The buzz it creates helps burgundy toms shoes underscore our city’s reputation
We are the fashion capital of the world. The buzz it creates burgundy toms shoes helps underscore our city’s reputation as a cutting-edge capital of fashion, home to more than double the number of fashion companies in Paris,” Bloomberg said.
Bloomberg and von Furstenberg, who is president of the Council of Fashion Designers of America, used their appearance at a fashion incubator for fledgling designers to highlight a number of ongoing city efforts to support an industry that employs 5.7 percent of the city’s workforce and provides nearly $2 billion in yearly city tax revenue.
Bulk manufacturing has shifted out of the city’s garment district to low-cost overseas venues, but Bloomberg said programs do exist to train and support fashion entrepreneurs. “If you’re going to make a million white T-shirts, it’s hard to see how that is going to stay here,” he said. But “when it gets to hands-on customer service, real quality, that’s where New York can star, because intellectual capital is our raison d’etre.”
Ken Downing, fashion director of Neiman Marcus, said that even the fur turning up cheetah print toms shoes on a lot of runways could motivate younger shoppers. “We are seeing a lot of mink, a lot of textural mink. You thought of mink before as your grandmother’s but this is through a new lens. … Mink is something a lot of women don’t have.”
Some of the fur being shown is faux, but whether younger shoppers — especially given the mainstreaming of veganism and animal rights — will buy real fur-accented pieces as a new trend remains to be seen.
But Downing said the way fur is being shown now is often as part of a coat, sweater, or skirt, rather than an entire fur coat. Downing said it was a youthful way of wearing it, flattering and interesting. “Fur continues to modernize into a sportswear item,” he said.
And while designers hope their new collections will inspire spending by shoppers young and old, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Fashion Week is an increasingly profitable enterprise for the city. At an appearance with Diane von Furstenberg Monday, Bloomberg announced that the twice-yearly shows are expected to generate an economic impact of $865 million for the city in 2012.
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