Saturday, December 11, 2010
how we can develop new fashion
People sometimes ask me what business a business journal has publishing a style column. The easy an-swer is, “The WallStreet Journal does it, so why shouldn’t we?” but the real answer is, style is a giant business.
How big? Well, we don’t really know.
It’s the industry that employs about 175,000 people in New York City, according to the New York State Department of Labor, and generates an estimated $1.6 billion in tax revenue.
Granted, Indianapolis can’t hope for the same financial return from fashion as New York. But with the recent hire by Develop Indy (formerly Indianapolis Economic Development Inc.) of a fashion liaison, it appears the city of Indianapolis would like to find out how important fashion is to our economy.
Every time I buy a pair of shoes (or five) at Nordstrom, I’m helping to keep the lovely sales staff employed, but there’s more to the business than that. Beyond the retail realm, there are myriad jobs that come with a new textile mill or clothing manufacturer. Recent industry news hints that maybe Indianapolis could carve a niche there.
The Hat World expansion for example, reported June 10 on ibj.com, is poised to bring 571 new jobs to the area.
The Finish Line Inc. has similar growth possibilities, according to Scott Miller, president and CEO of Develop Indy, as does Izod’s IndyCar sponsorship. “[Fashion] can be a bigger sphere than what people here in the Midwest might think,” he said.
That’s where Susan Branco comes in. She is Develop Indy’s motorsports liaison, with a secondary focus in fashion. With this year’s Indianapolis 500 behind us, Branco is now focusing her energy on quantifying the city’s fashion industry and developing a strategy for growing it, something she says no one has attempted before. In order to make a case for developing the industry, she needs to know how many fashion jobs exist locally and what potential there are for new ones.
“We have to figure out how to use our resources to impact the greatest number of people,” Miller said.
Since the fashion scene in Indianapolis is rather spread out, Branco said it’s been a challenge identifying how many industry professionals are out there. I don’t have that exact number, either, but I believe there are enough to warrant the city’s attention. Not to mention the fashion students at the Art Institute, Purdue University and Indiana Business College (now Harrison College) who could be retained as local professionals if there were a place for them to work.
Should fashion be deemed a viable venture for Develop Indy, Branco’s ideas mimic city-assisted efforts in places like Chicago and New York.
“Every city with a good reputation in fashion seems to be home to a major retail headquarters or flagship store, and there are incentives we can offer companies to bring them here,” Branco said. “I have a few specific ones in mind.”
In the short term, she’s considering a city-sponsored web directory for local fashion professionals, similar to chicagofashionresource.com offered by the Chicago Mayor’s Office. The site would make it easy to find local designers, boutiques, manufacturers, events and industry news. But there’s no word yet on who would maintain the database. Chicago’s site is managed by a team of volunteers called the Mayor’s Fashion Council, but Develop Indy doesn’t have any plans to form such a group.
If Indianapolis were to have a site of its own, Miller says, Develop Indy is more likely to follow New York’s lead, where the city teams up with the Council of Fashion Designers of America to achieve its goals. The only problem is, Indianapolis doesn’t have an organization like CFDA … yet.
“If the private sector shows this is an area that could take off, then we’d be open to giving them public help,” Miller said.
From there, things could get really exciting. With city backing, a fashion council could approach private developers about incubator-like studio space (Branco keeps a running list of possible locations), grant money could be raised for growing businesses, and graduating students could have a place to turn for mentorship.
Now that the fashion scene has the city’s attention, it seems imperative to keep it. But that’s not just up to local boutiques and designers. Our city’s ability to attract big employers will have a lot to do with it.
Miller is optimistic. Indianapolis has a lot to offer large operations like clothing manufacturers, he said. Our Midwestern location, work ethic and cost of doing business are all incentives to move from somewhere as costly as New York.•
How big? Well, we don’t really know.
It’s the industry that employs about 175,000 people in New York City, according to the New York State Department of Labor, and generates an estimated $1.6 billion in tax revenue.
Granted, Indianapolis can’t hope for the same financial return from fashion as New York. But with the recent hire by Develop Indy (formerly Indianapolis Economic Development Inc.) of a fashion liaison, it appears the city of Indianapolis would like to find out how important fashion is to our economy.
Every time I buy a pair of shoes (or five) at Nordstrom, I’m helping to keep the lovely sales staff employed, but there’s more to the business than that. Beyond the retail realm, there are myriad jobs that come with a new textile mill or clothing manufacturer. Recent industry news hints that maybe Indianapolis could carve a niche there.
The Hat World expansion for example, reported June 10 on ibj.com, is poised to bring 571 new jobs to the area.
The Finish Line Inc. has similar growth possibilities, according to Scott Miller, president and CEO of Develop Indy, as does Izod’s IndyCar sponsorship. “[Fashion] can be a bigger sphere than what people here in the Midwest might think,” he said.
That’s where Susan Branco comes in. She is Develop Indy’s motorsports liaison, with a secondary focus in fashion. With this year’s Indianapolis 500 behind us, Branco is now focusing her energy on quantifying the city’s fashion industry and developing a strategy for growing it, something she says no one has attempted before. In order to make a case for developing the industry, she needs to know how many fashion jobs exist locally and what potential there are for new ones.
“We have to figure out how to use our resources to impact the greatest number of people,” Miller said.
Since the fashion scene in Indianapolis is rather spread out, Branco said it’s been a challenge identifying how many industry professionals are out there. I don’t have that exact number, either, but I believe there are enough to warrant the city’s attention. Not to mention the fashion students at the Art Institute, Purdue University and Indiana Business College (now Harrison College) who could be retained as local professionals if there were a place for them to work.
Should fashion be deemed a viable venture for Develop Indy, Branco’s ideas mimic city-assisted efforts in places like Chicago and New York.
“Every city with a good reputation in fashion seems to be home to a major retail headquarters or flagship store, and there are incentives we can offer companies to bring them here,” Branco said. “I have a few specific ones in mind.”
In the short term, she’s considering a city-sponsored web directory for local fashion professionals, similar to chicagofashionresource.com offered by the Chicago Mayor’s Office. The site would make it easy to find local designers, boutiques, manufacturers, events and industry news. But there’s no word yet on who would maintain the database. Chicago’s site is managed by a team of volunteers called the Mayor’s Fashion Council, but Develop Indy doesn’t have any plans to form such a group.
If Indianapolis were to have a site of its own, Miller says, Develop Indy is more likely to follow New York’s lead, where the city teams up with the Council of Fashion Designers of America to achieve its goals. The only problem is, Indianapolis doesn’t have an organization like CFDA … yet.
“If the private sector shows this is an area that could take off, then we’d be open to giving them public help,” Miller said.
From there, things could get really exciting. With city backing, a fashion council could approach private developers about incubator-like studio space (Branco keeps a running list of possible locations), grant money could be raised for growing businesses, and graduating students could have a place to turn for mentorship.
Now that the fashion scene has the city’s attention, it seems imperative to keep it. But that’s not just up to local boutiques and designers. Our city’s ability to attract big employers will have a lot to do with it.
Miller is optimistic. Indianapolis has a lot to offer large operations like clothing manufacturers, he said. Our Midwestern location, work ethic and cost of doing business are all incentives to move from somewhere as costly as New York.•
is fashion necessary
On a giant screen figures swirl through a geometric landscape, morphing into a myriad of images. Finally the repeated forms focus into a centrifugal force: the single and particular figure of the model Kristen McMenamy — she of the long silver gray hair framing a strong face.
Multimedia
Related
Elegant Androgyny (September 30, 2010)
Volume and Layers (September 30, 2010)
The 11-minute film that Gareth Pugh showed on Wednesday, the opening day of the Paris collections, was the fruit of much thought and two days of intense filming in London.
Ruth Hogben, trained as part of Nick Knight’s ShowStudio team and the creator of images for Lady Gaga’s world tour, was charged with capturing the essence of the Gareth Pugh aesthetic. Instead of a runway show, this presentation, projected to enormous size in the Paris Bercy stadium, is Mr. Pugh’s fashion tool.
In its bravura, its beauty and its possibility of going viral to hundreds of million of people via ShowStudio and over the Internet, this grand slam in the virtual world poses a question that is increasingly being asked by both designers and executives: Is a fashion show really necessary?
Or will the bi-annual shows in different cities ultimately be replaced by virtual fashion or some other yet-to-be-invented format?
“We just have to press a button,” said Mr. Pugh before the show, although with hindsight he admitted that it was not any easier — and certainly not any less expensive — to take the image option, even if it avoided the “uncontrollable stress” of the live format.
As a concept, he finds the idea of video sequences exhilarating, setting the mood and conveying the essence of his vision, backed up with a look book focused on the clothes.
“The perception is that people aren’t willing to accept something else,” said Mr. Pugh, 29, who has shown films previously — but more recently has given catwalk shows in Paris, where he has been supported as a protégé of the designer Rick Owens.
The process of bringing his team from London to “very foreign surroundings” and everything “relying on the single show” sparked his search for an alternative.
“With a show, a lot rides on that very small amount of time and the whole thing comes down to image,” Mr. Pugh said. “If a model trips or has a problem with shoes, that is the thing that endures. It is liberating for a designer not to have to worry about a show. You can get the models to be even more expressive and do it all in a more concise way.”
“I always think about things in movement,” said the designer, who once studied dance and made the film with a male dancer from the English National Ballet School, alongside Ms. McMenamy.
Yet the feeling persists that backing off from a runway show is a cop-out or a sign of weakness, although mini-movies are increasingly used by big brands to focus on a particular message. The series of Lady Dior films, starring the French actress Marion Cotillard, are astute marketing tools, particularly for regions like Asia — highlighted in the recent “Lady Blue Shanghai” by David Lynch. They complement the live Paris runway shows, excite and inspire an audience and set a tone and an image.
But for Ms. Hogben, in the Gareth Pugh film and in other visual work she has done for ShowStudio, the concept is not so much to grab attention as to arouse emotion.
“I spend my whole world and whole life thinking about films to make in the fashion genre,” Ms. Hogben said. “I follow my own heart and I hope that if I am successful, film can become an alternative to showing clothes.”
The filmmaker says that she is “completely led by Gareth’s designs. I try to make a representation of every piece of fabric, every shape and sculpture. I am trying to convey Gareth’s world. I play with scale, physically some parts are quite claustrophobic. There is a lot of freedom, depth and space — a vast, endless infinity of the world. This season it is very varied indeed.”
For both designer and filmmaker the optimal word is “emotion.” And that is at the heart of the issue about whether the screen can contribute to fashion, rather than just reflect it.
There is a general feeling that after a quarter of a century of catwalk shows, with zombie-faced models walking up and down, with no interaction between clothes and audience, this system is coagulating fashion blood rather than making pulses race.
While the shows from John Galliano and of the late Alexander McQueen in the 1990s were unforgettable experiences, from liaisons dangereuses of historic figures to disturbing suggestions of a lunatic asylum, those creative expressions were essentially fashion astheater.
The digital camera and the Internet changed everything because even exceptional shows could only be instantly relived as still images on Style.com or as video clips.
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