Fashion Industry

IT'S NOT OFTEN the fashion industry comes to the population and asks for help. In fact, the last time was 1940.Recently, the American Society for Testing and Materials poked the fashion industry in the ribs and told it to take notice: The last time anyone took a hard look at the standard for women's ready-to-wear sizing was in 1940. That year, the measurements of 8,000 military women were taken and the results averaged to develop the standard size ranges still in use today. Everything's been fine for about 50 years, but something has happened to the population that has made the industry realize that study may now be obsolete.

As Fashion Week begins in New York today, the glitz of the runway is being dimmed by talk of a sober topic: eating disorders. Long criticized for fostering unrealistic ideas about beauty, the fashion industry has come under increased scrutiny since an 88-pound Brazilian model died in November of complications from anorexia. This week, a New York state lawmaker proposed establishing weight standards to protect child actors and models. And on Monday under the storied Bryant Park tents - where designers such as Carolina Herrera and Michael Kors will show their fall 2007 collections - the Council of Fashion Designers of America is sponsoring a body image symposium.

NEW YORK -- After a battle between two giant publishing companies, Walt Disney Co. has decided to sell its Fairchild Publishing division, which publishes Women's Wear Daily and W, for $650 million to Conde Nast Publications, the glossy, high-profile publisher of magazines like Vogue, Vanity Fair and the New Yorker.The deal would merge two of the fashion world's most powerful publishing entities and their distinct publishing styles: the frills-free but provocative style of Fairchild with the no-expenses-spared ethos of Conde Nast, a company that will send luggage overnight by Federal Express if a fatigued fashion editor does not want to carry it on a flight.

Fashion is growing up. "Women in their 30s are more like what women in their 20s used to be like," says Lois Joy Johnson, beauty and fashion director for More magazine. And so, designers and retailers, having to keep pace, are moving away from the trendy, style-setting 18- to-24 year-olds market group into a more mature, and more loyal, 25 and older - in some cases, much older - set. "This consumer is young and hip, and she still wants to be sexy," Johnson says. "She works on her body.

Models are living fashion. Unlike clothes, which can be nipped and tucked from season to season to keep designers abreast of the trends, the girls can stand only so much alteration until they start looking too tired.The ones the cameras and press love can negotiate supernova fees. The rising stars have to settle for less and smile nicely to get bookings for top designer shows. Now the Federal Trade Commission is taking a look to see if the $750-per-show guidelines that fashion industry organizers and designers have suggested for collection runways actually constitute price-fixing.

New York -- Attention, aspiring fashion hounds!If you think a career on Seventh Avenue is all glamour, you've been watching too many Audrey Hepburn movies. Unlike the stylized images of long-necked creatures and finery that grace the pages of Vogue, jobs in the fashion industry often translate into long hours and low starting pay. Just ask recent college graduates employed by Manhattan designers, retailers and manufacturers.In New York City, fashion is big business. The industry provides 180,000 jobs and generates $14 billion for the local economy, according to Manhattan's Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT)

Any Prada-clad, Fekkai-tressed and Gucci-booted fashion victim will tell you: Once the president of the United States and the establishment press wake up to a fashion trend, it's over.So-called "heroin chic" is over. The recent fashion look distinguished by photo spreads of strung out-looking models slouching in hollow-eyed stupor in designer duds is done.The disturbing images, however, have left a mark. The New York Times recently traced the sordid and short life and death of a fashion photographer who popularized the look and was hooked on heroin himself.

To see just how successful The Gap is, ask yourself these questions:Do you know anyone, excluding very recent Albanian immigrants, who doesn't know what The Gap is?How many pieces of clothing have you bought from The Gap in the last year? The Gap is so successful that the prince of understated (and very pricey) chic, Giorgio Armani, has just launched a chain of in-store shops called A/X Armani Exchanges that are upscale imitations of The Gap. With jeans costing $80 and up, and denim jackets at $165, Armani Exchanges are clearly not wooing price-conscious Gap customers who've gotten used to paying $38 for Gap jeans and $50 for denim jackets.

NEW YORK - Forget Calvin Klein. Forget Vogue magazine. They may be the obvious big players in the fashion world, but a hidden center of the industry's power actually perches on the 11th floor of a grubby brownstone building in Manhattan.The seasonal regulations of hip often emanate from a cramped office that houses Bureau de Style - a company of fashion oracles, who are otherwise known as trend forecasters.This company's four forecasters predict and dictate two years in advance what colors and fabrics will dominate the U.S. fashion industry in any season.

This week was fall fashion week in New York. In one of those odd asymmetries that make no sense to people like me, the designers show off in spring what they hope women will be buying in stores next winter.Sun fashion editor Vida Roberts reported that ''along with the fuss about frocks was buzz about Michael Gross' new book, 'Model: The Ugly Business of Beautiful Women.' ''Ms. Roberts noted that Mr. Gross, a senior writer for Esquire magazine, has ''tapped his insider resources to expose the stink of drugs, sex and exploitation that clings to the modeling business like stale perfume.

The fashion industry -- one of the few areas where women have been able to reach the top -- seems an ideal setting for a play revealing the complexities and challenges faced by its top achievers. Award-winning playwright Kathleen Barber chose this setting for her new play Amanda's Line, entered in this season's Baltimore Playwrights Festival and premiering tomorrow at Chesapeake Center for the Creative Arts in Brooklyn Park. For the second summer, a play from the current season of the Fells Point-based 21-year-old Playwrights Festival will be showcased at the center.

LADIES: IT'S TIME to get in shape for swimsuit season! If you start a program of diet and exercise now, in just a few weeks you can shed that extra 10 pounds, so when it's time to hit the beach, you can put on that new bikini with the confidence that comes from knowing that you will immediately take off that new bikini, put on a bathrobe, and spend the rest of the weekend in your bedroom, weeping and eating Haagen-Dazs straight from the container....

LONDON - The way 15-year-old Tracey Rhodes sees it, Britain's fashion editors have a lot to answer for as they dish up glossy magazines filled with stick-thin models whose looks can often drive teen-age girls to despair. "They should stop draining our self-confidence," Rhodes says. "Get more normal people." Rhodes' message may soon be getting through to the fashion world's movers and shakers after yesterday's British government-sponsored Body Image Summit. Editors, health-care professionals, a few designers and a sprinkling of teens such as Rhodes gathered to discuss how the fashion world's insistence that extremely thin is in affects the self-esteem and health of young women.

NEW YORK -- After a battle between two giant publishing companies, Walt Disney Co. has decided to sell its Fairchild Publishing division, which publishes Women's Wear Daily and W, for $650 million to Conde Nast Publications, the glossy, high-profile publisher of magazines like Vogue, Vanity Fair and the New Yorker.The deal would merge two of the fashion world's most powerful publishing entities and their distinct publishing styles: the frills-free but provocative style of Fairchild with the no-expenses-spared ethos of Conde Nast, a company that will send luggage overnight by Federal Express if a fatigued fashion editor does not want to carry it on a flight.

NEW YORK - Forget Calvin Klein. Forget Vogue magazine. They may be the obvious big players in the fashion world, but a hidden center of the industry's power actually perches on the 11th floor of a grubby brownstone building in Manhattan.The seasonal regulations of hip often emanate from a cramped office that houses Bureau de Style - a company of fashion oracles, who are otherwise known as trend forecasters.This company's four forecasters predict and dictate two years in advance what colors and fabrics will dominate the U.S. fashion industry in any season.

Any Prada-clad, Fekkai-tressed and Gucci-booted fashion victim will tell you: Once the president of the United States and the establishment press wake up to a fashion trend, it's over.So-called "heroin chic" is over. The recent fashion look distinguished by photo spreads of strung out-looking models slouching in hollow-eyed stupor in designer duds is done.The disturbing images, however, have left a mark. The New York Times recently traced the sordid and short life and death of a fashion photographer who popularized the look and was hooked on heroin himself.

LADIES: IT'S TIME to get in shape for swimsuit season! If you start a program of diet and exercise now, in just a few weeks you can shed that extra 10 pounds, so when it's time to hit the beach, you can put on that new bikini with the confidence that comes from knowing that you will immediately take off that new bikini, put on a bathrobe, and spend the rest of the weekend in your bedroom, weeping and eating Haagen-Dazs straight from the container....

NEW YORK -- Who needs superstars? The fashion pack does. That cynical and fickle crowd went as wild as kids on too much Halloween candy when the spots hit Cindy, Linda, Naomi, Shalom and Amber in a tableau that opened Todd Oldham's glamslam show of glitter, sex and '70s style. The excitement didn't let up.Fashion watchers who have been predicting the death of the cult RTC of supermodels may be premature in tolling the bell. These girls may be overpriced and overexposed but until a new crop learns how to work bits of lace the way Naomi does, the fashion industry needs them.

NEW YORK -- Call it a tug of war between the future and the past.On one side: designers such as Nicole Miller trying to pull their customers into the next century with new age clothes and futuristic renderings of familiar garments.On the other side: the likes of Bob Mackie who, having profitably revived the 1970s, are striving to make a buck out of '80s fare.The opening days of the U.S. designer collections mimic the struggle of their counterparts in Europe. A few weeks ago in the fashion capitals of London, Milan and Paris, it also was the '80s vs. the new millennium.

From rubber backpacks to recycled aluminum earrings, refuse has been reinvented.Call it real-life retro or garbage glamour, but the latest "environmentally friendly" fashion trend is turning industrial scrap into an accessory gold mine.Until this season, the trend had been aconfined mostly to rugged and active outdoors wear and focused on the granola-eating crowd. But now, just in time for holiday shopping, small companies around the country are bringing wearable waste to the city as well.