Lilliana Vazquez, style expert and founder of The LV Guide, discusses what not to wear this winter season when it comes to men's fashion.
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Lilliana Vazquez, style expert and founder of The LV Guide, discusses what not to wear this winter season when it comes to men's fashion.
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Even if you haven't heard of Herschel Supply Co., it's likely you've seen their products.
The nostalgia-inspired backpacks, bags, and accessories are certifiably ubiquitous in urban areas and college campuses. They're less sporty and technical, clearly derived from heritage designs, and even affixed with the company's patch in a faux-historic script.
Herschel, founded in 2009, now has 10,000 points of sale around the world in 72 countries.
The privately held Vancouver, British Colombia-based company also reported a 35% rate of group from 2014-15, and expected growth to stay steady at 30% through the end of 2016. The company declined to share revenue figures.
Nostalgia is only part of the brand's appeal, according Lyndon Cormack, who founded the company with brother Jamie. It was also about filling an underserved niche in the market — lifestyle.
"We kept on coming back to this idea that the bag industry in general was either a little bit too commodity, or a little too sport, driven," Cormack to Business Insider. "There wasn't a real lifestyle bag company, someone who celebrated not only functionality but fashion, in this sort of neck of the woods where we are now."
Cormack doesn't believe the brand was buoyed too much by trends, and that backpacks supposedly coming back into fashion wasn't a "driving factor."
"Used to always hear that men are wearing backpacks and it became sort of maybe a trend," Cormack said. "That's kind of a little bit concerning bc I've been wearing a backpack as my go-to bag forever so I guess I was unfashionable and became fashionable at a certain point in time."
The nostalgia, however, is clearly still driving force.
"We use that word 'nostalgic' around here all the time," Cormack says. "Looking back before you move forward is something we're big fans of."
The company strives to celebrate famous designs of the past, taking inspiration to create something new according to the founder.
"We aren't interested in living in the past and we look at those items in a different lens and try to figure out if those items were created today," Cormack says.
To do that, Cormack says Herschel will be investing in innovation. One of the newest examples of this is the company's new proprietary and trademarked fabric called ApexKnit— a woven that will significantly reduce the waste and energy it takes to create a bag. Cormack is so excited about the fabric, he says he carries an ApexKnit bag himself.
Herschel is also expanding into China in 2017, opening a wholly-owned entity in the country this year.
"China is a blank canvas for us," Cormack said, admitting that nailing the country's rapidly changing consumer preferences will be a challenge.
"[We're a] group of people who want to get it right," Cormack said. "That's our goal. So we hope we get it right,"
"I'm not a big believer on hope strategies, so I'm surprised I even said the word hope there.
SEE ALSO: Here's the backstory behind Trump's bizarre tweet about L.L. Bean
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The Professional Bull Riders organization, also known as PBR, recently visited Madison Square Garden in New York. Part of PBR's Built Ford Tough Series saw 35 of the best bull riders in the world competing for a championship prize of more than $100,000.
We followed 19-year-old bull riding phenom Jess Lockwood, the 2016 Rookie of the Year, beginning with his appearance at the New York Stock Exchange, where he rang the opening bell. Along with the other competitors, Lockwood rode once each night to try to get a combined score high enough to make the championship round on Sunday.
We were on hand for Lockwood's entire three-day journey, during which he put his life on the line for the chance at a huge payday.
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Whether she likes it or not, a first lady's style is put under the microscope from the Inauguration onward.
First lady Michelle Obama has exuded grace and elegance with her style choices no matter the event. While she's been applauded for rocking affordable clothing from stores like J.Crew and H&M, she really shines at formal events.
As she leaves the White House this month, as a private citizen Mrs. Obama's style could potentially morph. No longer restrained by being required to make politically charged wardrobe choices, she'll also be able to accept gifts from designers.
From state dinners to State of the Union addresses, here are Michelle's 29 best looks from the past eight years.
SEE ALSO: 17 photos of the stunning inaugural ball gowns worn by first ladies over the last 50 years
Source: Smithsonian
There's a lot of information about you in public documents if you've ever signed a lease or applied for a loan — your address, your age, sometimes the identify of your family members.
It's well known that a lot of sites around the internet, such as Spokeo, collect and compile that kind of information into databases.
But one innocuous-seeming website, FamilyTreeNow.com, found itself at the center of controversy earlier this week when some people realized that you could get information like a person's address, family members, birth month, and phone number — within minutes and without ever creating an account.
Go check it out for yourself. Simply input your name and your state and see what it turns up for you. For me, it found my immediate family members, an old address I used to use, and my current address.
Anna Brittain, a young-adult fiction writer based in Alabama, discovered Family Tree Now, and tweeted out a series of instructions about how to remove your personal information that ended up going viral.
📢 ONLINE SAFETY THREAD 📢
Heads up. This is super important.
— Anna Brittain (@Almost_Anna) January 10, 2017
Her recommendations were picked up by The Washington Post, and several Facebook users, and Snopes eventually had to run an article to clear up misconceptions.
"Internet safety is important to anyone, and in particular the community I belong to on twitter sees a lot of targeted online abuse. Thanks to a volatile political climate, using our voices now comes with placing targets on our backs -- particularly the marginalized groups Tr*mp has alienated and endangered most," Brittain wrote in a blog post published on Thursday.
The good news is that Brittain's instructions about how to opt-out are clear and effective. I was able to remove myself from its database quickly.
"DUE TO HIGH VOLUME, OPT OUT REQUESTS SUBMITTED HERE WILL BE SEVERELY DELAYED!!!" according to the FamilyTreeNow website. A request for comment was not immediately returned.
Here's how to opt-out:
SEE ALSO: Edward Snowden's guide to internet privacy
There's nothing like a hot bowl of ramen when the cold weather hits.
That's why we teamed up with city-guide app Foursquare to round up the 13 best places to eat ramen in New York, based on which locations had the highest ratings from Foursquare users.
From popular stops like Momofuku Noodle Bar to Takashi, which serves an unforgettable all-beef version, here are the top 13 places to hit up in New York when you need your ramen fix.
Talia Avakian contributed reporting to a previous version of this article.
SEE ALSO: The best bakery in every state, according to Foursquare
With quick service and lunch specials for around $10, Mei-jin Ramen is a good go-to for a mid-day bite. Their specialty here is a flavorful beef broth, and their spicy beef ramen is a favorite.
Those looking for a vegetarian option can also indulge in a warm bowl of ramen made with a miso base and topped with tofu, green onion, and a variety of fresh veggies.
The spicy miso ramen at this tiny Alphabet City joint is sure to warm up anyone on a cold winter's day.
But if you're not the spicy food type, Minca has all of the basic ramen styles as well, including the restaurant's namesake bowl, which comes with half pork broth and half chicken broth.
If you're feeling especially hungry, head over to Jin Ramen, where you can order kaedama (an extra order of noodles) to finish off your bowl.
While Jin offers shio, shoyu, and tonkotsu ramen, its spicy tonkotsu is the biggest crowd-pleaser. It's made with a creamy pork broth that is prepared for around six hours before being mixed with their special sauce and topped off with spicy sesame oil.
A well-stocked Netflix queue can go a long way toward pure and utter happiness, but sometimes there's still something missing.
For those moments, it can help to fall back on the wisdom of history's greatest thinkers: Kierkegaard, Socrates, Thoreau, and Confucius.
Here's what philosophers discovered about happiness long before orange became the new black.
It's out of character for someone like Bertrand Russell, a lover of mathematics, science, and logic, to dabble in something so negotiable as happiness.
But his idea that happiness can be found in the surrender to visceral feelings of love rings true — and contemporary science seems to be on his side.
For Nietzsche, the famous mustachioed nihilist, happiness is a kind of control one has over their surroundings.
The German philosopher wrote frequently on the impacts that power (and a lack of power) can have on people's lived experiences. When people resist, they take back their agency. That sense of self can then turn into happiness.
John Stuart Mill was a titan of liberalism, perhaps its most important figure in history. He spread the gospel of liberty wherever he could.
When it came to happiness, he adopted the wisdom of the ancient Greeks. Instead of inundating his life with goods, Mill believed in utilitarianism. He believed in using things for a purpose, and if they served no purpose, he banished them from his life.
Don't run into a bear unprepared. We asked survival expert Tim MacWelch, author of "How To Survive Anything" what to if you find yourself face to face with a grizzly.
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A study that researched the sex lives of over 6,000 Americans has concluded that, while the young may be having more sex, the older you get, the better your sex is.
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Boulder, Colorado, is the top-ranked college town in the US, according to a new list from American Institute for Economic Research (AIER).
The city of roughly 200,000 people earned the top spot thanks to its ease of accessibility — with more than 20% of commuters taking public transportation or cycling around Boulder Creek Corridor — and diverse and educated population. Boulder also has an active bar and restaurant scene, with plenty of coffee shops and microbreweries.
AIER calculated its list using nine economic, demographic, and quality-of-life factors. It defines small towns as having less than 250,000 residents.
Aside from the overall ranking, we included cities' individual scores for noteworthy metrics including rent, earnings, and bars and restaurants. Of the nine metrics cities were rated based upon, we chose the one for which they scored highest.
Scroll through to find out the 20 best college towns.
SEE ALSO: 14 things that are harder to get into than Stanford
Population: 208,832
College student population in the metro area: 24,926
#4 Arts and Entertainment
Population: 136,824
College student population in the metro area: 16,081
#1 Youth Unemployment
Population: 186,684
College student population in the metro area: 15,297
#3 Rent
The way we think about diets is undergoing an important shift.
We thinking less about diets as being for rapid weight loss and more about for creating lifestyle changes that stick.
To help people sift through the noise and find science-backed plans that work for years rather than weeks, US News & World Report ranked 38 eating plans.
The rankings considered different criteria including how easy the diet is to follow, its effects on weight loss — both in the short and long term — how nutritional and safe the diet is, and how well it helps prevent diabetes and heart disease.
For the seventh time in a row, it named the DASH diet its No. 1 choice.
DASH stands for dietary approaches to stop hypertension, or high blood pressure. While the diet focuses on a meal plan that helps lower or prevent high blood pressure, it is a diet for everyone.
In fact, the US Department of Agriculture considers it one of the best examples of a healthy eating pattern.
"The DASH diet is really a safe plan for everyone," Angela Haupt, assistant managing editor of health at US News & World Report, told Business Insider in 2016. "There's nothing exciting about it, and that's what makes it a good plan. It's not some fad diet making outlandish claims that you can't rely on."
And for people with abnormally high blood pressure, the DASH diet may, over time, help drop that blood pressure by as many as eight to 14 points.
The distinguishing factor of the DASH diet is that it limits how much sodium you eat.
Since many frozen and prepackaged foods contain large amounts of salt, DASH dieters stick to fresh produce and lean proteins like fish and poultry.
The diet also includes a lot of whole grains, low-fat dairy products, and legumes.
The typical day on a 2,000-calorie DASH diet looks like this:
For example, you could have an omelet with veggies and reduced-fat cheese for breakfast, minestrone soup for lunch, low-fat yogurt as a snack, and spaghetti squash with meat sauce for dinner.
With all the fiber-packed fruits and veggies in the DASH diet, you won't go hungry.
Generally, if you want to shed some excess pounds you'll likely need to incorporate exercise into your regular routine, even if you're on one of the best science-backed diets. That's a component, along with price, that isn't factored into US News & World Report's rankings.
In one 2010 study, researchers assigned 144 overweight adults to one of three diets: the DASH diet, the DASH diet plus exercise, and a control diet in which the participant maintained their typical eating habits.
At the end of four months, those on the DASH plus exercise diet lost an average of 19 pounds. The other two groups lost little to no weight.
Despite its benefits — healthy eating, controlling hypertension, and weight loss, to name a few — DASH can be difficult to adopt at first, which is why the US News & World Report says it's OK to ease into the diet.
"It does take willpower to stick to that [diet] and cut out things you like," Haupt said. "Red meat, sugar, salt — these are big parts of most people's diets, and if you've been accustomed to eat those things for so long, then making the changes and sticking to them will definitely take willpower."
Another potential downside to the diet is the time it takes to prepare fresh food for meals.
"Maybe if you're really crunched for time and you're not into cooking at all, then maybe this diet isn't the right diet for you," Haupt said.
She added that a couple of the other top-10 diets in this year's report, like Weight Watchers and Jenny Craig, either include premade foods you can pick up at the store or have delivered to you, which might better accommodate people who want to diet on the go.
SEE ALSO: Nutrition experts got together and ranked the best diets of 2017 — here are the top 12
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The extra eyelet at the top of running sneakers has puzzled us for years — what is it for?!
Turns out that extra hole helps runners tie their shoes extra tight with a "lace lock" or "heel lock" method.
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A woman in the Ukraine is making thick blankets out of large spools of merino wool using her arms instead of knitting needles. She's also built up quite a following online. Here's a quick look at her innovative product and how she makes them.
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From his speech at the Democratic National Convention in 2004 that made him a household name to his farewell address on Tuesday, President Barack Obama has captivated the world with his words.
Hailed as one of the greatest presidential orators in modern history (although the title is quitecontentious), Obama has a knack for public speaking even his political opponents can recognize.
As Obama prepares to leave office, we've compiled 17 of his most memorable inspirational quotes. Enjoy:
SEE ALSO: 'Yes we can, yes we did': Obama delivers emotional farewell address
DON'T MISS: Michelle Obama chokes up during final speech as first lady: 'I hope I've made you proud'
The best things in life may be free, but that doesn't mean they won't take time, sweat, and perseverance to acquire.
That's especially the case when it comes to learning important life skills.
To ascertain which talents are worth the investment, one Quora reader posed the question: "What are the hardest and most useful skills to learn?"
We've highlighted our favorite takeaways, as well as a few other skills we thought were important.
SEE ALSO: 15 things successful 20-somethings do in their spare time
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"You can be the most disciplined, brilliant, and even wealthy individual in the world, but if you don't care for or empathize with other people, then you are basically nothing but a sociopath," writes Kamia Taylor.
Empathy, as business owner Jane Wurdwand explains, is a fundamental human ability that has too readily been forsworn by modern business.
"Empathy — the ability to feel what others feel — is what makes good sales and service people truly great. Empathy as in team spirit — esprit de corps— motivates people to try harder. Empathy drives employees to push beyond their own apathy, to go bigger, because they feel something bigger than just a paycheck," she writes.
Effective time management is one of the most highly valued skills by employers. While there is no one right way, it's important to find a system that works for you and stick to it, Alina Grzegorzewska explains.
"The hardest thing to learn for me was how to plan," she writes. "Not to execute what I have planned, but to make so epic a to-do list and to schedule it so thoroughly that I'm really capable of completing all the tasks on the scheduled date."
There are so many prescribed sleep hacks out there it's often hard to keep track. But regardless of what you choose, establishing a ritual can help ensure you have restful nights.
Numerous studies show that being consistent with your sleep schedule makes it easier to fall asleep and wake up, and it helps promote better sleep in general.
Hindsight is 20/20, as they say, and it can often lead to regret.
Some people have the philosophy that everything happens for a reason, and there is no point in having regrets.
But for many of us, looking back on our lives can lead to lingering on one poignant moment or period when we wish we had done things differently That nagging question, "What if ...?," plays on repeat in our heads.
"This may sound a little melodramatic, but no matter how happy you are, at my age your regrets are countless," writes Quora user Gary Teal. "You have made decades' worth of little miscalculations you can't completely erase from your memory, as well as a number of big mistakes that made life permanently harder."
Vaughn Bell at Mind Hacks notes that there are two ways people frame their regrets: The things they did that they wish they hadn't, and the things they wish they had done but didn't.
"The difference between the two is often a psychological one, because we can frame the same regret either way — as regret about an action: 'If only I had not dropped out of school;' or as a regret about an inaction: 'If only I had stayed in school.'
"Despite the fact that they are practically equivalent, regrets framed as laments about actions were more common and more intense than regrets about inactions, although inaction regrets tended to be longer lasting," Bell writes.
Quora user Bradley Voytek points to a national survey about the regrets of a typical American, which found 13 common sources for regret. They are, in order: romance, family, education, career, finance, parenting, health, "other," friends, spirituality, community, leisure, and self.
Here are some of the most common regrets as chronicled by Quora users (answers have been edited for clarity):
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"I regret that I never fell in love with someone who was in love with me, when that would have been easy for me to do.
"I regret being like an old song sung by Buffy Sainte-Marie: 'Must I go bound and you so free, Must I love one who doesn't love me, Must I be born with so little art, As to love the one who would break my heart?'" —David Kahana
"For as long as I can remember, I have wanted to have kids. But in my younger years, I foolishly assumed that unlike certain accomplishments like a career, the marriage and kids thing would just happen.
"Well, they didn't. I dated plenty of people but never even thought about making family a priority. Then, in my late 30s, a bout with ovarian cancer left me permanently infertile.
"I think about the kids I never had every day, several times a day. I have a great relationship with my nieces and nephews, and volunteer at a children's hospital on a regular basis, but it's just not the same to be around other people's kids. I would love to adopt or be a foster mother, and hopefully be in a financial and domestic situation that would make this feasible one day.
"But again, not the same. And it pisses me off when people say, "You're lucky you don't have kids, they're so much work, blah blah blah." Yes, but a lot of things in life that are worthwhile are also so much work.
"I think the mothering instinct is so strong in some women that the knowledge that one will never get a chance to give birth and raise their own child goes beyond regret. One that a bar chart cannot capture. I can deal with most of my other regrets in life but am having a hard time dealing with this one." — Caroline Zelonka
"I regret not choosing to spend more time with my parents in my 20s. I lost my mother in 2000, and I feel the loss of the friendship we never had.
"She was very demanding, very strict, and from the perspective of a young man, very unreasonable. It turned out, as I live through middle age, that most of the ideals I have today ended up being the ones she put on me.
"Sometimes, after a setback, I feel the impulse to call her, and in the second or so that it takes for me to realize she isn't alive to speak to any longer, I realize how much I still need her.
"You cannot negotiate with death. It is final, often sudden, and personal. The last night I had with her, at a hospice in Chicago, I was exhausted and asked her if she minded if I went home. She immediately whispered that absolutely, I should rest, and to be careful driving home. I curled her fingers around the nurses call button, and kissed her on the forehead. I remember I felt some relief that I was leaving.
"I know it didn't make a difference, leaving at that time, or leaving a few hours later. She was going to die either way. But reflecting on that moment today I know then that I didn't understand how precious those minutes were, and how a door was being closed that would never open again." — Jim Wagner
Ever wonder what that diamond-shaped leather patch is on your backpack? It's called a lash tab, and it's popular right now for its vintage appeal.
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Ever wished there was an easy, quick way to cleanse your body of all those 2016 toxins?
Turns out you're already equipped with everything you need. They're called your liver and kidneys.
Together, these two toxin-bashing organs act as a superefficient system for filtering out the vast majority of the harmful substances we eat and drink.
In other words, you never need to detox. Not for New Year's Day. Not after too much Thanksgiving turkey. Not even because you spent most of last year subsisting on greasy takeout from the C-rated "restaurant" next door.
Here's how it works: While our kidneys filter our blood and remove any waste from our diet, our liver processes medications and detoxifies any chemicals we ingest. Together, these organs make our bodies natural cleansing powerhouses.
"Unless there's a blockage in one of these organs that do it day and night, there's absolutely no need to help the body get rid of toxins," family physician Ranit Mishori of the Georgetown University School of Medicine told NPR. Mishori has spent years reviewing the medical literature on cleanses.
The original detox diet, called the Master Cleanse, was thought up in the 1940s by Stanley Burroughs as a "natural" way to treat stomach ulcers. The method was never substantiated by any research.
He published a book describing it, called "The Master Cleanser." The cleanse consists of a daily regimen of six to 12 glasses of water mixed with lemon juice, cayenne pepper, and maple syrup, plus a laxative at bedtime. Yum.
Cleanse proponents like Peter Glickman, who helped resurrect the cleanse in 2004 with a book called "Lose Weight, Have More Energy and Be Happier in 10 Days: Take Charge of Your Health with the Master Cleanse," say dieters begin to feel "euphoric" and "serene" after about a week of not eating.
We could think of better words to describe the sensations of incipient starvation.
Other less-extreme alternatives to Burroughs' and Glickman's self-deprivation plans exist, like swapping a few meals a day for a $12 prepackaged bottle of green liquid, or juicing up a few bags of fresh produce at home each day.
Unlike the Master Cleanse, a juice diet won't totally starve your body, but it will drain your wallet, and the benefits are dubious at best.
For starters, you have to practically buy out your grocery store's produce department for just a few days of juicing. Take the list of ingredients for this three-day juice cleanse from the "Dr. Oz Show": four carrots, four apples (type not specified), two golden delicious apples, two 1-inch pieces of ginger, three cucumbers, six celery stalks, 14 kale leaves, half a lemon, one lime, four plum tomatoes, two red bell peppers, one-fourth of a small red onion, two cups of parsley, one large sweet potato, two large red beets, one orange, eight Swiss chard leaves, and six clementines.
This list is for one day on the three-day cleanse. (That's $40 at our local grocery store, multiplied by three days = $120.)
Or you can buy the premade version — Suja offers a bottle of its cold-pressed "Green Supreme" kale, apple, and lemon juice for $8 a pop. (Three days of three bottles of Suja each day = $72.)
When you juice fresh fruits and veggies, you remove all of their fiber, the key ingredient that keeps you feeling full and satisfied until your next meal. What you keep is the natural sugar in the produce — a bottle of "Green Supreme," for example, has more sugar than a can of Coke.
The immediate effects of a high-sugar, low-protein, low-fiber diet are felt almost immediately: You're constantly hungry because there's no fiber to fill you up. Meanwhile, the sugar you're consuming is temporarily raising your blood sugar, but with no protein to stabilize it, you're on a roller-coaster ride of high and low energy.
The long-term effects are more severe. A lack of protein, when prolonged for even a few days, can cause you to lose muscle rather than fat, because protein is what your muscles feed on for energy.
But there's another reason juicing isn't the best idea for some people that goes beyond depleting your body of muscle, and it has to do with behavior.
Cleanse advocates describe their plans as quick fixes that clean up the mess of processed carbs, sugar, and booze we throw in our bodies each day. In reality, though, this type of eating pretty closely mimics the dangerous binge-and-purge style of eating recognized globally as indicative of an eating disorder.
For people who are prone to disordered eating, juice cleanses could serve as a gateway to bigger problems.
At one eating disorder treatment clinic in New York City, at least half the patients reported having tried a juice cleanse, Marie Claire reports.
"Maybe a patient tried it and became obsessed, or maybe the eating disorder was already there and the juicing became part of it," the clinic's director of nutrition services, Debbie Westerling, told the magazine.
Eating nothing but juice for several days can also cause eating problems from the past to resurface, Megan Holt, a registered dietitian, wrote about cleansing in a post on her clinic's website.
"I tend to discourage fasting because it can reactivate disordered eating behaviors, whether that's restriction or feeling out of control with food or feeling disconnected from hunger and fullness cues when one does start to eat again," she wrote.
In other words, you can't simply drink your way to health — even with hundreds of dollars' worth of freshly liquefied produce.
READ MORE: The sugar industry is quietly funding one of the biggest misconceptions in modern nutrition
SEE ALSO: 14 seemingly harmless things you eat, drink, and use all the time that could kill you
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NOW WATCH: 6 'healthy' eating habits you are better off giving up
Lilliana Vazquez, style expert and founder of The LV Guide, discusses the situations where men can unbutton a button or two on their dress shirt.
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