American Fashion Podcast

Ecocult founder Alden Wicker moderates a panel of fashion sustainability leaders, featuring jewelry designer Melissa Joy Manning, Zady.com founder Maxine Bedat, Maiyet co-founder Kristy Caylor, and womenswear designer Mara Hoffman.

The panel covered a wide range of issues facing designers who are trying to manufacture using the most sustainable methods possible.

More photos and a deeper outline of the discussion will be available on the Ecocult website.

photos by Rachael Elana Photography

The story of a swimwear designer who came the long way round. “When she was 16, Tala Raassi went to a party. She talked to boys, and wore a mini-skirt. She was punished with 40 lashes and five days in jail.” That is the beginning of her story, but what happened in the following years is a story far more familiar to our audience, that of a designer trying to figure out how to get into and stay in the business of fashion.

Fashion Is Freedom Author Tala Raassi

The book, Fashion Is Freedom: How a Girl from Tehran Broke the Rules to Change Her World, outlines some of the most common problems young designers face, from working with the wrong partners, to support behind aspirations to be an artist from one parent and not the other, to starting with a t-shirt line, to getting tied up with the lower tier entertainment industry bottom feeders who promise the world and deliver less than advertised (including a certain nightclub-dwelling New York con artist currently running for President of The United States), to hitting the infamous low minimums wall, to crazy international travels with strange people and that universal human connection that transcends spoken language. Directed at women, and especially young girls, the book shows a way through dark and difficult chapters, though an interesting story for just about anyone. It is a cautionary but inspiring tale, well worth the read.

In The Studio

In the studio with American Fashion, Tala goes into more detail about how she solved certain problems, how she started writing opinion pieces about fashion clashes between the Western and Muslim world, and how she finally turned a string of bad luck into dozens of wholesale accounts around the world.

AFP Gets A New Website

This is the first episode of American Fashion Podcast published on our new revamped website on our new domain name, americanfashionpodcast.com. Our new email address is now [email protected].

Ralph Rucci Goes Into Detail

The preeminent American designer’s designer, Ralph Rucci, is back with us (swing back to episode #50 to listen to the previous recording). In this episode, Mr. Rucci updates us on his RR331 venture, the couture work he has been doing for private clients, and his plans to return to show during Paris Haute Couture.

There is also discussion of his take on the current retail environment, opinion on the exposure level of the Michael Kors brand, pre-show jitters, and Rucci’s interest in working with classic American brands like Levis and Hanes on updating staple garments. The conversation turns to his thoughts on fast fashion, making high fashion accessible, the changing seasons and schedule changes for Fashion Week, and the shift he sees coming away from darkness and toward leadership in the industry again by “kind people.”

References

• Ralph Rucci Teams Up With Moda Operandi for Made-to-order Initiative (WWD)

How To Fund A Fashion Business

Attorney Lois F. Herzeca is the author of the preeminent fashion law survival guide, Fashion Law and Business: Brands and Retailers. In this episode she talks about how fashion brands get funded and gives tips and tricks for how to make that process run smoothly, both for investors and designers.

References:

• Nineteenth Amendment
• Betabrand
• Golden Seeds
• Lawrence Lenihan on Fashion Is Your Business episode #115
• Resonance

Fashion Pop-Up Store Strategy

Lion’esque Group founder Melissa Gonzalez helps brands set up camp to sell and be known. The company provides fashion pop-up store strategy, deployment, and management for a wide range of clients both inside and outside the fashion sphere.

The temporary pop-up shop trend seems to have been catching on as steadily as the decline of traditional brick and mortar retail establishment, and can be a smart response to a number of different needs, from simple brand awareness building to flash sales that clear out merchandise.

How do you gauge the value of working with specific influencers, when most are not at all proven to drive conversions? How do you run analytics on a pop-up store? How do you do a pop-up in another city? How do you make informed decisions while running a pop-up store, rather than one-off conclusions? Is running a pop-up store a good way to prepare for opening a traditional brick and mortar store? What’s the difference between a pop-up and a trunk show? Is this a good strategy for small brands?

References:

• author Paco Underhill’s books on buying behavior (Amazon)
• The Pop-Up Paradigm (Amazon)

Damn The Fashion Week, Full Speed Ahead

Charles Beckwith an Richard Spiegel (The Fashion Tribune) are ranting about fashion week (damn the fashion week, full speed ahead). We sat down at the end of New York Fashion Week to talk about the good, the bad, and the ugly. This is rather raw and almost a behind the scenes conversation, of the kind that promoted the creation of this series.

Also in this episode is a backstage interview with designer Tadashi Shoji at his Spring 2017 collection show (at the 20:50 mark), and a chat with designer Austin Scarlet about his new experiment with non-bridal ready to wear (at the 23:15 mark).

Should emerging designers be doing fashion shows? Should Fashion Week even exist anymore? Where else should fashion shows be happening that they are not now going on? What happened to the party and the love and the spirit of fashion week? Is there a simple way to get it back? What would happen if fast fashion ceased to exist tomorrow? Why does the US Government tolerate cheap imports and trade deals that flood our market with fast fashion?

References:

• Monse
• Tadashi Shoji
• Reem Acra
• threeASFOUR
• Made Fashion Week
• Kate Miles
• Wanabees Have Ruined Fashion Week (NY Post)
• Esteban Cortazar
• Mathieu Mirano

Yeohlee Teng Interview

Yeohlee Teng (bio) has been a fixture of the New York City fashion design, culture, and industry for decades. Her store at 12 West 29th Street is a destination for women seeking clothing of a rare quality, the product of an intelligence and thoughtfulness that is both the mark and mind of its creator.

AFP hosts Charles, Seth, and Lisa attempt to interview Yeohlee about fashion then and now, disposable culture, her approach to design and technique, and a range of other topics, but she interviews them back, in this fascinating exchange about what is important in fashion and the life of highly conscious creative people.

Highlights:

You have to be careful who is telling you what the definitions are in this industry, because there’s this [message], “well, this is what the consumer wants, and so we’re just giving them what they want,” without acknowledging that the consumer has been trained to want that. And therefore, they can probably be untrained. – Seth Friedermann (15:22)

You would be surprised at how smart the women are who come into my store. I don’t have to tell them anything, they know. They know what looks good on them. They know the value of what they’re buying. They know how long it will last. They know how many places they can wear them to. They knwo it travels well. They know they can hand wash it. There are people that I could inform, but there are a lot more that could inform me. – Yeohlee Teng (25:04)

I think compassion plays a role. A lot of women are forgotten in the fashion world. I dress everybody. I have no prejudice. – Yeohlee Teng (31:36)

References:

• Humans Who Design
• Madeleine Vionnet
• Claire McCardell
• American Beauty: Aesthetics and Innovation in Fashion
• Richard Martin
• Made In Midtown

Fashion Week Pre-Game Show

New York Fashion Week is next week, so we’ve gathered some great minds to help you get your head in the game. It’s the New York Fashion Week Pre-Game Extravaganza!

Guests in this episode include Fashion Unfiltered founder and editor Katharine Zarrella, Decoded Fashion founder Liz Bacelar, ace runway photographer Udor (Instagram), and guest host Cathy Schepis.

Fashion Week show formats continue to evolve. A few seasons ago, many in the industry were shocked at the introduction of so many presentations replacing runway shows, and there have been experiments with social media-based shows, 3D effects, and fashion films. What’s now, and what is next?

Have bloggers disappeared from the front row? What is the role of individual social media influencers now? Where are we with See Now Buy Now? Is it getting big, or just buzz? Why aren’t there more top customers at the shows?

All this and more, in our New York Fashion Week Pre-Game Extravaganza!

references:

• With New Iconography at Play, Gucci is Banking on Legal Protection
• NYC Casting Calls Facebook Group

Aubrie Pagano, Founder and CEO of Bow & Drape

Mass customization has been a big buzz term in the fashiontech sphere for a couple of years, and a company spearheading the implementation of the idea is Bow and Drape. Aubrie Pagano (bio) founded the company in 2012 and has been making pathfinder decisions in the fashion future space ever since. Granted, it’s a lot of kitsch, like sweatshirts bearing slogans such as “Namaste In Bed” and “Humble Like Kanye,” but the course toward customers being able to make requests for changes to garments when shopping online is unmistakably part of fashion’s new frontier.

Guest host, photographer Stephen Eastwood

references:

• AFP Episode #79. with Cindy Gallop and Frank Spadafora

Albertus Swanepoel

Albertus Swanepoel is a hat designer from South Africa who has been working in New York for several years, and has collaborated with some of the biggest designers in the world on many of the most memorable runway shows.

Questions raised: Why don’t more people wear hats, and is it a growing or a shrinking business? Does e-commerce work for hats? What is the state of fashion in South Africa right now? What does traveling do for the perspective of a fashion designer? Do accessories designers fit well into the CFDA’s matrix of members? Is it possible for the CFDA to help or even understand brands that are worth less than a million dollars? Why is there a warthog on Albertus’ website?

references:

• Marianne Fassler
• Clive Rundle
• Black Coffee
• Reem Acra
• What Happened at Oscar de la Renta? (NY Times)