Unidentified Local Hack Buys PR Bullshit About NurseryWorks Lucite Crib

First of all, it's US Magazine, right? So what do you expect? Except that it gets repeated and retweeted everywhere, with nary a mention of whether it's true or not. So let's make this clear, as clear as a lucite crib, right now: the story of Z and Bey buying a Nurseryworks Vetro crib is pure, publicist bullshit.

Here's the deal: when "a source tells US Weekly" the crib was purchased "at a NYC boutique," "in November," you know the source is a publicist. Because the store's not namechecked, you can safely assume that it's not the store's publicist. [Unless, of course, the store is playing some sort of long Celebrity Industrial Complex game, where they get untraceable payback from the magazine for their tips, or they try to prove to the celebrity that it's safe and discreet to keep shopping there.]

But I don't think it went down that way. First, because, wouldn't the paparazzi have covered such a trip in November? Was there not a bounty out on Beyonce's bump?

Mostly I think it's bullshit, though, because "A source" also "tells Us the singer also purchased a NurseryWorks mattress to fit the crib." Which, ahh, no. There's no NurseryWorks mattress, but there are mattresses marketed by Mdb, aka Million Dollar Baby, aka Bexco, the scrappy discount crib company which bought out NurseryWorks in 2010. But NurseryWorks has only ever shown its Lucite crib with a Nook Pebble mattress, not one of their own totally random-looking ones. Because the Nook is obviously the only kind of mattress you could ever use in a freaky Lucite crib. Because otherwise it looks like 360-degree crap. Try it at home and let me know.

So NurseryWorks flacked their crib's fate, whether it was sold, sold wholesale, or "gifted" is really irrelevant, since the entire value is in the flacking.

UPDATE: NEVER MIND! In the comments, Kelly O points to a a Nov 16 interview at Fashion Week Daily with the owners of Maison 24 on Park in Midtown, who say the crib was purchased there. So the bullshit is that US ripped off the story without attribution. And, of course, all the NurseryWorks/Bexco/Million Dollar Baby shenanigans below. Carry on!

NurseryWorks Hollis Crib filled with Munny Dolls since, duh, a mattress'd look awful, at ABC Kids 2010, image by Chris Ford for Babble

And of course, none of this is even the biggest WTF?! in the NurseryWorks Vetro crib saga. Because until just a few months ago, the design-patented Vetro was actually called the Hollis Crib. That's the name NurseryWorks introduced it under in at the 2010 ABC Kids Expo.

The reference is to Charles Hollis Jones, a pioneering Southern California designer of lucite furniture. From the prototype's original debut, through ICFF 2011, and well into the Summer, NurseryWorks described the crib as "inspired by Charles Hollis Jones."

But even after the name changed to Vetro, the boilerplate Bexco provided to retailers consisted almost entirely of Jones's biography, and said the crib was "Designed by" him. [Here's a Vetro retailer on Amazon. Another retailer with the same text even has Jones's photo.]

And yet the Hollis [sic] Crib's design patent, filed in December 2010 [two months after ABC Kids Expo] and granted in March 2011 [two months before ICFF], was only in Bexco president Daryan Fong's name. Not Jones's.

Something was obviously fishy, so I called Jones today. He's going strong, and he said he had absolutely nothing to do with NurseryWorks or the crib. He was understandably but hilariously pissed at the prolonged and unauthorized use of his name to promote something he didn't design. Though he's not afraid of the legal expense, he said, when someone knocks off his furniture, he usually only goes after the most egregious or wide-ranging cases.

Some time last Summer or Fall, it seems like NurseryWorks got the word from Mr. Jones's lawyer.

Beyonce Buys Baby Blue Ivy Carter a $3500 Lucite Crib [usmagazine via dt senior bs correspondent jj daddy-o]
Crib with See-Through Structural Frame [google patents]
NurseryWorks Vetro Crib, $3500 [nurseryworks.net]