American Fashion Podcast

Some Model Tycoons

Shivani Honwad is a lawyer helping imported fashion folk with green card issues, while Jessica Perez is using her new Tycoon App (iOS) (Android) to help freelancers keep up with the dollar bills, and Aine Campbell is helping models prepare for life Beyond The Runway.

This episode touches on a broad spectrum of issues affecting legal immigrants who work in fashion. We also discuss how Tycoon App is getting freelancers paid on time. Jessica and Aine talk about their experiences working with modeling agencies in relation to immigration, what models do when they stop modeling and have no other resume, and their advocation for the passage of the new Freelance Isn’t Free Act.

References:

• U-Booker
• T-Project Showroom’s Handbag Course

 

John Nicolopoulos

John Nicolopoulos is a partner and the retail & restaurant leader at RSM, a leading tax, audit and consulting firm. John has more than 35 years of combined retail and accounting experience, and is on the show to talk about his company’s recent Retailer Omnichannel Survey, and what was learned about industry retail trends in their research.

References:

• RSM Retailer Omnichannel Survey
• 9 takeaways in middle market omnichannel retail
• They Were Expendable (movie)

“It’s okay if your answer to ‘do you have another job right now’ is ‘yes.'” – Nicole Giordano

There are a lot of sites that promise to help emerging and independent designers, but few have the depth of Nicole Giordano’s StartUp Fashion portal. What started as a blog has grown into a global community, where designers share knowledge and resources online.

In this interview, Nicole talks about her community and the two biggest problems independent designers face: financing and manufacturing.

“I hope that I’m never making them think that the more traditional approach is something they shouldn’t do. All I’m trying to do is remind them that it’s not the only option, and there’s a lot that they can be thinking about that is just as great.” – Nicole Giordano

References:

• Chetna Singh

A consultant on fashion branding and marketing with several decades of experience in the field, Bill D’Arienzo, PhD, is in the studio talking about right and wrong approaches to marketing and sales in the fashion industry. His company, WDA Brand Marketing, advises some of the biggest players in the business. Whether they listen is an interesting story.

“You have to characterize the differential nature of your customers. Who is spending? For what? And if you just have the names, you don’t have a database.” – Bill D’Arienzo “We’ve got to get some of the words out of our heads. You hear retail, wholesale, those are traps. Because the realities are no longer what those old definitions are about.” – Bill D’Arienzo

Fashion Branding and Marketing references:

 

• Brand Management Strategies: Luxury and Mass Markets (book)
• The Hatred of Poetry (book)

Bayard Winthrop, American Giant CEO

Vertically integrated Made In USA brand American Giant has become an icon in the movement to “make it here.” Founder and CEO Bayard Winthrop is the man who hired a former Apple engineer to design their first sweatshirt, and has driven the company to be consistently best-in-class among the new generation of Made In USA brands.

“I think that if you’re asking a customer to make an exception for you because you are a U.S.-made brand, I think you are never going to get out of first gear. At the end of the day we owe our customers the right to make a decision based on fit and quality. And after that, after clearing all of those hurdles, if they want to support American Giant because we are an American-made brand, that’s awesome. That’s fantastic. But I owe it to my customer to compete on fit and quality and value first, because that’s what they ought to be making their decision on.” – Bayard Winthrop

 

The retail incubator Flying Solo (224 Mulberry Street) decided to mount a fashion show on short notice for New York Fashion Week. Normally this would not be advisable, you really need good lead time to do these things, but with 30 talented member-designers pulling together, it becomes a little more possible to pull off.

In the studio is Flying Solo founder Elizabeth Solomeina, along with member designers Elena Rudenko, Silvia D’Avila, Jenny Lai, and Stephanie Schedraui, who were instrumental in helping to plan and execute the collective’s fashion show.

On the phone is the fashion show’s publicist, Cathleen DaCosta Bombard. Cathleen is also the founder of the opiate addiction awareness non-profit Heroin Is Not Chic.

The American Fashion Podcast hosts are a bit more a part of the story in this episode. Charles Beckwith produced the show for Flying Solo, and pulled in co-host Cathy Schepis to help manage backstage.

This episode also introduces a new joint venture podcast, between Flying Solo and Open Source Fashion: The SoHo Show (iTunes).

CLO Virtual Fashion Director of Operations Daniel Seo

A fashiontech startup called CLO Virtual Fashion (link) has developed software that lets you drape fabric in the computer and see how it will really fall and move. This is remarkable and groundbreaking technology. Our guest in the studio is Daniel Seo, Director of Operations at CLO, who has been responsible for much of the thinking behind how the software supports designers’ visions and needs.

“At the core of what we’re doing, we’re really trying to change the way that design is communicated. And that’s not just between designers and the end consumer, it’s more so between teams. Patternmakers can talk with the designers. They can understand what they’re doing because you see it actually happening as you’re making the changes, so any change you make to the 2D CAD pattern, you see it immediately reflected in the 3D environment.”
– Daniel Seo

References:

• Gerber Technology
• Monsters Inc. (animated film)
• Big Hero 6 (animated film)
• Frozen (animated film)

Round Table on The Future of Retail

The National Retail Federation is having a giant trade show in town, and it provides an opportunity to have several retail technology executives around a table for a discussion about the future of the businesses they serve. Participants in the panel are Carlos Ponce, Business Development Director at Tlantic; CEO of Infinite Peripherals, Jeff Scott; Gerber Technology Chief Marketing Officer Bill Grindle; and Craig Witsoe, CEO of Elo. The seven main topics on the table are…

• The current state of retail, and recent changes in effectiveness, including discussion of the recent mass closings by Macy’s, Sears, Kmart, Limited, etc.
• Where is the retail industry being pulled? If or when will a balance be reached between online and offline shopping?
• Customer experience: where is it failing, where is it shining, what can be done better?
• New retail technologies: how they will affect how shopkeepers and customers interact, both with each other and with products?
• What is going on with cybersecurity for the future of retail and loss prevention technologies?
• A discussion on using big data for marketing and sales, and how they interrelate with analytics, and how that is changing.
• A general discussion of innovation, and what is truly outside the box in retail right now.

References:

• In-Store E-Commerce
• Ralph Lauren starts testing interactive fitting rooms in NYC
• Amazon is opening a physical bookstore in New York City in 2017
• 4 Important Differences Between Multi-Channel & Omnichannel
• KPI
• Maker’s Row

 

Costume designer Paloma Young talks about the development process behind her current Broadway show, Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812. It is a new musical based on a 70-page love triangle story inside the much longer Russian novel, War and Peace, written by Leo Tolstoy and originally published in 1869. Some of the visual and audio elements of this adaptation are very tied to the history, and many are far more contemporary, projecting a fascinating singing and dancing collage of the connections between now and then.

“In our costumes, I have a lot of Easter eggs. Maybe ten percent of the audience every night is going to see them, depending on what corner you are in or who you are paying attention to when.” – Paloma Young

Costume is a vital part of the communication of the show, and Paloma Young soundly delivers with a remarkable array of costumes. This interview with the remarkable young artist uncovers a detailed process and a deep thoughtfulness. She previously won a Tony Award for Best Costume Design In A Play for her work on Peter and the Starcatcher in 2012, and Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812 puts her squarely on the line for another.

Curator Jessica Regan

We went uptown to The Metropolitan Museum of Art to interview Costume Institute curator Jessica Regan. Her remarkable exhibition, Masterworks: Unpacking Fashion, is on display through February 5th.

The exhibition highlights iconic recent acquisitions in the museum’s collection. Many of these pieces have never been displayed for the public. The exhibition includes work from some of the most distinguished and influential designers, covering the 18th century to today.

Jessica talks with Charles Beckwith and Cathy Schepis about both the current exhibition, and general trends in garment design over the centuries which it demonstrates. This vital historical context informs and gives a depth of perspective to where we are with fashion today.

She also provides a behind the scenes context to how the Costume Institute creates an exhibition, and where they get all those fantastic mannequins.

Also, look for The Met’s upcoming solo exhibition featuring the works of maverick designer Rei Kawakubo, opening in May.