kudos to our image/direct teams for making such a beautifully simple and simply beautiful shopping experience at intimately fp…

Our August catalog drops today and we are so excited! Shot at a quaint Pennsylvania farm, this is a very special book that has some very special models: the dogs and cats of The Philadelphia Animal Welfare Society! Many of our own pets were adopted from animal shelters, so this is a topic that really hits home for us! Our hope is that this book might help raise awareness of all the doggies and kitties that are hoping for good homes in shelters across the country!
Click here to find an animal shelter in your area! Also, don’t miss Kevin’s interviews with the animal models at the shoot! They are so cute!

Aside from our lovely animal models, another very special thing about this catalog was our photographer! For this book we were very lucky to get the photographer Dahlen. Dahlen is an amazing fashion photographer, and he has even shot Madonna! Check out this fun video of the master at work, at the shoot!

Hooray! Our July catalog drops today, and should be hitting your mailboxes any time now! We are so excited about this book because of the wonderful photographers we used! Lina Scheynius is a Swedish photographer who shoots with a free form, sometimes using polaroids! The more close-up studio shots in the catalog were taken by Crackerfarm Photographers, (who often work with us in our web studio as well) and these shots focus on the apparel that we love!
The locations we used for this book were an old brownstone house, and a photography studio in New York, NY. The old brownstone had fabulous old wallpaper, so the walls became a lot of the backdrops in the catalog!
As for apparel themes, jackets are a big part of this book – we love them layered with many items, or even over a simple top or dress!
Click here to check out the online version of the catalog!

meet cal patch! cal worked for free people many moons ago, and has since become a super-successful artist/crafter.
we asked her a few questions about what she’s up to, and what keeps her business – hodge podge – going…and about her little awesome chihuahua, gertie.
1) what exactly do you do?
well, i have been self-employed for the last ten years and that has meant a number of different kinds of work all relating to my love of making clothes. currently i design and hand-make every piece of my line, *hodge podge*, which i sell online, in person at artists’ markets and craft fairs, and in a few boutiques in new york and tokyo. i also teach sewing, crochet, patternmaking and other textile crafts at various locations around nyc and my new home in the catskills. i design projects for magazines like Sew Stylish and Crochet Today, and websites like Craft Stylish. I also just finished writing a book on making your own sewing patterns, which will be out in september. i am also working as a farm-hand and learning how to be a farmer!

2) what’s your favorite thing about what you do?
i love that i have the freedom to do anything i want to do, which translates into making all kinds of things, and that every piece is one of a kind so i never have to make the same thing twice. and i can make my own rules like never using the color black! my label is called *hodge podge* because it includes everything from crochet hats and linen tunics to dog sweaters and carriers, and it changes all the time…

3) what inspires you the most?
i am actually very inspired by function and practicality. i like to make pieces that are special but can be worn every day, not saved for a special occasion. i want them to be sturdy and last for hundreds of years, not disposable. i don’t work in seasons, i just make what i need in my own life and it seems to work for othe people’s lives too!

4) what’s the most beautiful place/thing you’ve seen in the past month?
i recently moved two hours north of the city to the catskills, and every day i am amazed by the surrounding beauty! i had been rather deprived of nature for the past 18 years living in nyc, so i am really attuned to the changes happening every week, like what is blooming or ready to harvest, or how high the river is. the other day i drove over the mountain on my way home, just after a flash rainstorm, and the sun was shining and little impromptu streams and waterfalls were pouring over the rocks alongside the road. it was so beautiful i got tears in my eyes!

5) tell us a funny story about gert.
about a month ago when i was selling my goods at renegade craft fair, lots of people were picnicking in the park behind my booth. every time i looked back there, i’d see gertie attending a different picnic, or sitting on someone’s belly while they sunbathed. nobody seemed to mind because she’s not really interested in food, she just likes to visit. it was cracking me up!
if you want to learn more, check out cal’s blog and etsy sites!

Our friend Lisa at Bazaarvoice, (the company that hosts our product reviews for our site,) used this fun generator at Wordle to make the word collage above. She took all of the product reviews on our website from the last few months or so, and entered them in the generator. The more a word was used, the bigger it appears in the image! It’s pretty fun! Plus, it made a cool visual of what our reviewers are saying.
Use the generator here to make your own word collages! It would be fun to take all the text on your Facebook profile, for example, and see what words come up the most!

Are you a native or fluent speaker of French, Spanish or German? Are you also fluent in English? Are you a savvy online shopper, who loves Free People, and has shopped websites in both English and other languages? If so, Free People needs your help with a very special project! The project will involve a few hours of work, and you will receive a gift for your help! If this sounds like something you would like to be involved in, please click this link to fill out a little form for us! If you seem like a good fit for the project, we will email you in the coming weeks with more information!
We are so excited about this project, and we think you will be too!
xo
Picture via.

Our newest catalog drops today! We’re super excited about this book and can’t wait to hear what you think. We shot it in a studio rather than on location, stripped it down and really focused on the models and the clothing and the styling.
Check out the photos online (or check your mailbox) and let us know what you think! Some “behind the scenes” info coming at you tomorrow, so check back then.

We are really excited to be selling jewelry from Nikki B designing from Santiago,Chile. Nikki employs women in Chile to bead jewelry in their homes on their own time providing extra income. The extra income helps many of these women and their families, paying for running hot water or their children’s education.
Nikki’s inspiration is the beautiful country of Chile, it’s colors and landscape as well as her own intrinsic modern taste. The jewelry is made with glass beads, handmade sterling silver and vermeil beads, seeds, shells, semi precious stones, silk thread, leather and local mystical wood carvings from the mountain region of Chile.
Check out all of Nikki B’s styles on freepeople.com

xoxox
FP

Free People is so excited to be the first and only place you can get Swedish Hasbeens in the United States! We have 3 styles, a strappy sandal, a covered sandal, and a super high slip in clog.
I LOVE the story behind these, so enjoy this bit from the Swedish Hasbeens:
Her name was Anita and she was the hottest mum in all of southern Sweden in the 1970’s. While smoking Camel she screamed at her kids until her curlers fell out and just looked fabulous in her white high-heeled clogs.
One summer day in 2006 we found the shoes she wore (300 pairs of red, white and black beautiful clogs from the 70’s) in the basement of an old clog factory in the neighboring village and brought them to Stockholm. So for all these people that shared our love for Anita’s wooden shoes and for ourselves we started Swedish Hasbeens.
Our ambition is to continue to release more incoherent and fun shoes and stuff inspired by Hasbeens that once ruled the planet.
The Hasbeens are based on original 70’s models and are made of ecologically prepared natural grain leather since it’s the most beautiful and the highest quality at the same time as it’s environmentally friendly.
See our styles on freepeople.com :)

Our January catalog drops today! The trend concept this month is called Farmer’s Daughter. Here’s some info from Elsa on our catalog team:
“We shot the catalog in Epping, North Dakota. We found the location in a National Geographic article about abandoned towns of North Dakota. Basically, in the early 20th century, with railroad expansion, people moved to the prairies of North Dakota to homestead and hoping to make a life farming. Unfortunately the weather proved to be too harsh for them or their crops and eventually the people had to abondon their houses as well as most of their belongings.
These houses and barns remain standing to this day, and if they are owned by anyone, you wouldn’t know it as they seem to have been long forgotten. We worked with a woman in Epping whose family had come out to North Dakota by way of Ohio, and she took us to the homestead they made, a small cabin on acres and acres of land. We were also able to explore lots of other abandoned houses, barns, schools, and even a church. Each building contained remnants of lives left behind, things such as books, clothes, papers, letters, and furniture.
It was an unbelievable experience getting to see this, but we decided that shooting outside in the vast fields was much better for our trend. The land in North Dakota is beautiful and vast, and it felt emptier than any other place I have ever been.”
Here are a few of the National Geographic photos, but check out the rest at the link. They are eerily beautiful…