick and Morty, youve got fire, water, smoke, lasers, ship trails, explosions, everything you can possibly think of. The overall scope of things is what makes it the challenge that it is.

This is, Litz points out, basically the opposite of how every other TV show works, especially in animation. I cant even think of a direct comparable because every other show is concerned with keeping it as conservative as possible, in terms of character count, locations, and so on. Whereas this show, they love to send someone off to some other universe, and give them three seconds with 15 different scenes, different background angles, different characters. Obviously every different planet and dimension has to be populated by original and interesting characters. Everythings as lively as possible.

This attitude accounts for why Rick and Morty doesnt look and feel like anything else out there right now. TV is very time- and budget-conscious, and they just want to get the least amount onto the screen as possible while still telling a story and making it funny or dramatic, Litz says. On Rick and Morty its about making it the biggest spectacle that it can be which takes an awful lot of work to bring to life.

As Rick and Morty finishes the first half of its fourth season, its obvious that the series is getting more ambitious. Litz has seen the evolution firsthand. Its absolutely gotten a lot bigger, he says. The ambition of the writers and designers only seems to grow. On the one hand thats fun to do. But it can be a real struggle to maintain the level of quality while still trying to get these episodes done on time.

Bardel Animation director Nathan Litz says that when he was brought on to develop the 2012 Rick and Morty pilot, he knew how much work it was going to be, and how much of a problem that could become. Photo: Bardel Entertainment Inc.

Interestingly, Bardels bread and butter as an animation studio has not been this kind of huge, ambitious adult content, but rather cartoons for little kids. It has been very successful over the last several years in the preschool and age 6-11 spaces, developing a slate of DreamWorks spinoffs for Netflix, including All Hail King Julien, Kung-Fu Panda: The Paws of Destiny, and VeggieTales in the City. Although Tina Chow, head of development at Bardel, is quick to emphasize that Bardel can work in any genre, Rick and Morty certainly stands out among the Bardel animation roster. Litz himself had never worked on animation for adults before he was brought on to develop Rick and Mortys pilot episode, in 2012. He says that while he knew how much work it was going to be, and how much of a problem that could become, he loved the show right away, and was eager to be involved.

Its a big difference to work on a project that you really enjoy the final product, as opposed to when its just a job, he says. As an animator you can of course still take a lot of pleasure in doing a scene that looks good, but if that scene comes in the middle of a show that you dont really enjoy, you dont get the same level of satisfaction. Working on a show like Rick and Morty, thats not only fun and entertaining but also high-profile, that everyone is watching, is extremely satisfying.

Chow also credits the animation teams appreciation of the series for the effort and passion they put in: We have people giving more than 110 percent to work on Rick and Morty, she says. We have people approaching us just because they want to work on that. Its great to hire big fans, because theyre going to give it their all.

For Litz and the team, the enormous amount of labor that goes into the project pays off when its all done. Its always great when we finish an episode and get together and watch it with the team, he says. You can always hear everybody whooping when their scenes come up. They have so much pride for this show.

See the article here:
Rick and Morty Is an Animation Challenge Like No Other - Vulture

Age of Empires IV was first announced at Gamescom 2017 with a 97-second trailer comprised entirely of artwork that, rather teasingly, flitted throughout allthe historical periods this iconic RTS series has tackled. And then Microsoft waited more than two years to tell us anything else about it, which was terribly cruel.

But as of X019, we now know Age of Empires IV will return to the Middle Ages the setting of the series most popular instalment, Age of Empires II. At that show we had the chance to speak with Age of Empires creative director Adam Isgreen and Shannon Loftis, head of Worlds Edge, the brand new studio Microsoft set up to work on Age of Empires. We also followed up with Isgreen via email on a couple of points, covering everything from crunchy gameplay details about civ design to the inspirations, influences, and challenges behind launching an old-school RTS in 2019.

Weve stitched together both those interviews into the epic you see below, so pull up your favourite throne, pour yourself a goblet of mead, and put your feet up on your squishiest servant. Here is a very long interview all about Age of Empires IV.

PCGamesN: Youve said some civs will be familiar to Age veterans while others will diverge dramatically in how they play. This has been a bit of a trend in strategy lately why do you think that is? Was it something you wanted to consciously imitate?

Adam Isgreen: Really, I think this is more about evolution of thought in terms of what players want today vs what they may have wanted, in the case of Age, 13 or more years ago. Given our commitment to accuracy and detail, it just made a lot more sense for us to push that even further as we explore what a modern take on an Age of Empires game can be.

We have this wide spectrum of civilisations that go from very understandable if you played a previous Age game, to those you really need to learn a lot play them well. While there are certain rules of RTS games in Age that we havent changed, were exploring many places with this new game to really make the civilisations stand on their own.

Can you give a rough idea of how far youre taking these divergences? Roughly how many civs will play like old Age of Empires, and how many will differ?

AI: Lets just say the level of departure grows as you move across the civilisations we offer. The English intentionally play the most like the Britons from Age II; the Mongols are the largest departure from that template. All the others fall in between. Our goal is that the cognitive load (i.e., how many things we want players to have to think about at any given moment) is similar in commitment across the civilisations, but each has a unique focus for where you spend that mental time.

Age II launched with 13 civs. Should we expect more or fewer?

AI: You can expect fewer than the 13 that shipped with Age II, as were aiming for more uniqueness with each civilisation rather than quantity.

Youve talked about the attention to detail youre applying to civ research. Does each civ have a unique, historically accurate skin for all of its units and buildings?

The Age games have always had a bright, inviting world and we will maintain that in Age IV

Adam Isgreen

Creative director

AI: While weve kept specific structures similar in shape language because we want them to be understood across any civilisation that has them, every civilisation in Age IV has unique visuals for every unit and structure in the game, from basic troops all the way up to whatever may be near the apex of impressive structures.

Most cultures changed fundamentally during the Middle Ages. In Age II this wasnt really shown civs were static in their names, bonuses, etc. Will this remain the case in Age IV, or did you want to represent this evolution?

AI: There are aspects of the civilisations that do change across the ages, but at the same time maintaining clearly understood gameplay and balanced cognitive load is very important to us. I cant go into more detail on this right now, but yes, weve thought about this quite a bit!

Can we expect the same familiar design points as in previous Age games? Four Ages to advance through, four key resources to harvest, that sort of thing?

AI: Classically, Age of Empires games deviate a little [from each other], but we really love the model from number two. So yes, there are four resources and all the civilisations use them. Do they use them in the same way? Do they use them in the same order? Hmm, dont know. Youll have to find out!

We said what can we improve? Players said not combat! Leave it alone!

Adam Isgreen

Creative director

But definitely those are the kinds of quintessential, important things for Age that we felt were worth maintaining. As to your second point, we love the idea of moving through ages. Weve actually taken it even further in this game not in terms of the number of ages, although there are civilisations that dont necessarily play by the four-age rule, I will say that but there are also new aspects to ageing up, from a presentation point of view, that no one has ever seen an RTS game before.

From the gameplay trailer, the art style is warm, colourful, almost Blizzard-like fair to say? If so, what was the thinking behind this approach? Is there any blood or gore?

AI: One of the pillars of the Age games has always been a bright, inviting world and we certainly mean to maintain that in Age IV. Given the response to the trailer and the look, I think were pretty close to where we want to be. Being a PC game, well be sure to include a vibrancy setting if players want to pull the saturation down a bit.

As to blood and gore, we want the game to be playable by as many people at as many age ranges as possible, so we intentionally avoid that to keep our rating towards the low end of Teen. However, much like every other Age game, Im sure well have a bloody mess mod (or something equally creatively named) within a day or so of release by an enthusiastic fan for those that want that in their gameplay.

I notice the tower collapsing from a trebuchet hit in the trailer. Is this just a neat aesthetic touch or will environmental destruction affect gameplay?

AI: Semantics can catch here, so let me be specific: Im interpreting your definition of environmental to mean structure/man-made related elements, not say blowing up a cliff or causing an avalanche that changes the map topography itself. The latter is something were not doing. For man-made destruction visuals, yes, there will be all kinds of dynamic elements regarding destruction and, really, combat in general.

At first players are like why would you change this? then theyre like yeah, this is better

Adam Isgreen

Creative director

We go back and forth on gameplay impact, honestly. Heres a theoretical example of why: Lets say youre playing a regicide game and you for some reason happen to not have garrisoned your leader theyre just standing in your well-fortified city, admiring their kingdom. An opponent has a trebuchet well out of range of hitting them, but not a semi-nearby wall. You smash the wall, causing debris to fly (in-line of attack, but still randomly in a cone behind the wall) everywhere, and one chunk happens to hit and take out the leader. GG.

While this would be a moment, it wouldnt be a fun win, or really an earned one when it comes to how Age has played in the past; its a bit too random and unpredictable. It also involves physics calculations across an already busy simulation that must identically represent them on every players machine. So then the team goes through all the permutations of how we could un-random that interaction to something more predictable for both players, which can sometimes water something down to the point that its not worth including. We go through these exercises all the time on just about every aspect of the game.

So the TL;DR on it visually youll have a lot of dynamic/kinetic things happening in combat. The team is still weighing the merits on whether any of it will have more than just visual impact.

Diplomacy was underdeveloped as a system in previous entries. Is this something youre looking to deepen? If so, how?

AI: Weve discussed diplomacy quite a bit, but much of our data from the other Age games shows that its a very underused feature by most players, especially for more than just breaking alliances mid-game. Where you will likely see more use of it is in campaigns rather than new elements to it for multiplayer.

Random question: does the game take any influence from Rise of Nations?

Shannon Loftis: Rise of Nations was kind of the spiritual successor to the Age franchise. We were hoping to recapture the audience, but it also deviated pretty significantly, with reduced building and more focus on combat. It kind of lost us some of the people that we cared about.

So one of the things we learned from Rise and from some of the other Age of Empires experiments that weve done, is there are things that Age of Empires gamers want to see: they want the variable pace, the building phase, and the combat. We were told at the beginning of Age of Empires II DE

AI: Do not touch combat! We were like, hey, what do we improve? They said: not combat! Leave it alone!

SL: But there are some things that Rise did really well, too, and we are keeping a lot of that in mind.

How much input do you draw on from the community, and in what ways?

AI: A tonne of input. We now have what we call flighting, which means we put a game out for people to play we dont really use the terms alpha and beta anymore. We ran that flight for Age II for eight months and we got incredible feedback.

Age IV has had people playing it for the last year, and we have gotten a tremendous amount of feedback from people that play Age II and Age III Age online, Mythology, Age I, and we have good discussions with them. Our community is so passionate. Theyre very passionate about telling us when they dont like things, too, so theres been these wonderful back-and-forths.We are driven, at a studio level, by community interaction. Thats an insanely important point for Worlds Edge, the new studio that we created for Age of Empires.

How do you balance the need to give fans what they want based on what they remember, while also being confident enough to give them something new?

AI: Its challenging, to be honest with you. Its a constant struggle, both internally and with the fans, to provide aspects like, ok, this feels like something that Age III players would really love. Because Age III and Age II players do not get along. Theyre completely their own communities.

We love them both, but its like, ok, what can we put in that offers this from Age III, without losing Age II players wholl say gah, this is from Age III, why would you put this in the game?

Mods are an integral part of Age IV - more than any previous Age game

Adam Isgreen

Creative director

Its just an iterative process of learning. The fun thing is, well have something new in Age IV, and at first its like the seven stages of grief where players are like how could you change this? This wasnt in the previous games! and then theyre like yeah, you know what? This is better. By the end they come around, theyre like were glad you did this, Im sorry! But thats cool, we want that feedback good or bad, its great. There are decisions we have to make that we will make with as much of the community as we can, but obviously there will be some that well just have to be like, trust us, guys.

SL: I would also add that when we think about the Age IP, well not stop honouring and building on the Age legacy products. Weve just launched Age II [definitive edition], so were going to spend the next weeks and months talking to the community, working on DLC, fixing bugs, doing balance tweaks. At the same time, were working on Age IV to take Age RTS into the future. And we fully expect there will be people that play both who make the jump from Age II to Age IV, and then go back to Age II for certain experiences. We love these legacy games, and our commitment is to keep them alive.

How has Age IV has been designed with creators or user-generated content in mind?

AI: I will tell you that one of the pillars of all of the Age of Empires games is mods, and allowing people access to tools that allow them to build great content. We all believe thats one of the reasons Age has lasted as long as it has because the community has been able to support the game. We have no intention of stopping now with Age IV. It is an integral, huge part of Age IV, and is showcased more heavily in some ways than any previous Age game.

Are you confident launching an RTS with a traditional premium purchase model working in the modern era?

SL: The interesting thing is RTS hasnt really changed that much in terms of the way that theyre sold. If you look at something like Total War, they launch at $60 and then they do a nice hefty DLC pack every year or so, and then some smaller content packs every once in a while, and then their bundle opportunities and everything.

I think the real disruptor to PC game pricing for Microsoft is going to be PC Game Pass. We will be part of that and see how gamers respond to the notion of subscribing to a game as opposed to outright purchasing it. But the number one thing is to keep our community happy.

This actually gives me the opportunity to clarify one point. Because of the way Windows Store works currently, in order to download the graphics pack for Age II DE, it looks like you have to do an in-app purchase but its free. There are no in-app purchases for Age II DE.

Will Age of Empires IV follow a similar model?

AI: The idea of microtransactions in a real-time strategy game isnt a thing. DLC, expansions all of that, are things that were going to be exploring for Age IV. Were actually going to be exploring most of that for all the Age games. So even though weve [just] launched Age II, its just the start of the conversation with Age II. We probably wont add more civilisations to Age II, because 35 is a lot. Even our pro players are like please dont add more civilisations, just do other things.

So we want to have those conversations with the community to figure out what we can add, and things that they want to see in the game, [like] new game modes. So were starting that conversation with Age II or will be soon. Age IV is going to be the same. We definitely have ideas of where we want to go past Age IV in terms of expansions and those kind of things. A lot of that is going to be driven by the community and where they want to see the game go.

Do you think Age of Empires IV has any competition among the modern descendents of RTS?

AI: I think Age has always occupied this special place thats a balance between tech research and 4X play, plus base building, plus combat, that no other game has really tried to capture. You have the Total Wars, which have gotten very meta-level sim most people dont do the combat, they just auto-resolve. Then you have the intense moment-to-moment games, like your MOBAs, and now you have the casual, casual auto chess games. All of this spawned out of RTS.

The cool thing is that everyone thats played all these games actually understands a lot about real-time strategy games, even if theyve never played one before. And every time we put the game in front of fans, they start playing it and theyre like, oh, I miss this kind of game. I can take my time, I can build something with my 20-minute treaty, I can have fun. All of that is still viable today. And whereas RTS may have not occupied the spotlight it once did, just because popularity goes in cycles, all our data shows we just keep getting more players playing RTS games. They havent gone away.

On that point of bringing new players into RTS, do you think Age of Empires IV will be a good jumping on point? Is accessibility something youre thinking about?

AI: Theres a lot of things were doing, but unfortunately I cant talk about it because a lot of it pivots on what were doing around campaigns. I will say were doing something completely different. I cant think of another game to do what were doing for campaigns. But were also leveraging a ton of things we have available to us now, like the compute power to do analytics-based tutorialising, and all kinds of things where we can see how players are playing and be like, hey, did you know you can do this?

The entire multiplayer back end in the definitive editions is all Relic's work from Age IV

Adam Isgreen

Creative director

Age II Definitive also launched with what we call the Art of War, which are missions designed to teach you how to play and improve. That actually came from Age IV because Im so adamant about teaching, I was like, wait, we need this in Age II. We have five or six scenarios and theyre short, like five minutes which teach how to deal with [things like] getting attacked early. Most people just melt when that happens, like ahh! I dont know what to do! So we made something to teach people to challenge and overcome that fear. In IV, because our civilisations are further apart now, Art of War will also have scenarios dealing with those specific civilisations.

That youve got this as-yet unreleased sequel feeding back into the rerelease of an older game is extraordinary. In what other ways do you find that happening?

AI: The entire multiplayer back end, in all the definitive editions, is all from Relic from Age IV. Weve taken the entire technology stack of multiplayer, its security, anti-cheat, and all that, and put it all into the old Age games. So technology from the future is now helping the older games be more stable and have people all over the world be able to connect with play.

Do you see that being part of the backbone of Age of Empires going forward?

SL: Yeah, its the core of our development philosophy. Were a small group in Washington State, but then were working with Tantalus in Australia and Forgotten Empires, who are literally all over the world, and Relic, and then other people that were not talking about yet. And the idea is that nobody works in a silo. Everybody owns their products, but we get people together Tantalus has visited Relic, and weve had Forgotten Empires down at Tantalus and they swap their best ideas, but were getting to the point where eventually well have an Age Dev Con kind of thing.

What lessons have you taken from the evolution of RTS since Age III? Can we expect Starcraft-style hero-focused missions, or a MOBA scenario?

People ask us 'isnt it past the time for RTS?' Absolutely not

Shannon Loftis

Studio head

AI: Heroes have always been a fascinating thing about Age there have always been heroes in it but, you know, time passes. And as we talk about civilisations, we thought more about making the civilisations the heroes. That doesnt mean there wont be missions that focus on certain people in those civilisations, but that time moves on.

The Mongol Empire [lasted] hundreds of years. If youre covering the entire thing, the people at the beginning are not alive by the time you get to the end of that. So we had to make a conscious choice to do that, but theres definitely a wide range of missions. I think the players can expect that its much more akin to what you see in a modern RTS than what you might have seen previously in Age.

SL: The studio is called Worlds Edge. This leans into the exploration aspect of Age of Empires, theres a little reference to the maps edge as well, but also to the number of stories that we can tell within the framework of human history. Theres no edge to the number of things we can ask our fans to tell us, either. And theres so much innovation left in RTS, which has already given birth to dozens of different genres. People ask us a lot isnt it past the time for RTS? It is absolutely not past the time for RTS. In fact, its getting stronger every single day.

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Age of Empires IV interview: it is absolutely not past the time for RTS - PCGamesN

When it comes to fashion trends that shaped the 2010s, dad jeans, sneakers and logo-laden everything come to mind.

Fashion in the 2010s was underscored by a range of subcultures that met the world stage, from normcore to Gen Z Internet culture (VSCO Girls, anyone?). On another, far more formal plane, the British royal familys popularity experienced an apotheosis not seen since the days of the late Princess Diana, as Kate and Meghan have taken after their late mother-in-laws fashion icon status.

But while logomania, ath-leisure and the occasional fascinator led the decade style-wise, the fashion industry itself experienced profound cultural shifts over the last 10 years, that spurred marked change in terms of larger issues including inclusivity, diversity and sustainability across the board.

As the 2010s come to a close, WWD looks at the seven fashion trends that defined the decade.

1. Goodbye Formalwear, Hello Ath-leisure

Fashion got casual in the 2010s. From thewellness movement to the newfound 24/7 access to just about anyone on Instagram and Snapchat, a relaxed culture ensued, giving launch to the decades most comfortable fashion trend: ath-leisure.

What started at the gym, as the boutique fitness culture proliferated in the decade, the demand for more fashionable workout clothes increased, too. Hyperstylized workout gear, from the ubiquitous yoga pant to sports bras, evolved with higher-quality fabrics, vibrant colors and graphic patterns, spilling from the spin class to the street.

The demand for ath-leisure fostered the boom of successful brands, such as Outdoor Voices (founded in 2014), Vuori Clothing (founded in 2013) and Bandier (founded in 2014) as well as establishing heritage brands like Lululemon, Sweaty Betty and Athleta, among others, as key players in the market.

Ath-leisure wasnt restricted to just fashion. The trend made its way to the beauty industry in 2018, when a number of brands emerged with skin-care products that offered pre- and post-workout benefits.

The ath-leisure fashion trend saw steady growth throughout the decade, with the category expected to grow by roughly $21 billion over the next four years, reaching a total of over $138 billion.

2. The Royal Effect

The 2010s ushered in a number of high-profile additions to the British royal family, most notably the Duchess of Cambridge, Kate Middleton, and the Duchess of Sussex, Meghan Markle, who have both had their own unique influence on fashion.

Much like the late Princess Diana, both duchesses have proven over the decade that they have the magic touch when it comes to influencing consumer purchases, with pieces they wear at royal engagements virtually selling out within minutes of their photos hitting the Internet.

Since her royal wedding to Prince William in 2011, Middletons style has become defined by heritage British designers with her go-to brands being Alexander McQueen, Emilia Wickstead and Jenny Packham. Shes largely stuck to royal dress codes, favoring structured coats, knee-length and long-sleeve dresses, high-waisted trousers and closed-toe pumps.

Markle, while only officially part of the royal family since her 2018 wedding to Prince Harry, has had a marked effect on fashion and designers bottom lines. The duchess has become known for championing smaller and emerging designers, such as Mackage and Greta Constantine, and more affordable options from brands like Aritzia, Club Monaco and Reformation. The California-born Markle also has a sweet spot for American fashion designers, regularly wearing looks by close friend Misha Nonoo, as well as designers like Jason Wu, Brandon Maxwell and Veronica Beard.

Ahead of the royal wedding, the net present value to brands that Markle wore was estimated at 150 million pounds (roughly $212.1 million) according to David Haigh, chief executive officer of Brand Finance. On one instance that Markle sported a Mackage coat, the brand revealed that it garnered 1.6 billion media impressions in a 24-hour time span.

Both duchesses also had an effect on the bridal market thanks to their royal wedding gowns Middleton with her long-sleeve lace Alexander McQueen gown and Markle with her cowl-necked Givenchy gown spawning a number of duplicate bridal gowns.

3. A Street Style Star Is Born

Street style photography has long been a part of fashion week, but the phenomenon gained prestige and ubiquity in the 2010s thanks to the proliferation of social media. These street style images circulated on fashion blogs, web sites and Instagram more so than actual runway looks, spawning a budding class of influencers that today are industry powerhouses.

The dawn of the street style star can be credited in large part to the late New York Times photographer (and former WWD reporter), Bill Cunningham. For decades, Cunningham was a fixture on the streets of New York, but he became a celebrity in his own right with a hit documentary about his work, which was released in 2011. The decade also saw the rise of other street style photographers, includingScott Schuman and Tommy Ton, who gave a platform to the self-styled fashion bloggers and put on display their widely acclaimed authentic style.

The frenzy around street style stars catapulted the careers of influencers likeLeandra Medine of Man Repeller, Chiara Ferragni of the Blonde Salad, Aimee Song of Song of Style, Arielle Charnas of Something Navy, Susie Lau of Style Bubble, Nicole Warne of Gary Pepper Girl, Tamu McPherson of All the Pretty Birds and many other bloggers, influencers, fashion editors and the like.

Today, fashion influencers are fixtures at fashion week, sitting front row alongside celebrities and fashion editors. Their ubiquity, influence and prominence has also reshaped the landscape of brand marketing, with major companies eschewing the typical celebrity spokesperson for the influencer brand ambassador. Many of todays biggest influencers have been tapped for these ambassador roles, including Charnas for Tresemm and Ferragni for Lancme.

4. Subcultures Go Mainstream

Perhaps ironically, the antitrend was the one of the most pervasive fashion trends of the 2010s. Fashion subcultures, the direct antithesis to ubiquitous, sometimes overstylized fashion trends, proved to be even more popular than the original trends themselves, making their way from niche communities to the mainstream fashion runway. The decade saw a number of these subcultures enter the widespread cultural lexicon, most notably normcore, streetwear and Gen-Z Internet culture.

Normcore:

Normcore was meant as the antidote to overly ornate and stylized runways and designer goods. Instead, the trend put an emphasis on mundane, casual looks that historically were interpreted as anything but fashionable.

The term was originated by New York-based trend forecaster K-Hole with its 2013 report Youth Mode: A Report on Freedom. The report defines normcore as moving away from a coolness that relies on difference to a post-authenticity coolness that opts into sameness.

Normcore in fashion translated as color palettes of white, beige, gray and black, with virtually no logos or prints. The trends main style icons were Jerry Seinfeld circa his Nineties Seinfeld TV days replete with dad jeans and chunky sneakers, and Steve Jobs uniform of Issey Miyake black turtlenecks, Levis and gray New Balance sneakers.

Other quintessential normcore looks included white sweat socks with sandals, Birkenstocks, baseball caps, windbreakers and tracksuits.

Streetwear:

Streetwear was nothing new in the 2010s. The movement has origins dating back to the late Seventies and early Eighties surf, skateboard and hip-hop cultures of Los Angeles and New York City.

But in the 2010s, brands like Stssy, Supreme, A Bathing Ape, Off-White and Hood By Air, reinvigorated the look and developed cult followings. Mainstream brands, luxury houses and retailers took notice and soon after, streetwear-inspired wares sprung up on the runways, most notably in terms of sneakers. For his Chanel spring 2014 couture show, the late Karl Lagerfeld broke tradition and dressed all of his models in sneakers in monochrome hues, creating a sporty vibe that was enhanced by accessories like knee and elbow pads and fanny packs. Lagerfeld continued this at Chanels fall 2014 ready-to-wear show, where he dressed models in technicolor sneakers as they walked the shows supermarket-themed set.

The streetwear trend was also brought into the mainstream with many designer houses collaborating with cult-favorite streetwear brands. Louis Vuittons former mens artistic director, Kim Jones, teamed with Supreme for its fall 2017 collection, which included co-branded items such as denim jackets and shirts that merged both brands logos and bright red leather goods with Supremes famous box logo. Industry sources claimed that sought-after collaboration increased both brands sales by 100 million euros.

Generation Z Internet Culture:

While still mostly in high school, the teenagers of Generation Z already have birthed a few fashion trends that are defining their generation, namely the E-Girl or E-Boy and the VSCO Girl.

These trends spring from the generations hyperconnectivity with social media and their inclination toward the relatively new social media platform, video-sharing app TikTok.

E-Girls can be best described as the evolution of the scene kid from the aughts. Its a trend prevalent on social channels where teenagers post pictures and videos of themselves with pastel-colored wigs and graphic makeup consisting of black winged eyeliner, rainbow-colored eye shadow and hearts drawn on the cheeks.

VSCO Girls, on the other hand, are both a meme and a fashion trend among teenage girls. The trend has origins linked to TikTok, however, its name comes from the photo-editing and sharing app, VSCO. The trend is a blend of the classic preppy style with a beach aesthetic, with girls looking to oversize T-shirts that cover their shorts, Birkenstock sandals, puka shell chokers, Pura Vida bead bracelets, colorful hair scrunchies and Fjllrven backpacks. VSCO Girls are also known for being environmentally conscious, with their staple accessory a sticker-covered Hydro Flask water bottle.

5. Inclusivity and Diversity Take Centerstage

The long-awaited movement for inclusivity and diversity had a profound effect on the industry in the 2010s. Designers and brands across the board made commitments to making their businesses, runways and designs both represented by and available to people of all races, gender identities, size and age.

Chromat, for one, has championed diversity and inclusivity in fashion since launching in 2010, serving as a beacon to an industry that needed to catch up. Chromat designer Becca McCharen-Tran has long cast her runways with a diverse set of models, including those that are plus size, transgender, pregnant, amputees and breast cancer survivors. Most recently, McCharen-Tran cast plus-size model Tess Holliday in her 10thanniversary spring 2020 collection, where the model was seen wearing a dress that read sample size.

Christian Siriano is another champion of the movement toward inclusivity and diversity in fashion. The designer is known for creating red-carpet looks for actresses who have publicly said that designers had refused to outfit them due to sizing restrictions.

In 2016, Siriano responded to a 2016 tweet by comedian Leslie Jones who said that no designers were willing to dress her for the premiere of her film Ghostbusters. Jones went on to attend the premiere in a custom, off-the-shoulder red dress created by Siriano and has worn a number of his looks on the red carpet since.

The industry also made strides in inclusivity in terms of ageism. The decade saw the likes of then 80-year-old Joan Didion cast as the face of Clines spring 2015 campaign, Carmen DellOrefice still an in-demand model at 88, and most recently, iconic supermodels Pat Cleveland, Carol Alt, Patti Hansen, Christie Brinkley, Carolyn Murphy and Christy Turlington Burns, returning to the runway at New York Fashion Week fall 2019.

The 2010s were chock-full of watershed moments, from model and body activist Ashley Graham, who made history as the first plus-size model to cover Sports Illustrateds Swimsuit Issue in 2016 to Halima Aden becoming the first hijab-wearing model to be signed by IMG Models and walk the New York Fashion Week runway.Rihanna for one, was widely celebrated, for putting on a diverse lingerie fashion show for her second Savage x Fenty collection at the end of the decade. The movement was also prevalent in the beauty world, with CoverGirl tapping influencer James Charles as its first male spokesmodel in 2016, as an example.

6. Proud (And Perhaps Ironic) Consumerism

On the other end of the normcore spectrum, Millennials developed a penchant for nostalgia: enter logomania (again).

The second half of the decade was laden with logocentric pieces, with highlights including Vetements much sought after DHL logo T-shirt;Balenciagas fall 2017 menswear collection (which riffed on Bernie Sanders presidential campaign logo), to Supremes iconic box logo.

Virgil Abloh, for another, launched his fashion label Off-White in 2012, changing the landscape of streetwear and logomania thanks to his ironic usage of quotation marks for his product names and designs.

Luxury designers were quick to jump on the logomania bandwagon. Gucci creative director Alessandro Michele has revived logomania at the Italian fashion house, creating modernized, colorful updates to the brands handbags and increasing popularity for the brands logo belts.

Dior, for another, saw a newfound interest in its classic logo Saddle Bag originally released in the brands spring 2000 collection. The It of the aughts was re-created by Kim Jones for his first Dior mens spring 2019 collection and by Maria Grazia Chiuri for the fall 2018 ready-to-wear collection, and has since regained its It status.

7. Amped-Up Runways

Over-the-top runway sets have long been de rigueur in fashion, but in the 2010s, designers took over-the-top to a whole new level. Fendi, for one, held its 90th anniversary show at Romes Trevi Fountain in 2016, Chanel, for another, had a 115-foot-tall rocket that actually launched at the close of the show at the Grand Palais in Paris in 2017.

Kanye West arguably had one of the most widely panned shows of the decade for his Yeezy Season 4 collection. Logistical information was scant until just a few hours before the show, where West shepherded editors, critics and showgoers to New Yorks Roosevelt Island, essentially holding them captive in the scorching heat. The heat led to multiple models collapsing on the runway, with spectators rushing to assist them. The show ultimately received scathing reviews and backlash on social media.

Wests close collaborator and friend, Virgil Abloh, however had one of the most memorable runway moments of the decade with his first collection as artistic director of Louis Vuitton mens. Abloh showed a collection that signaled a new era for the brand, blending Louis Vuittons luxury roots with Ablohs streetwear sensibility. The show was seen as a watershed moment for the designer house, with Abloh rushing to embrace West after his finale walk and the two openly weeping.

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7 Fashion Trends That Helped Define the 2010s - WWD

Environmental lawyer jobs are in high demand, with a practice such asShiersincreasingly attractive to law students and new lawyers. It's a mainstream discipline now. There are all sorts of programsand, yes, we have a number of applicants always. . . .There's no dearth of people applying, she says.

The firms growth has shifteditsrelationship with the competition. In 2007, JohnWillmstoldCanadian Lawyerthat it was a challenge for a relatively small firm like his12 lawyers at the timeto keep up with larger firmsthathad economies of scale. More than a decade later, Shier says the firms growth has given it an edge on the competition.

Things have changed a lot for us because our firm size is as large or larger than any big firms environmental group, she says. I'd be hard pressed to think of even a large Canadian law firm with 20 environmental lawyers.

The firm practises in environment, Indigenous and energy law and Shier says Indigenous law has expanded as well. The firmsIndigenous practice consists of consultation, negotiation and accommodation for natural resource development and energy projects and is led by JulieAbouchar.

Shier was called to the bar in 1978, began working withWillmsin 1977, part-time, doing research and writing. The firms environmental practice grew out of the work the firm did in rural municipalities, primarily landfill site work, Shier says. Shier was fascinated by every aspect of industrial processes, which drew her to the type of work the firm was doing.

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Environmental escalation: Willms & Shier has grown with the times - Canadian Lawyer Magazine

The death of Anna Karina at 79the actress featured in Jean-Luc Godards films in the 1960s By David Walsh 17 December 2019

Anna Karina, the Danish-born actress associated above all with the early films of French-Swiss director Jean-Luc Godard, died December 14 at 79 from cancer in a hospital in Paris.

Between 1960 and 1966 or so, Karina appeared in seven feature films by Godard, along with an episode in an anthology film. Those include prominently Le Petit Soldat (The Little Soldier, shot in 1960, released in 1963), Vivre Sa Vie (English titleMy Life to Live, 1962), Alphaville (1965) and Pierrot le Fou (1965). While Karina featured alongside a number of male performers, the true co-star of each of those films (with the exception perhaps of Pierrot le Fou) was Godard himself.

Whatever Godards later evolution, very much shaped by the fate of the social revolution in the last third of the 20th century, the movies he made with Karina remain among the most intellectually lyrical evocations of romantic feelings in the postwar period.

Karina was born Hanne Karin Blarke Bayer in Copenhagen on September 22, 1940. Her father, a ships captain, deserted the family while she was still an infant. She grew up, unhappily and restlessly, with her mothers parents. Before her 18th birthday, she took off for Paris, with the hope of becoming an actress.

After a number of modeling jobs, Karina came to the attention of Godard, who had seen her in a Palmolive soap advertisement. He attempted to hire Karina for a small role in his first feature film, Breathless (1959). The effort failed when the aspiring actress angrily refused in advance to take her clothes off in the proposed film. Later in 1959, Godard invited her in for a principal role in his next movie. In this video, Karina discusses her early experiences in France.

Karina was eventually persuaded to perform in his Le Petit Soldat, a story about a young man (Michel Subor) coerced into working for French intelligence during the neo-colonial Algerian war. He meets and falls for Vronica Dreyer (Karina, in a tribute to famed Danish director Carl Dreyer), who is a sympathizer of the Algerian National Liberation Front. The French authorities end up torturing Vronica to death. The politics of the work are murky, but even so the French government held up its release for three years.

The second film Godard and Karina (now a couple) made together was the slight A Woman Is a Woman (Une femme est une femme, 1961), a quasi-musical about an exotic dancer, who wants to have a baby. The film is too much of an uncritical tribute to femininity (the sheer otherness of women, in critic Andrew Sarriss approving phrase) and Godards own overwhelming feelings for Karina. It suffers from preciousness.

Vivre sa Vie stands up today as perhaps the most remarkable collaboration between Godard and Karina. The latter plays Nana, a clerk in a record shop and an aspiring actress, who falls into prostitution. The black-and-white work tells its sad tale in 12 succinct chapters.

Karinas face and features are here subordinated to a larger cause, the sordid story, sympathetically told, of prostitution in contemporary Paris. In a dialogue between Nana and the narrator, the details of the life emerge: Do I have a room? Hotels usually change the towels, not sheets. Beds are often made just with a bottom sheet. The police? They conduct raids, interrogations. Anyone infringing regulations is sent for medical tests. Can I drink in a caf? A drunken prostitute is a liability, undesirable because she creates scenes. If Im pregnant? People think prostitutes always have abortions. Thats not true. They do try to avoid pregnancy, by chemical or other means. But when pregnancy is confirmed, abortions are rare. Must I accept anyone? The prostitute must always be at the clients disposal. She must accept anyone who pays. That one ... that one... Are there clients every day? Lower-grade prostitute average five to eight clients a day, etc.

The references to mile Zola, Edgar Allan Poe, the actress Louise Brooks in G.W. Pabsts Pandoras Box (1929), Dreyers The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928), gangster films, the inclusion of French philosopher Brice Parain in an extended scene, all help give the work its weaker, more self-conscious side. However, My Life to Lives genuinely moving and disturbing elements, its social and psychological concreteness largely prevail. These sequences may provide an idea:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zq_ytGRD5do and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2n_r_5RXobM and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-C9x131Iof0.

Alphaville and Pierrot le Fou are also valuable, often beautiful works, and also not without their self-conscious and precious moments.

The Godard-Karina films document a couple of things at once: the liveliness of a younger, middle-class postwar generation determined to make its own way intellectually, culturally and psychologically; the inevitable emergence and even eruption of political issues, such as the Algerian and Vietnam wars, and eventually the May-June events in 1968, for which this same generation was largely unprepared.

The marriage of Karina and Godard disintegrated painfully in the mid-1960s in part as the result of the innumerable pressures that bore down on them under conditions of film industry success and increasing social tensions of the 1960s. By the time Godard turned to the left, discovering Maoism and even flirting with Trotskyism, their relationship had dissolved.

As it did for many French intellectuals, by various routes, some more circuitous and protracted than others, the great general strike in 1968, which forcefully demonstrated the revolutionary potential of the working class, proved Godards undoing. His misguided efforts at anti-bourgeois agitational and propaganda films failed miserably, while his more recent work has shown an almost pathological demoralization and disillusionment, but those are subjects for another article.

Karina went on to make films with Luchino Visconti, Volker Schlndorff, George Cukor, Tony Richardson, Andr Delvaux, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Raoul Ruiz, Jacques Rivette and Jonathan Demme, as well as directing two films herself, but it is unlikely that anyone would dispute the fact that her performances in the early films with Godard were her most enduring.

Godards films with Karina joined intellectual seriousness, intriguing literary and film influences, considerable humor, strong even obsessive emotion and visual and verbal poetry. Sarris, writing about A Woman Is a Woman in 1964, argued that the film employs all the resources of the cinema to express the exquisite agony of heterosexual love. These films had a lasting influence on their audience. As Fassbinder once noted, Godards works were among the first his generation viewed that revealed films could do more than merely entertain.

The collapse of the Godard-Karina cinematic collaboration in the face of political upheavals in the 1960s reminds one a little of Leon Trotskys comments about the poet Vladimir Mayakovsky in Literature and Revolution. Trotsky argued that Mayakovskys pre-Russian Revolutionary poems were artistically his most significant and creatively his boldest and most promising work. The poets efforts suffered when he attempted to enter the orbit of the Revolution. Trotsky, of course, was not arguing for artists to remain aloof from political events, which is not a possibility in any event, but pointing to the inevitable difficulties when petty bourgeois bohemians left the closed-in world of the intelligentsia.

The Godard-Karina films from the early 1960s remain indispensable viewing.

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The death of Anna Karina at 79the actress featured in Jean-Luc Godard's films in the 1960s - World Socialist Web Site

Bill Callahan once wrote a galloping tune named America!, in which he tips his hat to a certain lineage of Texas country musicians who had served in the armed forces. Captain Kristofferson! Buck Sergeant Newbury! Leatherneck Jones! Callahan bellows, a propulsive drum and electric guitar feedback pulsating behind his sonorous baritones invocation of Kris Kristofferson, Mickey Newbury, and George Jones. I never served my country, he adds gravely, just before a three-string guitar threads through an escalating crescendo. Its a love letter to his nation, albeit at times a critical one.

Nearly a decade after its release, I ask Callahan to explain the intentions behind America!, which is now a linchpin of his live performances. Were sitting outside Wheatsville Food Co-op, a natural-foods market just north of the University of Texas in Austin, the city hes called home since 2004. The 53-year-old singer-songwriter does much of his speaking with silence. He thumbs the label of his Cayennade-flavored kombucha as he mulls over his answer, eventually offering, It turns out that every country musician that I love is from Texas.

It may seem like something of a surprising admission coming from someone who first made his name almost thirty years ago recording lo-fi noise-music cassettes. But though Callahan doesnt wear a cowboy hat, hes spiritually entwined with his Lone Star musical heroes and the poetry they unspool. That connection reverberates throughout Callahans first new studio album in seven years, Shepherd in a Sheepskin Vest, released in summer 2019 by his longtime label, Drag City, to rave reviews. Its a gripping, country-inflected collection of songs revolving around home and family. In the plucky What Comes After Certainty, you can almost imagine Callahan perched on a porch with his guitar, a toothpick dangling from his lip, as he describes finding true love: And I got the woman of my dreams/ And an imitation Eames/ And I signed Willies guitar/ He sang, Hey good lookin, whatcha got cookin?/ And I signed Willies guitar when he wasnt lookin.

The bit about Willie and Trigger isnt true. But Willies singular songwriting ability, capable of zeroing in on particular emotions with clarity and depth, has clearly influenced Callahans work. Hes like a seer, Callahan says. He bridges this gap and unifies all these different types of people with different politics more than anyone. Hes all heart. Nobody can escape Willie; he just speaks to everybody. On the rest of the album, Callahans sparsely arranged songs ruminate on death and drinking, missed connections, and the merits of waking up earlynatural fodder for someone who, over the past few years, has gotten married, become a father, and lost his mother.

As the youngest of three children growing up mostly in Silver Spring, Maryland, in the seventies, Callahan was often left to his own devices: specifically, a bicentennial-themed transistor radio that his grandmother gave himwhich he used to tune into a soft-rock AM radio station transmitting the Carpenters and Air Supplyand the local hardcore punk records he scrounged up money to buy. I just was happy to listen to music and fantasize in my room, he says. His parents lent him the car keys once a month, allowing a teenage Callahan to set out for unorthodox venue spaces, including VFW halls, peppered throughout the outskirts of Washington, D.C. It made me realize that it can happen anywhere, he says of those shows. You can do it and set up things yourself. He first picked up a guitar at fifteen but quit because it didnt come easily. Six years later, he found his way back to it again with a little more gumption after working a string of odd jobs and dropping out of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, three times. Nothing was working out for me, he says, chuckling.

During a one-year stint in Atlanta, in 1988, Callahan and a friend bought a four-track recorder with the intention of making music but couldnt get anything off the ground. Callahan bought out his friends half of the four-track and, under the musical moniker Smog, created his first tape, the thirty-minute cacophony Cow. I couldnt do traditional songs, so I was starting out doing what I could do and, at the time, slowly learning to do otherwise, Callahan says of those nascent days. A noise DJ at a local college played one of the tapes songs on air, and it was on after that, he says.

Callahans son has a plastic drum kit with a built-in microphone. When Callahan recently heard the four-year-old screaming into it, complete with feedback, he thought, Huh, that sounds like me when I was twenty-two.

Callahan returned to Maryland and set about making what would become Smogs first full-length album, 1990s Sewn to the Sky, a labyrinthine collage of noise experimentation. He spent the next fourteen years establishing a cult following with a slew of low-budget albums that saw him move away from pure noise and develop as a songwriter. He moved around along the East and West coasts and to Chicago (home of Drag City) before finally landing in Austin sixteen years ago. He didnt mean to settle here. Hed come to town for South by Southwest to play at the Ritz and do an in-store performance at the now-defunct record store 33Degrees, just a few blocks north of where were sitting. (33Degrees eventually morphed into the beloved South Austin record store End of an Ear.) The in-store itself went fineCallahan played half a dozen songs to a small retinue of fans and curious onlookers. But then something happened that amazed him. Someone invited me to a party afterwardno one had invited me to a party in Chicago, like, ever, he laughs. It felt like people here were happy. He had found his home.

Callahans songwriting at this time often veered toward the twisted and sardonic. But he couldnt stop thinking about something the legendary Jamaican producer Lee Scratch Perry once said in an interview. He was talking about how he was a superhero and his music is good for lifting up people and vanquishing evil, Callahan says. And I was like, Hmm, thats a choice. Thats a good choice he made. Maybe Ill make that too.

Following that conscious decision to imbue his musicand, by extension, himselfwith more positivity, the ideas flowed. He refers to the first album he made in Austin (and his last under the name Smog), 2005s A River Aint Too Much to Love, as a breakthrough. It was a huge change to come here and have a house for the first time, he says. Since then, hes worked toward being a ray of sunshine. Youd be forgiven for thinking otherwise, given some of Callahans lyrics. Take Spring, a song from his last studio album, 2013s Dream River. And everything is awing and tired of praise/ And mountains dont need my accolades, he purrs. And spring looks bad lately anyway/ Like death warmed over. While hes slowly pulled back the curtain each year and let light seep in, old shadows clearly linger.

Though his approach has transformed over the course of his career, a consistent through line in all of Callahans music is its immersive quality. You dont listen so much as submerge yourself in a song of his: the low resonance of Callahans voice, coupled with his evocative lyrics and inventive arrangements, demands rapt attention. Hell often kick off his songs with a quiet strum or hum, as a mesmeric soundlike a quivering harmonica or a sharp inhaledraws you in even closer. And as a performer, he thrives on the intimacy of his live shows. He will spontaneously do an apparently unscripted intro to a song while he vamps the chords and tells some understated and hilarious story from his life about the place or city that were playing in, says Brian Beattie, a music producer and bassist who has worked with Callahan for a decade. Hell go on for ten minutes with the audience in the palm of his hand, like some alternate-reality Las Vegas entertainer. We just listen and try not to ruin it.

In 2014, Callahan married the documentarian Hanly Banks, whom he met when they made Apocalypse: A Bill Callahan Tour Film; they have a four-year-old son. I was just splattered against the wall, he says of becoming a father. The me that I had come to use as a tool to get through life and make music was just not functional. That me was no good in this [new] world . . . so I had to find other parts of me that hadnt grown yet or been grown yet. Those gnarled lessons and meditations on internal growth are all over Shepherd, particularly songs such as Tugboats and Tumbleweeds, which sounds like a tough (but gentle) conversation between Callahan and his 23-year-old self. And in Son of the Sea, he addresses his lifes recent sea changes directly: I got married to my wife, shes lovely/ And I had a son/ Giving birth nearly killed me/ Some say I died/ And all that survived was my lullabies.

Callahan performs in Barcelona, Spain, on February15, 2010.

Photograph by Drew Anthony Smith

He started writing what would become Shepherd before moving to Santa Barbara in 2016 for a ten-month spell while Banks attended graduate school. In California, he found himself incapable of making progress on the album; the regions no-worries vibe just wasnt conducive to his songwriting. But as soon as he returned to Texas, the record immediately began to take shape. Some grit and anger are good for me, but not too much or not too little, he says. Though Callahan loves living in Austin, he feels that the anger level is rising here a little bit, with more people coming in. Its like the clown carit wasnt designed [for this growth].

Callahan recorded Shepherd (which, at twenty songs, is a double album), at the Wonder Chamber, Beatties home studio, in South Austin. Beattie describes Callahans songwriting evolution this way: Someone like Hank Williams is really thinking about a whole bunch of other people when hes writing a song. But Bill is in that lifelong mission of becoming more and more like himself.

Though many musicians wax poetic about the road, Callahans come into his sound by ruminating on his evolving home life. Yet as is the case for most independent musicians, he has to tour pretty extensively to make money from his art (he capped his national summer tour behind the new record with a European stint in October). When hes in Austin, hes not usually out on the scene; he prefers a quiet life of cooking for his family and going on hikes along the Greenbelt. Ive become very accustomed to the landscape here now, he says. I think where you live, thats your idea of beauty that you compare other things to. So now when Im on tour, its like, Oh, this looks a bit like Texas. I think thats what makes it homewhen its your reference point.

This article originally appeared in the January 2020 issue ofTexas Monthlywith the headline Home Is Where the Art Is.Subscribe today.

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For Singer Bill Callahan, Home Is Where the Art Is - Texas Monthly

In a world fixated on narratives of political Islam with all their variants, Hilal Ahmeds Siyasi Muslims is a welcome addition. The ten chapters of the book are structured in three parts: part one examines how best we can make sense of the expression, siyasi Muslims; part two delves deeper to unpack the various debates gravitating around Ahmeds subject of study, the siyasi Muslims; part three interrogates metaphors associated with the siyasi Muslims and seeks to connect them to the future of Indias democracy.

Ahmed situates his research against the wider backdrop of the problems that underwrite the project of defining siyasi Muslims: whether siyasi, true to its original Urdu/ Persian roots, ought to be seen as an adjective defining a politically conscious community or as a reductionist pejorative to denote opportunistic individuals and groups. There is, however, a subtly nuanced approach in Ahmeds arguments that sets his book apart from works defining Muslim politics in India. By contrast, as he says, this is a study of Muslim political discourse an intellectual mode through which certain specific notions of Muslim identity in contemporary India are produced and sustained. The author has marshalled sources of a diverse nature: official documents, pamphlets, booklets and so on; interviews with religious leaders and Muslim politicians; sources available in the world wide web and, finally, data generated by the Delhi-based Centre for the Study of Developing Societies--Lokniti on different facets of Muslim public life in postcolonial India.

Chapters one through four, all under part one, cover a wide sweep in conceptual terms: from reiterating the well-recognized need to provide a corrective to the colonial predicament of conceptualizing the community almost necessarily in terms of numbers (thus resulting in the sharp binaries of minority/majority), through discussing idioms of a religious community, Islamization in post-Independence times to issues at the Hindutva/Islam interface. Drawing upon B.R. Ambedkars view of South Asias Muslims, Ahmed broaches the Muslims not as numbers but as a constitutional category and provides, in these first few chapters of the volume, an overview of the subject and its literature.

In the chapters in the second part, he shows how, over the years, approaches to Muslims as a religious minority in India have yielded questions that can be structured along the following lines: The Indianization of Islam; The Indianization of Muslim everyday life; The Indianization of Muslim family life; The Indianization of Muslim eating habits and The Indianization of Muslim politics.

From there Ahmed goes on to dissect idioms of backwardness associated with Muslims in contemporary India, the politics of triple talaq, to exploring the internal configuration of Muslim communities, especially the formation of a new middle class. Expatiating on these internal nuances, Ahmed suggests, is important even as we need to move away from both the hegemonic, if also monolithic in their own ways, narratives of Islamic terrorism or Muslim backwardness and victimhood. This is Ahmeds way of bringing back the important, yet arguably downplayed, class-question with reference to the Muslims.

The two chapters in the third part, on the metaphors of Muslim politics and Muslims and the future of Indias democracy bring into sharp relief not only questions of political idioms but also, conversely, the equally important discourse of Muslims as an apolitical entity, which had its historical roots way back in the late colonial times, eventually culminating in the three core arguments of the book.

The first of these arguments relates to the themes of the Muslim vote bank, good Muslims/bad Muslims and Muslim appeasement; the second relates to contemporary religiosities, Muslim victimhood linked to the internal configuration of power; the third proposes that Hindutva needs Muslims. Written before the 2019 elections, Ahmed questions if these arguments will be useful in making sense of the outcome of the 2019 elections. This is a question that readers, with the wisdom of hindsight, are well-equipped to address.

Ahmeds is a pertinent intervention. One feels though that a deeper engagement with historical processes and forces would have enriched the story that Ahmed narrates. For instance, what are the intellectual lineages and sites of evolution of a Muslim political community and, by extension, an apolitical entity in colonial India? Indeed, what are their parameters and terminologies, and the nature of debates that have conditioned, in the first place, the context for this evolution of the idea of a Muslim political community? How have religio-intellectual forces historically intersected or diverged at global and regional or local levels? While substantial works in this field are already available, one would have liked to see them brought in conversation with the core research problem developed in this volume. All said, however, the book offers a good and timely overview of the subject that will interest both scholars and a wider general audience.

Siyasi Muslims: A Story Of Political Islams in India by Hilal Ahmed, Penguin, Rs 599

Originally posted here:
The story of politics and Islam in India - Telegraph India