The most wonderful interview with Tom Ford appeared on Fresh Air the other day. Ford speaks on how fashion reflects a moment in time:

Fashion is very quick. It’s very disposable. It’s immediately - it tells you exactly where we are in our culture, especially women’s fashion.

If we’re having a glitzy over-the-top moment, fashion is very glitzy and over-the-top, you know, over-the-top. If we’re having a moment where things are, you know, we’re in a recession, fashion becomes quiet.

Gucci in the late nineties

Terri Gross asks:

Of all the things that you’ve designed, do you have any favorites that you really hope will endure because you think they were wonderful?

Ford replies:

I do. I have to say, I think my last few collections for Gucci and for Yves Saint Laurent in 2003-2004, in terms of complexity and construction, were some of the most interesting things I ever designed because I had learned at that point how to make more complex clothes, both cerebrally as well as technically.

And I had worked with a great atelier in Italy for Gucci and in Paris for Saint Laurent. So, I had learned a lot. However, the collections that I feel influenced popular culture the most were early on, in 1995, 1996.

And I think that those were the collections that I’ll be remembered for because at that particular moment in time, fashion was in one place. It was very subdued, very sedated, and in a sense, I brought back sensuality and sexuality to clothes. And the things I did at that time were simpler in construction but maybe more powerful in content.

…the first collection I did that really, you know, brought me a lot of attention and brought Gucci a lot of attention and a lot of business were hiphuggers in velvet, satin shirts, simple coats, but what was new about them at that time was that they were very, very sensual. They were very colorful, as well. There was an enormous amount of color. And they were a throwback to a period in the 1970s when fashion was more touchable.

Benjamin Schupp on Conceptar.org

And then it gets really interesting as Ford contrasts the sensuality of the seventies with the hard edge ‘femme bot’ sexuality of now:

Today, you know, fashion is not - our beauty standard today is harder. It’s beautiful but it’s off-putting. It’s like, don’t touch me, I’m hard.

It’s so interesting how female form, less male form, mirrors where we are culturally, aesthetically, as well as - for example, right now everything is pumped up.

Cars look like someone took an air pump and pumped them up. They look engorged. Lips pumped up, breasts pumped up, everything is pumped up. And it’s also kind of off-putting.

It’s sexual but in such a hard way that it’s, for me, not sexual at all, whereas the 1970s, breasts were smaller. People were not wearing bras. Farrah Fawcett’s sexuality and sensuality was a very touchable sexuality. She was kissable. She was friendly.

And that was what I brought back in the ’90s with some of my early collections for Gucci that we hadn’t seen in a while. And I think that right now we’re in a very hard moment and off-putting. I mean, look at shoes today, women’s shoes. They couldn’t possibly get any higher and meaner and sharper. But then again, you go and watch most films today, they’re violent, and we’re living in a world that is, at the moment, quite hard.

Terri asks him to elaborate on the breasts issue:

I don’t understand all these breasts right now, and they don’t look like breasts. They look like someone’s taken a grapefruit half and inserted it under your skin. I mean it’s - it doesn’t even bear any resemblance to what a natural breast looks like. But we’re starting to think that this is what women should like.

And young girls are looking at these breasts and thinking, oh, I need to go have my breasts done because they’ve lost touch with what a real breast actually looks like. I find it fascinating. I find it disturbing. I mean, you could consider it more fascinating because we’re becoming post-human.

…We are actually - we are. We are actually starting to manipulate our bodies, because we can, into a shape. We are becoming our own art. But what happens for me is that it desexualizes everything. You know, you start to look more and more polished, more and more lacquered and you look like a beautiful car. Does anyone want to sleep with you? Does anyone want to touch you? Does anyone want to kiss you? Maybe not because you’re too scary.

But you’re beautiful, you’re glossy, you’re shiny, but you’re not human. Very interesting. And I say that in a very detached way, I’m not making a judgment about it. I’m just saying it’s fascinating culturally.

“In fashion, one minute you’re in… and the next minute, you’re OUT.” Stephen Foley writes, Why American Apparel is Going out of Fashion:

It is impossible to say if there is a straight line from the salacious gossip – usually culled from the sensational lawsuits that the company attracts – to the financial peril in which American Apparel finds itself, but this much is clear: it is no longer the hottest place to shop. An equally bright and breezy foreign interloper, Uniqlo, is expanding fast on its home turf; H&M and Zara are buzzing with bargain-hunting fashionistas, hip to styles that change in those stores faster than they ever change at an American Apparel.

A fickle hipster clientele has moved on to other things? Never woulda believed it.

From Gawker.com

Foley cites Gawker media as AA’s thorn in their side. American Apparel’s PR department is no match for Gawker’s solicitation of the real story from former employees.

In regard to the recent article about Grooming, it is 100% true. Not only do they have it on paper, they also have a team from “corporate” who come to the stores just to see what we’re wearing. Just a couple weeks ago, a posse of power tripping nineteen year olds came in (literally everyone from this corporate fantasy land is a maximum age of 20) and made me go to the bathroom and wash my makeup off (and by makeup I mean a splash of liquid eyeliner and mascara and nothing at all hooker inspired). And then they scolded me for not being on the sales floor. Also, whenever we get considered for raises/promotions, we’re required to have our photos sent in for approval. My co-worker was recently denied a spot as Manager because she didn’t fit the company image. I have no idea why we continue to work there. And more importantly how are none of us involved in a lawsuit?

And it goes on and on, a litany of examples of an entire company of individuals riding the crest of last decade’s trend waves (and competing with each other to see who could do blow with the boss) with no clue how to evolve the brand into a post boom zeitgeist.

But the financial troubles go deeper. In-store sales are still running down 10 per cent, while the rest of the high street has tiptoed out of recession, suggesting a bigger malaise among shoppers.

Worse, the company jacked up its debt levels to fund its expansion just as the slowdown hit, and its failure to get back into profit means it will almost certainly breach promises to its lenders at the end of this month. London-based investor Lion Capital bailed the company out with a loan a little over a year ago; as it totters under the weight of $91.4m (£64.6m) in debt, Lion will have to decide if it wants to turn that debt into a share of the company, or put American Apparel into bankruptcy.

This is a company that has been built on the personality and creativity of Dov Charney. If his power is waning, there are plenty of critics who will declare that this is no bad thing.

I suppose I’d better invest in that lifetime supply of thigh high socks pretty soon. (the only thing I buy there. If I could find them anywhere else I would.)

Of course the corporate media moguls are going to keep the spotlight on the Tea Party movement; the more they reinforce the meme that government is the one taking liberty, not protecting it, then that much less attention can be paid to the real issue - the consolidated corporate giants that control the mass market of consumer goods directed at the middle class that so many of these ‘activists’ are freaked out about losing. Don Monkerud writes for Counterpunch, Tea Partiers Should Be Picketing the Corporations That Dominate Our Lives:

Tom Tomorrow

“Those who control our corporations managed an Orwellian achievement to redefine the use of brute corporate force as ‘market forces,’” says Lynn. “We still believe in a consumer utopia, but we have an illusion of choice. Corporate powers manipulate our decision-making and direct us to buy certain goods at certain prices.”

Institutional power shifted to Wall Street and large financial institutions. Today a small elite runs corporations to serve themselves as they concentrate their power. Some Americans are waking up to the reality of their situation, but Congress lacks the will to regulate corporate power.

…Although some Americans worry about the growing power of the government, few understand the real power that controls their everyday lives.

Private monopolies determine the brand of breakfast cereal we eat, the type of car we drive, where we bank, the medical treatment we receive, the fashion of our clothes, and the kind of toothbrush we use, in addition to the beer we drink, the health insurance we buy, and what we feed our pets.

…”People say we have an uncontrolled free market but we have the opposite,” says Barry C. Lynn, senior fellow at the New American Foundation. “What we have today is a laissez faire American version of feudalism; a private government in the form of private corporations run by private individuals who consolidated power to govern entire activities within our political economy.”

…

When aspirational young women noticeably outnumber boyfriend-worthy men on college campuses apparently “The Rules:Time-Tested Secrets for Capturing the Heart of Mr. Right ” get tossed out the window. But if its true that men are wired for ‘the chase,’ what do they think of this new wave of female assertiveness in the dating game? From Alex Williams’ The New Math on Campus in the NY Times:

North Carolina, with a student body that is nearly 60 percent female, is just one of many large universities that at times feel eerily like women’s colleges. Women have represented about 57 percent of enrollments at American colleges since at least 2000, according to a recent report by the American Council on Education. Researchers there cite several reasons: women tend to have higher grades; men tend to drop out in disproportionate numbers; and female enrollment skews higher among older students, low-income students, and black and Hispanic students.

57-43 isn’t that impossible of a ratio, is it? Keep in mind that these statistics don’t account for who’s hot and who’s not, and how the standards of women and men might differ:

Jayne Dallas, a senior studying advertising who was seated across the table, grumbled that the population of male undergraduates was even smaller when you looked at it as a dating pool. “Out of that 40 percent, there are maybe 20 percent that we would consider, and out of those 20, 10 have girlfriends, so all the girls are fighting over that other 10 percent,” she said.

And that targeted 10 percent are in the catbird seat:

Thanks to simple laws of supply and demand, it is often the women who must assert themselves romantically or be left alone on Valentine’s Day, staring down a George Clooney movie over a half-empty pizza box.

“I was talking to a friend at a bar, and this girl just came up out of nowhere, grabbed him by the wrist, spun him around and took him out to the dance floor and started grinding,” said Kelly Lynch, a junior at North Carolina, recalling a recent experience.

Students interviewed here said they believed their mating rituals reflected those of college students anywhere. But many of them — men and women alike — said that the lopsided population tends to skew behavior.

“A lot of my friends will meet someone and go home for the night and just hope for the best the next morning,” Ms. Lynch said. “They’ll text them and say: ‘I had a great time. Want to hang out next week?’ And they don’t respond.”

Even worse, “Girls feel pressured to do more than they’re comfortable with, to lock it down,” Ms. Lynch said.

Fake bisexual competitive show off anyone? That quote makes me recall the much talked about Details magazine article How Internet Porn is Changing Teen Sex and the fact that the counterpart of guys expecting their dates to act like porn stars (I’ll let you read the article for specifics)… are young women who are willing to play along.

As for a man’s cheating, “that’s a thing that girls let slide, because you have to,” said Emily Kennard, a junior at North Carolina. “If you don’t let it slide, you don’t have a boyfriend.”

I remember a couple of years ago when Big Love first aired and I became briefly obsessed with Mormons and polygamy I found myself on a pro-polygamy site written by a guy who stated that there are a lot of women out there that would rather share a piece of a good man than have a loser all to themselves. For that lucky top 10 percent of popular, attractive, high status boys in their early twenties that most of the single girls are becoming accustomed to competing for and sharing by necessity, isn’t polyamory an obvious progression? An alpha male with a handful of girls in rotation keeping themselves in the game while shopping for (or amusing themselves with or relying on emotional support from) beta males on the side?

…Women on gender-imbalanced campuses are paying a social price for success and, to a degree, are being victimized by men precisely because they have outperformed them, Professor Campbell said. In this way, some colleges mirror retirement communities, where women often find that the reward for outliving their husbands is competing with other widows for the attentions of the few surviving bachelors.

“If a guy is not getting what he wants, he can quickly and abruptly go to the next one, because there are so many of us,” said Katie Deray, a senior at the University of Georgia, who said that it is common to see six provocatively clad women hovering around one or two guys at a party or a bar.

Daniela Perdomo neatly sidesteps engaging in the content of the theories themselves, but rather takes a step back and asks what their growing popularity means:

promo ad for Jesse Ventura's tv show

“We have got to get to a point where we have leaders who are there for us instead of representing their manipulative, greedy ways,” he told me.

This insight is one most progressives can identify with, and it drives home the fact that people like Jones and Noory are driven to do what they do because they are distrustful of the powers that be. The fear of a government that ignores your constitutional rights or of too-powerful interests controlling the economy is a perfectly legitimate concern. This manifests itself across the political spectrum in the United States.

…That doubt stems from not knowing what happens behind closed doors in government and in the board rooms of the largest, most powerful companies in the country. What we have little doubt about is that power in the United States — and everywhere, for that matter — is monopolized by small, associated groups that do not represent the interests of the great majority. That’s why there is at least a grain of truth in every bit of conspiracy theory, even the most delusional ones.

The fear of concentrated power is valid and brings up important questions that mainstream culture is often unwilling to ask. Conspiracy theorists ask those questions, though their answers may lead some astray.

This is sort of where I’m at with all of this - can’t say too much about the specifics, aware that anyone who thinks they’ve got it all figured out is still seeing through their own filters, and since I’m still awaiting my invitation to the next Bilderberger event know that I’m so far outside elite power circles of any kind I’ll never have a chance to draw first hand conclusions.

But what I do see is a growing populist discontent with whomever is in power, and as the Supreme Court’s baffling decision to grant giant corporations with multi billion dollar arsenals the same rights of the individual ‘persons’ that have nothing near the means to compete on that playing field shows us, whomever that is sure isn’t governing ‘for the people.’

So the question becomes not ‘is there a shadow elite intricately tangled up in corporate and government trying to manipulate the masses for their own ends using mainstream media bombardment to frame the reality they want everyone to believe?’ (see the film Orwell Rolls in his Grave for an excellent expose on the specifics of that). The question is ‘what are people going to do when the system of consumer supply that keeps us comfortable and compliant begins to falter?’ It’ll be then - and only then - that we’ll start to see any widespread challenges to said structure that go beyond watching tv shows.

...

Alt press influential Arianna Huffington shines the spotlight on her first book pic of the year:

My first HuffPost Book Club selection of 2010 is Janine Wedel’s Shadow Elite: How the World’s New Power Brokers Undermine Democracy, Government, and the Free Market. It’s a gripping, disquieting book that exposes and explains why it’s been so hard to bring about any real change in our country — why Washington no longer seems capable of addressing the problems our nation faces.

It’s not an altogether new idea, but what’s notable is the divergence from the usual focus on corporate power and towards individual players. It will be interesting to read it and see how much overlap there is with conspiracy theories that target organizations like the Illuminati.

But the mere fact that books like these can still be published and then promoted on a alternative-mainstream site with a large audience gives me a glimmer of hope.

“The shadow elite clearly knew that the months and months of so-called debate over the issue was nothing more than a charade — the ultimate outcome never in doubt. The bill was created in the shadows. The public process since then has essentially been like a Hollywood adaptation — complete with the requisite third act happy ending (or, in the words of our elected officials, a “historic” ending).

“The new breed of players,” writes Wedel, “who operate at the nexus of official and private power, cannot only co-opt public policy agendas, crafting policy with their own purposes in mind. They test the time-honored principles of both the canons of accountability of the modern state and the codes of competition of the free market. In so doing, they reorganize relations between bureaucracy and business to their advantage, and challenge the walls erected to separate them. As these walls erode, players are better able to use official power and resources without public oversight.”

There’s a lot of talk about whether or not copyright protection should be extended to fashion designs, and I’m concerned about the gap between the general, idealist vision about how designers, manufacturers and retailers should behave… versus what the reality would be if this bill were to become law. So I thought it would be helpful to pause and spend a post looking in to some of the relevant language and details. Because you don’t have to be a lawyer to know that in a court room, that’s what it’s all going to boil down to.

from Bertaut.com

The Nixon Peabody law firm does a great job of explaining the act in their post, Legislation to extend copyright protection to fashion designs reintroduced in Congress and except where noted, all block quotes below are from their site, but the underlining is mine. (If you want to read the nitty gritty text of the DPPA amendment itself, it can be found here.)

If passed, the act would amend 17 U.S.C. §§ 1301, et seq., which governs copyright protection of vessel hull designs, to afford copyright protection to fashion designs embodied in, among other things, clothing, handbags, wallets, belts, footwear, headgear, and eyeglass frames.

Vessel hull? What does that have to do with anything? Well, the reason that fashion designs (as in the cut of a garment as opposed to the print of the fabric) haven’t been afforded copyrighted protection already is because they are considered a ‘useful article.’ So someone had to dig deep to find a reference of another useful article that is protected. Like a vessel hull.

But enough about vessels, what does the DPPA define as a ‘fashion design?’

As currently drafted, a “fashion design” constitutes the appearance of an article of apparel as a whole, including any ornamentation,

Marc Jacobs Fall 09 on style.com's trend report "Party like it's 1983." Do you think these garments would be filed as 'original designs' by LVMH, the parent conglomerate?

Alright so we’re looking at the entire garment, not just a piece of it. so if someone came up with a particular sleeve detail no one had ever seen before - or copied something interesting from an obscure vintage piece and filed it with the copyright office as their own original design - and you had the same detail in your garment but the other parts and pieces were different… but wait…

…and specifically protects any original elements or the arrangement or placement of any elements incorporated in the overall appearance of the article of apparel.

So if you can’t prove that said clever sleeve detail was public domain, done before somewhere by someone else, and not an ‘original element’ (and not having access to the same exclusive vintage collections it might be a hard one to research) the designer - or company backing them - that filed the design would ‘own’ that sleeve detail. For three years. Just because they said it was theres first. And just like Levis, could hire dozens of detectives to scour the racks of the big stores to find things they deem ’substantially similar’ to file lawsuits against - but we’ll get to that part of the language in a bit.

But what if you, the designer, don’t claim any ‘original elements’ but do what designers do all the time - take shapes and proportions of collars, sleeves, waistbands, darts, pockets, etc - that are part of the shared design vocabulary and sit down in your studio and come up with a nice, wearable,  ‘classic with a twist’ garment? If it’s related to the current trend zeitgeist (and if you want it to sell then it probably is) chances are it looks somewhat similar to a lot of other garments currently in stores. But where is the line between somewhat similar and substantially similar? And how does the idea of a bunch of lawyers and random John Q. Public jurors off the streets making that determination sound to you?

The Marc Jacobs design above is reminiscent of Dynasty-style 80s wear, so can we expect to see black/silver lame jackets of this shape in stores everywhere? Probably. And I’d venture to guess that John Q. Public, especially if chosen for the jury because of his lack of fashion savvy, would probably notice the fabric as much as the shape in determining degrees of similarity.

The presence or absence of any particular color, or of any pictorial or graphic work imprinted on fabric, is not considered when determining the originality of the fashion design or similarity for the purposes of infringement.

Currently pictorial or graphic work is already protected, and the fabric used - including color - is not protected. So somehow we’re going to get John Q. Public to unconsider that element in his determination of degrees of similarity.

Under the act, it is an infringement to make, have made, import, sell, or distribute any article embodying a fashion design that was: (1) copied from a protected design, or an image of such design, without authorization; and (2) created with knowledge, or with reasonable grounds to know, that such design was protected.

This part is very important and is the basis for Kathleen Fasenella’s concerns she outlines in her Fashion Incubator post; the scenarios dismissed as hyperbolic by lawyers unfamiliar with the way garments get produced and distributed. As a trademark lawyer for the fashion industry once explained to me, she is able to get the big dollar judgements and/or settlements that pay her fees not by going after obscure no-name knock off labels, but the department stores who carry their lines. And what about that factory you contracted to sew your garments? Or even the sourcing company that found that contractor for you? (more…)

from S+ark by Ballantyne

Jasmin Malik Chua writes for Treehugger, Anti-Fashion Designer Philippe Starck Creates Sustainable Fashion Collection:

French designer Philippe Starck is broadening his reach to include ready-to-wear clothing for men and women. Just don’t call it “fashion,” s’il vous plait.

“Although the work of [its] creators is fantastic, I will never be idiotic enough to do fashion,” the father of the Juicy Salif juicer and the Louis Ghost chair told Le Figaro newspaper just before the collection launched in Florence last week. “The public will take maybe three years to understand the concept. It’s not fashion. We won’t be very big in the newspapers. The clothes are non-photogenic. But intelligent people will know to discover us.”

He claims he’s sidestepped fashion. I say that’s not possible if you’re trying to sell expensive clothes to the “intelligent” people (translate: hipsters with advanced degrees in creative fields who can afford designer cashmere). Slower under the radar fashion that is inaccessible to the masses, perhaps, but fashion nonetheless.

Because the essential ingredient of fashion - be it a garment, electronic gadget or even an idea - is that it is of the moment and somehow captures the zeitgeist. What Starck - and presumably his clientele - are trying to dissociate themselves from is the garish, trendy, disposable frenzy of junky garments of malls and H & M’s across the globe. But he still can’t escape the imperative to offer something novel that will inspire those with discriminating tastes to buy.

The real anti-fashion?

Johnston's of Elgin men's cashmere v-neck sweater

Good ‘ole v-neck cashmere sweater. You can find versions of these that are 50 years old and look just like this one; grandpa cut and all. Now that’s anti fashion.

But if super cool Starck can make investing in, wearing and keeping highly functional and aesthetically pleasing garments that are built to last a concept that catches on and grants status to the tastemakers, then I’m all for it.

Lizzie Davies writes for the Guardian UK:

Convinced that rising concern over the sustainability of mass consumerism will encourage more people to look for longer-lasting solutions to their wardrobe dilemmas, Starck believes the time has come for clothing to develop a conscience. “It’s the right time to launch this collection. We are starting something that cannot not work, and that will be followed,” he said.

Mark you calendars: April 11 might turn out to be a newsworthy flashpoint day. I just read an alternet article about A New Way Forward, a group that’s formed to synchronize protests against Wall Street and the ‘too big to fail’ financial institutions:

Somehow, we’ve created a system that protects some of America’s wealthiest individuals by letting them build institutions that are “too big to fail.” Large scale banking has left our economy unstable, and overly dependent upon too few institutions. Greed for short-term profit, and competitive exuberance, has led to incomprehensible financing schemes and rewards for companies that sold people things they couldn’t afford.

But, increasingly, people are realizing that anger at the banks ought also be directed at Congress, and at ourselves. We have created corporations that have left us exposed, unstable, and made it easy for concentrated wealth to exploit the political process.

A new grassroots, bottom-up, organization, has sprung up demanding structural change, and grown from 4 to over 1,000 people in the last week. Their clear and important demand is this: any bank that is too big to fail is too big to exist.

Writer Matt Taibbi thinks the same thing. Keeping with the ‘too big to fail is too big to exist’ theme, Rachel Maddow interviews Taibbi and calls his piece for the Rolling Stone a must read:

Here is the introduction from The Big Takeover, which is well worth reading in its entirety. He follows with a blow by blow historical account framed in his take-no-prisoners style.

So it’s time to admit it: We’re fools, protagonists in a kind of gruesome comedy about the marriage of greed and stupidity. And the worst part about it is that we’re still in denial — we still think this is some kind of unfortunate accident, not something that was created by the group of psychopaths on Wall Street whom we allowed to gang-rape the American Dream. When Geithner announced the new $30 billion bailout, the party line was that poor AIG was just a victim of a lot of shitty luck — bad year for business, you know, what with the financial crisis and all.

… He conveniently forgot to mention that AIG had spent more than a decade systematically scheming to evade U.S. and international regulators, or that one of the causes of its “pneumonia” was making colossal, world-sinking $500 billion bets with money it didn’t have, in a toxic and completely unregulated derivatives market.

Nor did anyone mention that when AIG finally got up from its seat at the Wall Street casino, broke and busted in the afterdawn light, it owed money all over town — and that a huge chunk of your taxpayer dollars in this particular bailout scam will be going to pay off the other high rollers at its table. Or that this was a casino unique among all casinos, one where middle-class taxpayers cover the bets of billionaires.

People are pissed off about this financial crisis, and about this bailout, but they’re not pissed off enough. The reality is that the worldwide economic meltdown and the bailout that followed were together a kind of revolution, a coup d’état. They cemented and formalized a political trend that has been snowballing for decades: the gradual takeover of the government by a small class of connected insiders, who used money to control elections, buy influence and systematically weaken financial regulations.

The crisis was the coup de grâce: Given virtually free rein over the economy, these same insiders first wrecked the financial world, then cunningly granted themselves nearly unlimited emergency powers to clean up their own mess. And so the gambling-addict leaders of companies like AIG end up not penniless and in jail, but with an Alien-style death grip on the Treasury and the Federal Reserve — “our partners in the government,” as Liddy put it with a shockingly casual matter-of-factness after the most recent bailout.

The mistake most people make in looking at the financial crisis is thinking of it in terms of money, a habit that might lead you to look at the unfolding mess as a huge bonus-killing downer for the Wall Street class. But if you look at it in purely Machiavellian terms, what you see is a colossal power grab that threatens to turn the federal government into a kind of giant Enron — a huge, impenetrable black box filled with self-dealing insiders whose scheme is the securing of individual profits at the expense of an ocean of unwitting involuntary shareholders, previously known as taxpayers.

And then for some fun with time machines and crystal balls, Rachel Maddow interviews Senator Byron Dorgan of North Dakota. Why is that fun? She pulls quotes from 1999 where Dorgan - one of the only 8 senators who voted against the bill that allowed for the consolidation of insurance companies/banks/investment firms heretofore prohibited because that’s what helped lead up to the great depression - expresses concern that 10 years forward we’d find ourselves bailing out these institutions.

Who’s looking like the smart guy now?

from NY Times: breaking ground for the White House kitchen garden

We’ve all heard about Michelle Obama as a fashion trendsetter and how her wearing a brand is the kind of marketing gold that money can’t buy. So if Michelle can turn the White House lawn into a kitchen garden, does that mean we’ll start seeing less Chem Lawn and more victory gardens in suburbs across America? Will neighborhood association rules have to cave on this one as the sustainable, local, organic and healthy food movement gains mainstream momentum? Let’s hope so.

The organization Eat The View is taking credit for instigating the replanting of the White House Victory Garden.

Eat the View is a campaign to plant high-impact food gardens in high-profile places. We asked the Obamas to lead the way by replanting a kitchen garden on the First Lawn and they heard our call!