Rock On...

Picture this: the world's biggest green-field festival, 700 acts performing on over 80 stages, mud you could lay bricks with, rain, a crowd of 177,500 people, rubber Wellington boots… and Egyptian cotton sheets. It seems our products have reached global recognition yet again (just like our Summer PJ shorts) achieving a celebrity status worthy of an appearance on Larry King Live - Paris Hilton had to go to jail to get her spot on the show!

We discovered that last month, Egyptian cotton sheets made their way to South West England, getting loose at Glastonbury Festival. If you’ve been to a weekend festival before you’ll agree that sleeping doesn’t rate too highly on the priority list. If you manage to find a bit of spare time to squeeze in some shut eye, it is most likely in your brother’s old sleeping bag and your uncle’s tent from 1979. Even if you spent two weeks pay on the latest camping gear - the “Genesis Plasma Three-Season Extreme Self-Inflating sleeping bag,” comfort never really seems to be a key feature, especially when sharing your sleeping space with someone who has a tendency to steal your inflatable mattress.



If your shares in a banana plantation in Greenland just recently produced a high return, then you could have enjoyed the Glastonbury Festival from the exclusive Camp Kerala. Unlike our products, you have to actually be a rock star to have enough spare change to afford this lavish accommodation.

There were 75 luxury tents that overlooked the Glastonbury festivities… and the “commoners” knee deep in mud. For a mere $14,200 you could experience “The Glastonbury Ritz” that featured king-size beds, sheepskin rugs, duck-down doonas, showers, toilets (that flush) and… wait for it… Egyptian cotton sheets! Like our Summer PJ shorts, we’re a little stumped on how our sheets made it to the U.K… unfortunately I can’t devise any clever six degrees of separation link between our Bear & Duck gift wrapping loft and the tunes at Glastonbury.

In a few weeks time, Australian music junkies will be basking in the melodic rays of Splendour in the Grass. It’s not quite as big as Glastonbury… but it still involves mud and tents. A few lucky Bear & Duck employees will be ending the working week early and heading off to Byron Bay for the festival, while the rest of us sweat it out in the office and look forward to a weekend of laundry, dinner with the parents and babysitting. While they don’t have the funds to create a Splendour in the Grass equivalent to Camp Kerala (complete with Egyptian cotton sheets) they will be passing out in style (like true rock stars do) by adding a touch of luxury to their ratted old tent with their Bear & Duck Plush Lounge Blankets.

P.S. We just received an email informing us that our Shoe Boxes have been spotted in Sydney, live on stage in a performance of Priscilla Queen of the Desert. Thank you Linda for letting us know.

Ch Ch Changes!

The trusty Wikipedia site tells us that change denotes the transition that occurs from one state to another… or something along those lines.

When I think of “transition” I’m always reminded of the awkward gangly girl from school who eventually grew into her long limbs and had the rest of us blown away by her Miss Universe like capacity at the five-year reunion.

So you could say that changing our name from Vilain Boutique to Bear & Duck is our metaphorical leap from being an uncertain teenager to a mature confident being.

Well actually, it’s not as deep and meaningful as that. Names are a funny thing, like a tattoo, they are stuck with you for life and can almost be just as painful. We sympathise with all the kids out there whose parents were a product of the hippy movement and consequently named their children Goddess Poet Rain Puddle Smith. Even though we thought Vilain Boutique rolled off the tongue quite nicely it did prove quite a mouthful to pronounce for most people.

My mum always tells me that variety is the spice of life, so as the kids today say, at Bear & Duck we're “keepin' it real.” The jump from Enfant Vilain to Vilain Boutique and now to Bear & Duck reveals our intention to stay current, offer the front line luxury products for the home and provide interactive activities and interesting (or useless) facts to keep us in the game. No bench warmers here… although we do like oranges.