21:59
aaronchua
Mrs. Obama did something bolder on the campaign trail and, in a sense, less expected. With flashcard clarity, she signaled an interest both in looking stylish and also in advancing the cause of American fashion and those who design and make it. She wore off-the-rack stuff from J. Crew and, at times controversially, designs by fashion darlings like Isabel Toledo, Thakoon Panichgul and Narciso Rodriguez.
I don't think what the fashion needs is more marketing. The problems it is facing has the same roots in other decaying industries.
Insignificant as this may seem in the larger scheme of things, it is less so when one considers the distressing state in which American fashion has found itself lately, with both chain and department stores shutting their doors, consumers confidence at its lowest level in decades and manufacturers struggling to remain afloat in what, as May Chen, the international vice president of the union group Unite Here, explained, “has always been a very credit-sensitive industry.”
What it needs is new DNA. New ways to manage resources and enable innovations and creativity to flourish. New ways to empower independent fashion designers. New ways to add context for the consumers.
American fashion, said Steven Kolb, the executive director of the Council of Fashion Designers of America, like the American automobile and banking industries, is “at a crossroads” in dire need of some kind of boost.
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