Arts & Culture

For some people, the sub-prime mortgage crisis led to lost homes or jobs.  For one Virginia man, however, the economic downturn created a business opportunity. 

The business plan for Ledbury was hatched by Paul Trible in a pub on London’s Ledbury Road.  With an undergraduate degree from Washington and Lee and a business degree from Oxford, he was preparing to start a career in finance.

E-commerce has taken a toll on conventional stores of all kinds.  Since it’s not necessary to invest in a shop, there are many more sellers online.  In Richmond, two retailers appear to have found successful ways to compete in this brave new world of fashion.  

As a teenager in Richmond, Elizabeth Harris knew just where to shop – a boutique that carried cool vintage clothes and contemporary fashions from around the world.

This is fashion week in New York, but with the advent of the Internet, the Big Apple isn’t the only American city laying claim to haute couture.  Several innovative apparel companies have put down roots in Richmond – among them a store and factory focused on blue jeans. 

In the old tobacco warehouse district, the company opened a small, tasteful showroom and, on the other side of a long window, a workshop where customers can watch nine people, using sewing machines and other tools, to make high end jeans, one pair at a time.

As anti- Muslim rhetoric becomes part of the public and political conversation this election season, Muslims in this country feel more vulnerable.  That has Muslim students at Virginia Tech thinking about how to cope with the situation, and… how to improve it.

Current events are shining a spotlight on Muslims in this country.  And that’s both a problem and an opportunity, says Sana Rauf, a junior, studying business information technology at Virginia.

Recent record highs this winter may have you seeing green in your garden long before you should.
 

Salvia is a sage plant with bright purple flowers, that usually doesn’t bloom until the middle of summer.

“So it’s really strange that we see it still with some green foliage and those beautiful flowers,” says Grace Chapman Elton, director of horticulture at Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden.
 

Elton says there are lots of plants she’d expect to be dead this time of year, but aren’t -pointing out another type of Sage, Pineapple Sage.