Happy Halloween Fashionistas

Happy Halloween skanks and hoes! What? Was that rude? Considering the costume options floating around out there, that is apparently what costume manufactures believe the women of America to be. So, when did Halloween become an excuse for grown women (or even teenagers) to run around the streets looking like two dollar hookers? Are US women that lacking in creativity, that all we can come up with is a “sexy” version of a traditional costume? Sexy nurse, sexy witch, sexy cat, even sexy nun, is that really the best we can do? Despite the lines out the door at Ricky’s, we’d like to believe that our readers, being creative fashionistas, have far better costume ideas. We’d love to hear from you. What are you dressing up as this Halloween? Was it a DIY or a store bought? What has been your all time favorite costume?

Recently, we saw that one of our favorite bloggers, Jessica Schroeder from What I Wore has been posting a wonderful series of her past Halloween costumes. You must check them out as they are wonderful examples of what the creative mind can do. From Karl Lagerfeld, to Frida Kahlo, to Little Edie Beale, Jessica has done an outstanding job. Her costumes are also a fantastic inspiration for those of you who need last minute, affordable, ideas that can be made from clothes in your own closet. Whatever you decide to go with we wish you a happy Halloween, from 39^th and Broadway!

Update ** We just realized that the lovely Jennine from The Coveted, has her Halloween series up, that you must check out for a ton of DYI costume ideas. Besides some great looks, she has this hilarious quote regarding the slutification of Halloween costumes, “not that there is anything wrong with being slutty (whatever that means) but looking slutty? That’s where I draw the line.”

Fashionista’s Sex Diary

Flickr image via Johan Larsson

Ever wonder what goes on behind the bedroom doors of your neighbors and coworkers? Well, thanks to New York Magazine, you can find out! For better or worse, NY Mag has all the dirty details on what New Yorkers are doing between the sheets. On their website they post a feature called, “Sex Diaries“. There, a variety of anonymous New Yorkers agree to share, blow by blow (pun intended), their sexual activity over a handful of days. The diarists range in age, ethnic group, income level, and relationship status. They give a fascinating and often X-rated look into their personal lives.

Well, we found one in particular quite entertaining titled, “The Fashion Freelancer on the Prowl.” Here is her description from NY Mag, “Once a week, Daily Intel looks behind doors left slightly ajar. This week, the Fashion Freelancer on the Prowl; 31, female, Park Slope, straight, in an open relationship that probably shouldn’t be open.” Without getting too graphic for our little blog, we’ll say, from random strangers to vibrators this girl gets a lot of action and has a particularly erotic subway ride. To read all the juicy details (and you know you want to) please click here to read her seven day sex diary.

We can’t help but wonder who this girl is, do we know her? Is she a co-worker? Does she read this blog? If the answer to this last question is yes, we would love to hear from you. Also, what fashion company is she working at were she doesn’t have to be to work until 10:00 am?

When you read her diary link, don’t forget to check out some of the 90+ comments left for her, they are as fascinating as the diary itself. After one commenter posted this “Not to be age-ist, but she’s getting WAY busier than any of the 31-year-olds I know. Girl’s a man-eater.” There was a ton of refuting responses and we couldn’t help but laugh at this one, “Sorry to hit a nerve with the age-ist comment. Bear in mind 30 in Chicago years is 55 in New York ones.” So enjoy this bit of this insider scoop and feel free to let us know, do our readers have as steamy a sex life as this Fashion Freelancer?

When Design Becomes Big Business

For many aspiring fashion designers their dream often includes, starting a small label and watching it flourish. But, how large do you really want your “small” business to become? Many prefer to keep their brands small, tight, and controllable, while others take the, “go big or go home” perspective. And of course, what constitutes a designer being labeled a success? Well, there really is no right answer for what success is in the fashion industry.

Perhaps this is the reason why the recent Marc Ecko news struck a cord with us. Ecko is a large presence in the Garment Center, owning clothing lines like Rocawear, Mossimo, and Joe Boxer. To some Ecko could be deemed more successful than an indie label sold only at local boutiques. At the same time, Ecko is a drop in the bucket compared to giant conglomerates like LVMH and Federated. Ecko sales are estimated to be at around 1.5 billion and has 750 employees in NYC alone. However, Marc began his business small, by selling just t-shirts in the 80’s, which then became the Ecko brand about a decade later. Certainly he followed the, “go big or go home” mentality.

While there is much discussion in the blogesphere regarding starting a fashion line and the struggles of small indie designers; there is little on what happens after. If a designer/entrepreneur like Marc Ecko makes it big, what’s next? Well, many successful growing companies end up going public, licensing out the majority of their product, or simply getting bought out. There are pros and cons to all these situations. For Ecko, lavish spending styles, management issues, and a poor economy have forced Marc to sell off a majority stake of his company. The Iconix Group has bought a 51% share in the Ecko brand taking control of the company while keeping Marc on as Chief Creative Officer.

So we had to wonder, would this be considered a failure on Marc’s part? We think not. Had he stayed small, just selling his Ecko logo t-shirts, that would have been a failure. Clearly he had more vision then that and brands like Rocawear would never have been developed. Bottom line, Marc Ecko has accomplished more then most designers and fashion entrepreneurs could dream. At 37 with 63 million in cash and 90 million in financing from Iconix, he could retire or start a whole new brand if he wanted. We think he agrees since he told the NY Post, “I’ve had a crazy, wild ride. I’ve done a lot of things that have been naive. I’ll take my lumps for a lot of things that, in retrospect, were a little indulgent. Life happens. I don’t regret any of it.”

I Don’t Eat Shark Fin Soup

Flickr image via lookslikeamy

We received the following excellent insider article from fashion designer and writer, Stacy Lomman. Stacy has much experience working in NYC for various apparel companies and like many of us she has a lot to say about the business of fashion. So please enjoy the following post and stay tuned for part two from Stacy next week.

I refused to eat the shark fin soup. It sounds crazy, but I’m convinced that played a major role in the recent loss of my design job. Over the past fifteen years, I have held some rather difficult jobs and worked with some seriously crazy people. It’s definitely been character building, to say the least. I had been working in my latest role for just over eight months and I walked on egg shells every day because I feared that I could lose my job at any moment. I knew it was coming, the pattern had long been established. I heard from a girl in the production department that the owner fires a designer every six months or so. Apparently, some of them had quit long before that and walked out in tears because they were treated so badly. I was there when the designer from the other division was fired after she had put in eight months. “I can’t work with you,” the owner told her. Hmm, I thought she was a lovely person.

A little while later, with my eighth month rapidly approaching, I was informed that I had to make a trip overseas. I spent twelve excruciating days working in the factories in Hong Kong and China with my boss, and then I returned to New York, tied up the spring line in a nice little package and awaited my fate. I felt excited in a way — like I was about to be released from prison. A couple of weeks ago, I went into the office and discovered that my password on my computer had been changed. Great, now I was forced to march into my boss’s office and practically fire myself! “So, you must know my password doesn’t work, right?” I said. “Yes,” he replied and handed me my expense check that was sitting on his desk. This is so surreal, I thought. “Is there anything you want to say?” I asked him. “I can’t work with you,” he replied. I resisted the temptation to snap, “It’s because I wouldn’t eat the shark fin soup in Shanghai, isn’t it?” Instead, I just marveled and the insanity of the situation and went home and took a run in Central Park. The noose I wore around my neck for almost nine months had been cut.

This story is not uncommon and I’m not writing this article because I’m feeling sorry for myself, but rather to speak up and try to change the way that creative people are treated in this industry. The fashion business has always been challenging, finicky, cutthroat and unorthodox, but these days, more than ever, designers face adversity. We’re totally dispensable. We are being phased out due in part to the economic situation as there are less companies and less jobs, but also because creativity is no longer a priority. Many of my design colleagues have noticed this over the past several years. While senior level positions used to demand ten years of work experience, now the ads for senior designers sometimes request only three to five years of experience. I call them “CopyCAD’s.” It’s standard practice these days for companies to simply buy garments from a store and pass them to a junior level designer to copy and send overseas. Therefore, it’s sufficient to employ an individual who can create a half decent sketch in Illustrator (Computer-Aided Design), measure a sample and pack a Fed Ex. And it’s cheaper than hiring a designer with significant industry experience and knowledge. Price points have become such an important factor with the American consumer that quality has suffered as a result. Manufacturers must source the cheapest labor in order to meet their margins and this means producing offshore. In many cases, the factories have become so powerful that they are the ones paying our salaries and making the decisions. Garment manufacturing has moved almost entirely overseas and has taken along with it, jobs and opportunities for New York designers, technical designers, print artists, patternmakers, etc. The recent HBO documentary, Schmatta: Rags to Riches to Rags, confirms exactly how much apparel we actually manufacture in the U.S. today. A whopping 5%! That figure has decreased from 50% since 1995. I have witnessed this drastic drop-off over my fifteen year career and I am dealing with the ramifications right now.

I had an interview the other day. The creative director carefully scrutinized my portfolio and spoke without making eye contact. He complimented my sketching, admired the photos of my samples and praised my choice of fabrics and color. I was feeling confident when he said, “This is great, I’m just going to take this in the back to show the owner.” A couple of minutes later he returned and blurted, “She said we’ll call you, she came in late this morning and is really stressed out.” He shuffled me away so fast it seemed like he was scared for his life. Quite possibly they copied a few pages of my portfolio (which happens all the time) or perhaps the owner did, in fact, send him away like a scared little boy. When I relayed the story to my friend and former colleague, she was not surprised. She had actually worked at that very company a year ago and told me to consider myself lucky things didn’t go any further. “The owner will make you cry,” she said. “Everybody cried. It didn’t matter how tough a person was, she managed to make them crack eventually. That was her thing, she got off on it.” My friend told me about the day she finally broke down and walked out (therefore, forfeiting her right to unemployment). “The owner gathered the entire staff to watch and took all my sketches and stacked them into a neat pile and dumped them into the trash can. She said they were garbage and that’s where they belonged.” It sounds shocking, but I know that designers, artists, technical designers, patternmakers, sewers, etc. have to deal with this kind of behavior all the time. We are all talented, educated, hardworking people who deserve more respect. Hopefully, one day, when and if the garment manufacturing finds its way back to New York, there will be better opportunities for all of us. Meanwhile, I’m searching WWD and StyleCareers on a daily basis; I’m networking, reconnecting and keeping my skills sharp. I’ve pretty much given up on head hunters. Occasionally, one will contact me but it’s usually for a design job overseas. “I cannot live in Asia,” I always say. “I don’t eat shark fin soup.”

Cost of Living – Apparel Crisis

Recently, a friend received a “Remember When” booklet on her birthday. For those that don’t know, they are fun little pamphlets from the year you were born. They’re filled with news, photos, advertisements and other hilarious events form your particular birth year. Well, this one contained a rather amusing, yet slightly depressing, cost of living chart as pictured above. As you can see, a new house was almost 50k in 1977, while today a new home averages 280K, big difference there. Gasoline, which as we all know, has thankfully come down a bit, was $0.65 per/gal back then vs. around $2.68 per/gal today. Food is huge shocker, the cost has unbelievably sky rocketed for groceries, especially in the last few years. Eggs are now six times more expensive then in 1977 and that’s not counting organic pricing. Insanely, bread had gone up to $2.79 per/loaf a whopping 800% increase!

One thing we noticed missing from this chart was, apparel. Where are the clothing prices? Now you would think, with the cost of living rising across the board, including average income, apparel would increase too. Right? Well further into this booklet we found this little gem, a 1977 ad for K-Mart bathing suits, check it out…

Classic photo right? And the price $8.96, not bad right? We were curious though, with mass marketers vying for the lowest price-points, and consumers wanting more for less from retailers, how does a 1977 K-Mart bikini compare to today’s prices? Take a look at the below screen-shot, taken this week from K-Mart’s website.

Well, these images pretty much say it all don’t they? Thirty two years later and prices have not just failed to rise but have actually decreased! The apparel industry is hemorrhaging jobs, suffering bankruptcies left and right, retailers are struggling to stay in the black, and this is a large part of the reason why. Everything else in the world has gone up in price except clothing, it is amazing apparel companies can even stay in business. We thought Walmart’s agenda to, “Make shirts cost less then a loaf of bread” was upsetting, but these pictures really bring the point home.