Did Tom Wolfe have it right when he claimed that much that is strange and crazy and wonderful in American culture has a way of starting out on the West Coast and eventually filtering East?

For those of us far more fascinated with the inception and dissemination of fashion trends than the consumption of them, the neighborhoods of San Francisco have always been a buffet of people watching for the street style destined to seed the runways and department stores. And Guy Trebay of the New York Times nails it in his opening line of Fashion Diary: The Tribes of San Francisco:

IF a decade spent following the fashion flock will teach you anything, it’s that fashion people seldom have much to do with generating style. This little-appreciated truth naturally comes to mind as the Fashion Week juggernaut lumbers toward Manhattan, a rolling, continuous loop of live-streamed, Tweeted product-placement set to ambient glamour-buzz cranked out by the Industrial Hype Machine.

…What she likes about San Francisco style, said Ms. Grim, who is in her early 40s, is that the town is remarkably free of fashion hierarchies and in-crowd tyrannies. There is no shoe of the season here. There is no It bag. Except perhaps for the pulp-novel heiresses Vanessa and Victoria Traina (who anyway are almost New Yorkers), there are no Vogue-anointed darlings-du-jour.

Photo: Heidi Schumann for NY Times

One thing notably absent, however, in Trebay’s analysis is the influence of Burning Man culture on the San Francisco fashion scene. Given the thousands of key Burner players whose default world residence is the bay area yet keep their culture alive and well year round, I find it hard to believe that their DIY radical self expression anti-corporate style wouldn’t permeate out onto the streets.

Interestingly enough, even though the quirky, innovative aesthetic is pervasive, my handful of trips to San Francisco hunting for the corresponding retailer sources - especially local designers - have left me standing mostly in resale shops or malls in tourist destinations. Ever so often there will be a brave entrepreneur opening a collective of local designers, a curated vintage store in a high rent district that mixes in refashioned pieces, or a boutique carrying avant-garde designers from NY… but those are the exception, not the rule.

Even locals tend to concede, unasked, that San Francisco has historically been an also-ran in fashion terms. “Every time a designer from here has a little bit of success, they disappear to New York,” said Gladys Perint Palmer, executive director of fashion at the Academy of Art University, whose fashion department has an enrollment of 2,500.

Allow me to digress for a moment… 2500 fashion students? That’s about 1000 graduating a year, and that’s just one school in one city. A private, for-profit school with 5 digit tuition. Are there enough jobs in the industry for all of them? Um, no. Back to San Francisco…

Ms. Perint Palmer was referring specifically to Nice Collective, a San Francisco-based label founded in 1997 by Joe Haller and Ian Hannula in part to capitalize on distinctive elements of a local style that, like so much else in the Bay Area, seems to be generated by some loopy organic collective impulse rather than an editorial cabal.

It’s so good I have to restate it: “generated by some loopy organic collective impulse rather than an editorial cabal.” But really, especially since the ‘youth revolution’ of the 60s, has that editorial cabal really dictated much? I’d argue that the best they can do is distill and co-opt the shapes, colors and styling that settles out of the collective choices of the loopy ones. And where do those loopy young ones go for the raw materials of their sartorial expression, especially when their piled into shared bedrooms in sky high rent apartments? You guessed it - thrift stores. Which has over the past couple of decades seeped into the mainstream to the point of becoming a standard style option, perhaps even one with far more cred for the find than the spoon fed trends of the big stores. Trebay quotes a former department store buyer:

“The stigma attached to used-clothing is gone,” she added. “You can either spend $300 on a top at Neiman Marcus or go to the thrift store and buy a bag of clothes for a tenth as much.”

Exactly. And this leaves one with far more time and disposable income for living, not just posing like a well dressed doll.

…Or you can do both and then mash up the results, as the women of the Mission tribe do.

“Those girls are the local Holly Golightlys,” Mr. Ospital of M.A.C. said of women like Rachel Corrie, a waitress at Tartine, who as she left work last week hopped onto her bike wearing what looked like a gingham onesie, feet shod in gladiator sandals and a velvet equestrian hunt cap passing as safety gear perched atop her head.

Girls like her are all over the Mission. You see them flying down Valencia Street on Vespas, their wildly improvised get-ups composed of, say, rags scavenged from the Bay Area’s fabled thrift shops (Out of the Closet in the Castro, Eco-Thrift in Vallejo, the Goodwill outpost just off the 101 Freeway in San Rafael), Marni skirts, vintage SM leathers culled from an eclectic assortment of goods at Marc Josef’s locally legendary antiques shop, Tradesmen, and wingtip shoes.

…“People will wear vintage with some D.I.Y. thing they made themselves with some piece that they couldn’t resist in a boutique,” Ms. Grim said. “They’re not afraid to mash things up.”

Because it might be that one innovative, interesting piece from the boutique, something that might have been inspired by vintage, might even have been made from vintage, but definitely didn’t happen prior to this decade… that’s the piece that communicates that subtle status that signals to other members of the targeted tribe that you’re doing well enough, and care enough, for bits of investment dressing.

“It’s a very difficult city to read,” Mr. Lopez said, owing largely to the local distaste for ostentation and hype, a suspicion of anything that requires a high-degree of difficulty to pull off and that people spend a lot of their lives in cars.

“San Francisco is definitely about quiet style,” he said. “People care. They have the clothes, but they wear them in private. They bring in the most amazing stuff for consignment and I’m always thinking, ‘Where did you wear this thing?’ ”

Stealth Wealth indeed.

While restrained spending has always gone hand-in-hand with a shaky economy, now, more than ever, Americans are bragging about their rock-bottom fashion finds.

Really? I’ve been doing that with my friends since the 80s. Apparently cheap chic has gone fully mainstream. And ‘fast fashion’ outlets are all too happy to provide alternatives to the traditional department store outlets.

Forever 21 - Times Square flagship store from Sugar Rock Catwalk

While the average American may not be glued to London’s FTSE or Japan’s Nikkei, he or she is more inclined to acknowledge the reality of his or her own financial situation. At Forever 21’s new 90,000-square-foot Times Square flagship Friday with her teenage daughter, Donna Georgio said she is definitely shopping at stores such as Marshalls and TJ Maxx more than Bloomingdale’s like she used to. “Part of it is due to clothes being too expensive and I’m afraid of losing my job or getting into debt,” she said. “I’m 50 years old. I’ve had all the clothes and have gone from having Audis and BMWs to a Volkswagen. My priorities have changed. But I can still hook it up and look good.”

What is interesting to note is that nowhere in this article does Feitelberg mention, even in passing, the essentially slave labor necessary in this race to the rock bottom price. Not that designer labels are above exploitation, mind you. It’s just that, ironically enough, the big names have been the target of enough high profile anti-sweatshop campaigns to force them to implement at least minimal supervision of their subcontractors. But the Forever 21 customer is highly unlikely to care about much beyond getting that trendy dress for $12.

Consumers have plenty of reasons to be frugal and will keep trading down and saving money for years to come, according to Howard Davidowitz, chairman of Davidowitz & Associates Inc., a New York-based retail and consulting banking firm. “People are looking for value and the consumer mind-set has changed forever. All you have to do is look at what’s going on with Mango, Zara and H&M [financially],” he said. “The most dramatic example is Japan. I have a home there. It used to be the biggest place for luxury [shopping]. Everything has changed there because the standard of living is declining and that’s what is going on here.”

W. David Marx noted this shift in Japan back in 2008 at Businessoffashion.com in a blog post titled Japanese Women: From Luxury to Yuru Nachu:

Just five years ago, the Japanese luxury market looked like it was headed for an era of permanent dominance. The economy had finally started to uptick after a long decade of recession in Japan. In came a relatively-unprecedented New Rich — mostly, internet millionaires and employees at foreign investment banks — who ushered a wealth-obsessed zeitgeist into the popular culture. Conspicuous consumption was in.

As an analogue to this movement, female style gravitated away from the street fashion of the 1990s to a style called O-nee-kei (“big sister style”), popular among mainstream females in their early twenties. The O-nee-kei girls were convinced that the only chance at future happiness was a rich suitor, and the bibles of this fashion movement — magazines CanCam and JJ — told them exactly how to dress in order to snag a man in a decent income bracket. The styling was mostly cute office conservative, but instead of designer fashion like in the 1990s, the clothes came mostly from cheap domestic labels. Handbags, however, needed to be from Louis Vuitton or Gucci, and jewelry meant Tiffany, Bulgari, and Cartier. The bling was all in the accesssories.

These O-nee-kei girls would not think for a microsecond about Parisian mode. In fact, these girls started to openly preach a love of “real clothes” — a term to describe inexpensive, trendy apparel from exclusively Japanese companies, mostly designed by young women the same age as customers. Although CanCam‘s focus on looking “classy” to attract rich men kept the luxury handbag on the menu, the “real clothes” rhetoric of “unreal foreign fashion labels vs. real Japanese brands” offered omens of wide-scale luxury rejection.

Ah ha. Keep the easily recognizable status symbol, but skimp on the quality couture clothing that the men they were chasing didn’t care about, anyway. What happens, however, when the supply of rich young men dries up with a global recession? While some girls just step up their game, all too many decide to play a different one.

Yuru Nachu style featured on Businessoffashion.com. W.David Marx photograph

With the less robust economy and a visible rise of underpaid young workers, the New Rich Pageant of 2003 has gone out with a whimper, making the princess-y O-nee-keilook appear somewhat shallow. In this recession-adjusted cultural atmosphere, everyone wants inexpensive, low pressure, and comfortable clothing. This year has thus seen the rise of the Yuru Nachu (“relaxed, natural”) style, which could be a long-term challenge to previous luxury attitudes. This “fashion ethic” is based on relaxed silhouettes, muted colours, and layering organic textiles. From loose “Bohemian” flower print dresses to off-white linen tunics, young women from all taste and consumer subcultures have embraced some variation of this fashion look.

Although Yuru Nachu reflects many of the global industry’s spring trends, the look has succeeded wildly thanks to its ability to connect with young women’s need for a less consumerist take on fashion. Out with the exclusive leather handbag, and in with the $12 “eco bag.”

When the cheap canvas tote replaces the Louis Vuitton as the anti-status status symbol, something is afoot. Back to WWD:

“If you look back at the boom years, a lot of that spending was accessed through credit. Debt-fueled affluence or aspirational consumerism is going to be challenged to return and is not about to get us back to where we were.”

Needless to say, he is not counting on shoppers to start spending more freely anytime soon. “From a big-picture macroeconomic standpoint, we are expecting a very sluggish recovery in the economy that is probably not conducive to consumers waking up one day feeling a lot better about everything and willing to spend again,” said Tuhy

This is bad news for big name ‘luxury’ brands that depended on the aspirational consumer to provide the bread and butter by overpaying for logo laden bags cranked out in third world factories.

“Conspicuous consumption is not very chic right now,” Christopher said. That behavior is counter to the Veblen effect, named after economist Thorstein Veblen, who first noted that decreasing the value of high-end goods only decreases people’s interest in buying them, he added.

Obviously Veblen wasn’t around long enough to witness The Gilt Groupe website. What’s different about now versus Veblen’s Victorian age is that the ‘democratization of fashion’ has 21st century ‘aspirational’ (translate - can’t really afford it but buy it anyway) consumers going after the same luxury brands as the actually rich, which in the long run turns into a cannibalistic effect of sorts. Decreasing the price doesn’t necessarily increase the interest - for it’s safe to assume that, by definition, far more people are interested in these items than can afford them - but instead increases the accessibility of the brand. Which will, in time, decrease the interest of the truly rich who establish the status of the item in the first place.

Consumers are kidding themselves if they think fast fashion distinguishes them from the masses, said Ellen Ruppel Shell, author of “Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture.” Topshop may have certain status for being London based and the same might be said of the Swedish chain H&M, but the reality is that neither is all that different from Wal-Mart, she said. “Frugal chic is kind of a label in itself now. But I would argue that we are deluding ourselves. These goods are mass produced, sold all over the world, available to everyone and they don’t involve a lot of creativity,” Shell said. “Truly fashionable people are able to go to thrift stores to find something stylish.”

Yes! Count me amongst the truly fashionable, then.

The symbiotic relationship between fashion and celebrity, as seen everywhere from the red carpet to an increasingly sophisticated print media, has been the most ubiquitous and, it almost goes without saying, money-spinning phenomenon of the era. That is, until now.

This time last year – and as presciently as ever – the Prada Group sent out a press release to accompany the launch of its new women’s wear campaign for Miu Miu stating, in the opening paragraph, that it marked “the return of the model as opposed to the celebrity” to fashion’s most hallowed frontline. Shot by the super-fashionable duo Mert Alas and Marcus Pigott, the images established just that, featuring an array of painstakingly sought-out new models remarkable for their fresh personalities and entirely unrecognisable faces.

In February this year – in a move that was equally unprecedented – Marc Jacobs very publicly rid his catwalk show’s front row of the formerly requisite A-list contingent, telling the influential American Vogue website Style.com that his love affair with celebrity was over.

“It generated so much press [but] at a certain point it was like, ‘Did anybody actually watch the show?’ “

Snooki proudly sporting Coach

And remember, Marc Jacobs has the likes of Madonna in his front row. But in this new era increasingly dominated by reality TV, the newest crop of ‘celebrities’ aren’t always as aspirational. Access Hollywood asks Is Snooki a Pawn in the Gucci/Coach Bag War?

According to The New York Observer’s Simon Doonan (via Celebuzz),  Snooki is a pawn in a reported raging style war - with the weapon of choice being supple fine leather..Doonan claims that various fashion houses are engaging in “preemptive product placement” or “unbranding,” by sending Snooki new purses from their competitors’ collection…He adds, “The bottom line? Nobody in fashion wants to co-brand with Snooki.”

Back to Stengle quoting Karl Lagerfeld on his decision to use professional yet anonymous models:

… ”Why? Because I love them. They have the right look and class.” Ah, class … and with this in mind, he adds, “Their overexposure in ‘people’ magazines also makes it that one may be a little tired of celebrities and the red carpet.”

Ah yes, the now ubiquitous red carpet. With the wall of brands behind it. When even a nobody like me can all too easily find herself on one, you know it ain’t that special anymore.

Stengle writes an eloquent historical summation of the rise of the celebrity/fashion phenomenon:

It wasn’t until the Eighties – significantly the decade in which designer fashion first identified the potential of its power – that the relationship between fashion and celebrity began to gather momentum, and the seeds were planted for the behemoth it has become today. Giorgio Armani dressed Richard Gere in American Gigolo, and the response was such that the great Italian designer soon ensured that the front rows of his twice-yearly men’s and women’s wear shows were as star-studded as his jewelled evening gowns. Gianni Versace was quick to enter the fray. Speculation was rife as to just how much either designer was prepared to pay anyone, from Sofia Loren to George Michael to attend their shows, resplendent, it almost goes without saying, in Armani or Versace designs.

Versace, in particular, went on to invest huge amounts of capital in advertising campaigns shot by big names such as Irving Penn, Bruce Weber and Richard Avedon that featured everyone from Elton John to Madonna (yes, her again) and from Jon Bon Jovi to Lisa Marie Presley. If ever designer muscle was fully flexed, it was here. The fact that the label had the weight to employ not only the world’s most feted photographers but also so many of its most famous stars was a potent formula that few – before or since – could ever match. By the late Nineties, it was rumoured that Nicole Kidman was being paid no less than $2m simply to wear Christian Dior to significant social occasions.

It was also during this period that fashion magazines began featuring celebrities as opposed to models on their covers on a regular basis – and it was doubtless quite a coup when, for the December 1998 issue of American Vogue, Anna Wintour landed Hillary Clinton for that purpose.

After the rise… the fall:

Within five years, however, the effect of such originally ambitious intentions had been watered down beyond all recognition. Testamant to this was the appearance of the alleged TV “stars” Amanda Holden, Hermione Norris, Tamzin Outhwaite and Ulrika Jonsson on the cover of the November 2002 issue of British Vogue, a decision that moved some high-minded commentators – and Sir Roy Strong, the flamboyant former director of the Victoria and Albert Museum, in particular – to bemoan a celebration of the “trash-ocracy” in British culture. This was hardly “aspirational”, the thinking went, and that, surely, was the point of such glossy titles.

Yes, the ‘trash-ocracy’ is the opposite of aspirational. And not what middle class suburban moms aspire to with their handbag purchases.

From Neiman Marcus' fall offerings

The Associated Press article featuring Neiman Marcus’ Fashion Director Ken Downing’s predictions for the fall has been widely featured in newspapers around the country. But the declarations of Downing I found most useful were not his recommendations of what to buy this season (feathers, lace, pantsuits, whatever). Of far more interest were the words on what compels her to buy at all, which are especially relevant in a belt tightening economy:

“A customer’s not interested in buying something she already owns,” he said. “She wants something that has absolute newness that she just desires and can’t live without.”

Ah yes, the perfect quote to support my irresistible sells fashion category!

Author Jamie Stengle offers a few more gems that give us further insight into the process of forecasting and influencing the trends we see in the malls at every price point:

Downing, luxury retailer Neiman Marcus’ fashion director, has been digesting designer offerings from New York to London to Paris to Milan to come up with a list of trends sure to get people running to the mall.

“I really create the attitude and the message and the mood of the season that the company will be following,” Downing said.

His fashion forecast is then integrated into everything from the Dallas-based company’s (www.neimanmarcus.com) marketing message to what buyers look for to how mannequins are dressed.

Do not try this at home

I really like Stengle’s use of the term digesting in reference to the trend distillation process. No, all the big name designers do not coordinate their lines around specific trend messages.

To create that trend list, Downing watches for recurring themes at fashion shows around the globe. Then he checks out whether designers are producing enough of those trendy items he’s honed in on to fill store racks.

“We start to talk about do we have the critical mass to make these bold predictions?” he said.

For instance, he said, “If we believe in green, we need to have green everywhere.” (This fall, by the way, green will be everywhere, he says, especially in the military-influenced olive.)

Boots of all heights are also in the fall forecast, he said. And a structured handbag is a must, not to mention pearls, “ropes and ropes” of them. Also, he says, keep an eye out for capes, ponchos and vests.

Olive green military? Excellent. Easy to thrift. And looks good with my new red lipstick kick. Ropes and ropes of pearls? Hello 80s retro Chanel knock off possibly spurned by Patricia Field’s god-awful costuming in Devil Wears Prada? And ponchos? Seriously? C’mon, we were giggling about that in 2003, it’s got to be a least a decade before you can try that again. If you’re going to invest actual money, go for that pantsuit with a killer cut. Frilly lace tops can be found at the Buffy.

Red carpet fanfare sizzled in the Texas sun

What I realized last night dressed to the nines while eating cheap hamburgers at a picnic table post red carpet award show is that AFW isn’t really about the actual clothes (the part I’m into) but is about cultivating the consumer. Oh yeah, that part. See, if no one is buying clothes from local designers and boutiques, how are any of the creatives supposed to make a living? I can snark about sorority girls (current and former) all I like, but if they’re not compulsively overstuffing their closets with higher end designer labels, what treasures would there be for me to discover at Buffalo Exchange once they trade in their excess?

AFW producer Matt Swinney introduces the big budget stage production for the awards show

A friend of mine who participated as a designer offered me an extra ticket to the awards show and I thought ‘what the heck?’ at least it would be good people watching. And I do have to offer some genuine respect and acknowledgement of the insane amount of work that goes into producing and coordinating all of these events. Thank goodness other people enjoy that kind of work and are willing to do it because I’m certainly not.

Having fun with the Bentley photo-op. That's me on the left and my friend and fabulous Austin designer Chia on the right. I'm wearing a top, shorts and vintage shoes from odd and various thrift stores while Chia is sporting Tina Sparkles' prize winning Little Black Dress.

That being said, I can’t help but chuckle over the irony of trying to tout Austin as having viable potential for this kind of formal (and profitable) industry when the fashionability of Austin as a hip place to live has been inexorably tangled with the slacker casual look that was advertised as a refreshing alternative to the big city pretension. Oh don’t get me wrong, the slacker hipster had a whole different flavor of pretension, but red carpets and Bentleys were not it.

Although the hipster slacker look might contribute significantly to the success of many local thrift stores, it’s not going to keep boutiques of triple digit party dresses afloat.

No, if you’re going to get the Real Housewives of Westlake to slap down the Platinum Amex for enough dresses, hair and makeup to keep these high rent boutique and salon storefronts open, then you need to give them enough opportunities to play dress up. Such as attending the AFW awards show…

In fact, for a mere $300 ($550 for two) you could get one of the ‘extremely limited’ VIP ticket packages that included not just special seating at this event, but personal shopping and princess attention. Which leads to the question that both the Austin American Statesman’s newcomer fashion writer and longtime cultural commentator Michael Barnes posed in his blog review:

Inevitably one must ask: Who is paying for all this? Surely not the starving creative class, which, in Austin, includes many of the seemingly high-end retailers in their pristine boutiques. (Just ask about their rents.) Fashion reporter Marques Harper has posed the crucial questions about what holds Fashion Week aloft, and what will do so in the future: Fees or sponsorships; ticket prices or donations?

Tina Sparkles & friend at afterparty

Insider sources (aka my designer friend with the extra ticket) told me that originally the designers were not given tickets to the $60ish per person after party. But then the producers, realizing that it would be weird to try and pull off a fashion week after party with no designers, decided to go ahead and include tickets in the packet. I also heard rumor of a kerfuffle that erupted over asking models to pony up $45 to participate. Producer Matt Swinney of event planning company Launch 787 reportedly spends upwards of $100k of his own cash each year to make this event happen, with the hopes that as it grows those tables of income/expense will turn in his favor.

He did have the cahones to jump out and claim Austin Fashion Week as his own, so it’s not as if some other event planner can do it, but truth be told I remain skeptical of anyone’s ability to turn a profit from an event of this flavor in this city in this economic climate. If you own a print shop or sell beverage napkins I suppose you saw an uptick in sales as a result of all the parties and promotions, but fashionistas everywhere are notorious moochers and as Barnes noted the “chronically underpaid creative class” can barely afford to sustain their craft, much less the hypebeast needed to promote it. And earlier that day, mere blocks from the Long Center itself, I noticed a clean cut young man standing on the side of Lamar Boulevard waving a sign offering 2 months free rent for one of the dense urban living buildings that were all the rage during the boom. The sign didn’t mention it, but I’m sure they have walk in closets and granite countertops.

Good evening, everybody.

My name is Claire James and Malissa has asked me to say a few words about the fashion climate here in Austin, TX (my home town) and how that might interface with the global fashion phenomenon at large. I do believe that right now and especially in the coming decade that Austin, along with the rest Texas, will offer a unique set of opportunities based on a combination of economic factors and cultural influences you won’t be able to find anywhere else.

But what I’m not going to do is stand here and tell you that if you just do what you love and believe in yourself and visualize success that all of your dreams will come true.  No, think of me more as the critical naysayer of the fashion industry - trying to cut through the hype and glamour and PR and tell it straight about what’s really going on.

Photo: Wendy Corn

While on one hand I’m going to try and offer some useful advice for those of you motivated and determined to try to make a living (or at least a side income) as a fashion designer I’m also going to try to encourage many of you to stop worrying altogether about extracting dollars and cents profit from your creative endeavors and just enjoy designing and creating fashion for its own sake. That the amateur do-it-yourselfer has just as much - and in some instances more - to contribute to the collective visual sartorial culture as the professionals.

So, what business do I have making such proclamations? Let me share a little of my background. Currently I write a blog  - collectiveselection.com. - which is a byproduct of my masters thesis work in the Textiles and Apparel Program at Cornell University. Collective Selection is a discourse analysis of what other writers and journalists are saying not just about the fashion trends themselves, but the intersection of culture, economics and politics that together create the zeitgeist - or spirit of the times - that those trends reflect.

So today here in 2010 I now have the luxury of watching, wearing and enjoying fashion in the evenings and weekends I’m not at my nice secure business casual day job. But from 1995-2002 I did manage to just barely eek out a living as an independent craft artisan - designing, producing and selling a line of hand dyed wearable art.

The name of my micro business was Colorwheels, and maybe some of you (or your parents) bought a tank top or baby romper from me at the Armadillo Christmas Bazaar or any number of local craft shows.

Like many of you, my love of fashion and costume (because for me the line was always pretty blurry) was sparked in high school. Luckily for me, my mother had started teaching me to sew in the second grade, and as soon as I was introduced to the glorious, yet still untapped motherlode of thrift stores in the 80s, it was all over.

Since the small allowance from my hard working yet non indulgent parents combined with the meager paycheck earned checking groceries at Randalls couldn’t even get me in the ring with the popular girl mall princesses - and the identical oversized shaker knit sweaters, acid washed ankle zip guess jeans and hair bows they were all wearing were excruciatingly boring anyways, I decided it would be way more fun to spend that bit of cash on giant bags of vintage finds, get out my scissors and sewing machine and see how I could horrify my conservative mother while at the same time making the halls of high school a whole lot more interesting.

25 years ago refashioning vintage was somewhat of a radical and unusual defiance of the corporate mall culture that completely dominated the fashion choices available at the time. How awesome to look around me today and see refashioned vintage sold in stores, taught in classes, featured in television shows. It’s infiltrating and spreading everywhere as an accepted alternative that continues influence the mainstream.

Over the past 15 years I’ve watched the fashion scene in Austin grow exponentially. Every year there are more and more fashion shows on the calendar, more stores featuring local designers and more places to set up a pop up tent and sell directly to the public.

And this explosion of interest in fashion we see in Austin is our own Texas indie flavored microcosm of a global phenomenon. Whether its new green business models of production or an underground line of clothes that editors are buzzing about or a bold and unusual dress turning heads in a nightclub - the momentum is coming from individuals at the grassroots level pursuing their creative visions. The best the corporate conglomerates of brands beholden to the instant gratification of shareholders can do is try to cool hunt and co-opt the authentic innovation of street style and independent upstarts.

And if you’ve been paying attention to the business news and earnings reports of those big labels and retailers you know that the climate can be described as nervous at best. The PR departments might be exuding optimistic messages in an attempt to fake it til they make it, but the reality itself is actually pretty grim.

Now this is where I venture into my Nouriel Roubini style Dr. Doomsday bit, but stay with me if you would because I promise to end on an optimistic note.

Although there’s lots of interest and excitement about fashion in Austin, the level of production and distribution infrastructure designers need to have a viable professional industry does not currently exist here (yet). But I will argue that this might actually be a good thing because the fashion industry proper like we see in New York and LA today is currently in a lot of trouble.

After the economic meltdown in the Fall of ’08, what do you think was the first thing people stopped buying? You guessed it, new clothes and shoes, especially the frivolous and expensive designer kind. I know there’s a lot of economists out there now talking about green shoots and the road to recovery, but my crystal ball tells me that for the immediate future our economy is in for another big hit at worst, and an anemic slump of unemployment at best.

Last year during New York fashion week I found one fashion writer brave enough to say what nobody else would: that at the shows themselves all too many industry veterans were busy working the room looking for gigs. Trouble is, most of their connections were in the same boat.

And more and more the established design houses are eliminating entry level positions and relying on and unlimited supply of fresh fashion school graduates for unpaid internships.

If you are hoping to make it big in the fashion industry as it exists in America today, I’d say good luck and I sure hope you have genius talent, incredible stamina, golden connections and a wealthy patron.

Now for the good news.

The best news I have is for the amateur do-it-yourselfers. The Blue Hangar still has mountains of discarded potential raw materials for $1.25 a piece, old school heavy duty sewing machines can be found used for under $50, (because really, the vast majority of home sewing machines built after 1975 are junk) and classes, books and websites to teach you to sew are within reach.

When you look back at the history of fashion and the changes in the dominant themes, norms and silhouettes, the most dramatic shifts always come in times of economic and social unrest. Now is the time to push it to the walls, and then push it some more. Enjoy the luxury of taking hours and hours, even days and weeks to painstakingly explore and experiment with techniques that may end up producing only one garment. And once you figure that out to the point where it’s efficient….move on to the next thing that catches your fancy.

I also find the social scene in Austin to be more fun and forgiving and far less judgmental and snobbish than cities where the stakes seem to be higher, like New York or San Francisco. The deliberately casual culture promoted by our own Chamber of Commerce means that one tends to find a broader range of social groups and types within the same venue.

At events like the Treasure City Thrift Fashion show everyone is applauded simply for giving it a shot. So go ahead, take a risk. If people think what you’re wearing is amazing, they’ll come up and tell you themselves. And if they think it’s just awful… well at least you’re keeping it weird!

So let’s say you’ve come up with a fun and unique twist on a garment or accessory, you’ve received lots of positive feedback, you’ve made more than you can wear and give away to friends and now you’re ready to try making a little bit of cash on the side to support your habit. The good news is that today there are stores like Parts and Labour and Moxie and the Compound that want to consign your work and have storefronts with systems and clientele already in place.

And of course I’m sure all of you are familiar with Etsy - the online marketplace that’s gotten many a new designer started with a viable business. But you will soon find out that efficient productions systems are essential to maintaining a profitable business of any size. The first hat is fun to make. And the third might be, too. But the thirtieth? Or the three hundredth? Streamlining is essential to preventing burnout.

The other thing essential to getting people to cross the line and fork over their hard earned dollars for your work - instead of just telling you how awesome they think it is - is that it has to be irresistible. And not just to one person, but to lots of them. Your look has to resonate with the tastes and subconscious desires of at least a niche demographic group.

And it must be well made. Period. Or people will pick it up and put it back or pass over the photo or send it back in the mail. Become skilled in your craft! If you’re making garments, learn to sew! I mean really learn to sew.

And what would I say to those of you who will settle for nothing less than making a living as a full time designer? For those of you determined to give it a shot, nothing I can say will talk you out of it because nothing anyone told me was able to talk me out of it. And boy did I show them! But I do believe that at least for me the naivete and boundless energy of being a twentysomething was essential.

Because you are the ones who are going to have to create your own jobs. To be visionary and creative enough to imagine not only new things to wear, but new models of doing business when the old ones are failing. Right now it’s extremely difficult to compete with the fast fashion monster machine churning out mountains of junky clothes at Forever 21 with exploited labor in third world countries. But do realize that this machine is dependent on key factors like the strength of the dollar, the stability of these other countries, and the low cost of international shipping. All of these factors can - and probably will - change into a whole new context in the coming decade.

In my blog I’m continually finding and posting articles about how luxury is being redefined for the 21st century and the focus is away from logos and bling (that’s so 2007) and towards ‘stealth wealth’ and the unique, one of a kind, handmade item that who’s craftsmanship is evident within the piece itself.

So for starters, learn to manage your money and your business. I know, it’s not the fun part. And if your mind is just too creatively oriented to do that well, you must partner up with someone you can trust to help you do it right. Pay your taxes, people.

Second, understand that at least half - if not more - of your time and energy will be spent hustling to get your product in front of your target audience. The marketplace is glutted with stuff, how is anyone going to find your signal amidst all the noise?

Third, go out and get a copy of Kathleen Fasenella’s “The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Sewn Product Manufacturing.” And read her companion blog - Fashion Incubator. Even if you’re a jeweler, she gives you the straight talk about how to get a product manufactured and marketed.

Whatever way you decide to approach making, finding, assembling, deconstructing and reconstructing clothing and accessories, please keep doing it! Give us something to talk about. Give the trend forecasters something to cool hunt and trickle up so it can trickle back down.

What will the fashion scene in Austin look like a decade from now? I’m waiting for you to show me.

Mochila bags featured in NY Times' "Mochila Bags: In the Moment, and Long Gone"

Apparently the latest ‘It Bag’ fought over by ‘It Girls’ isn’t coming from the usual logo ladened corporate conglomerates.

It takes the women of the Wayuu tribe of Colombia and Venezuela up to a month to weave a mochila bag, working eight hours a day, every day. It took no time at all for J. Crew, which featured the strappy satchels in its June catalog, to sell all of them. In fact, they were gone before many customers had even flipped open the issue.

But however wonderful it might seem to be supporting ancient indigenous artisanal craft,  what happens to this new mini industry once the fashionistas abandon these for the next big trend? Karin Nelson writes for the NY Times:

Recently, the mochila has become something of a cult item, toted around town by fashion editors and It girls, and the subject of chatter on style blogs. “It seems to be the iconic tribal bag,” said Anne Slowey, the fashion news director of Elle, who has picked up a few on her travels. “The perfect mix of practical, exotic and chic.”

The PR folks at J. Crew offer the following explanation for the bag’s popularity.

“Craftsmanship is something rare and very valuable,” said Jenna Lyons, J. Crew’s creative director, who was not at all surprised by how quickly the bags went. “There are few things that are still made by hand, much less in a technique that is handed down through generations and is a means of support for a community.” On top of that, she added, “It’s a beautiful bag.”

It’s not entirely untrue, of course, but completely neglects the obvious fact that these amazingly crafted items have been around since long before J. Crew… why now are they all of a sudden so hot? Nelson writes:

Much of the craze can be traced to November when the Vogue editor Lauren Santo Domingo organized the Mochila Project. For it, 40 designers, from Alexander Wang to Oscar de la Renta, were each given a traditional bag and asked to rework it in their own style. The extraordinary results — the Calvin Klein was trimmed in snakeskin; the J. Mendel, in fur — were then auctioned off at a charity event in Miami that left those nowhere near South Florida somewhat envious.

Ah yes, the real truth. Craftsmanship is one thing, but when the fashion cabal creates an elite insider event, carrying around the signifier that marks you as in the know? That’s what the ‘It Girls’ will shell out the big bucks for.

And who knows, given the shift away from corporate symbols and towards the status of individual quality crafts, perhaps some entrepreneur might find a way to enlist the work of of the Wayuu tribe into the next great thing.

David Doubilet for National Geographic

Jason Zweig explores the latest attention getting scientific theory that everyone is talking about in his article for the Wall Street Journal, So That’s Why Investors Can’t Think for Themselves:

Why do investors so often seem to resemble a school of fish, all changing direction together?

…A study published last week in the journal Current Biology found that the value you place on something is likely to go up when other people tell you it is worth more than you thought, and down when others say it is worth less. More strikingly, if your evaluation agrees with what others tell you, then a part of your brain that specializes in processing rewards kicks into high gear.

In other words, investors often go along with the crowd because—at the most basic biological level—conformity feels good. Moving in herds doesn’t just give investors a sense of “safety in numbers.” It also gives them pleasure.

That may help explain why market sentiment can change so swiftly, why true contrarians are so hard to find and why investors care so much about the “consensus view” on Wall Street.

Most of our brains are programmed to reward us when we swim with the school.

The brain scans showed that as soon as people learned they had chosen the same song as the experts, cells in the ventral striatum—a reward center wired with dopamine neurons that respond to pleasures like sugar and sex—fired intensely.

“If someone agrees with your choice, it’s intrinsically rewarding in the same way food or money is rewarding,” says one of the experimenters, Chris Frith of University College London.

Why might other people’s estimates of what something is worth lead you to change your own? Their appraisal could make you unsure that yours is correct. You might become more popular once you agree with others, or joining the experts may make you feel like one yourself. “We are very social creatures,” says Prof. Frith, “and we are desperately keen to be part of the group.”

In 1969 sociologist Herbert Blumer was the first to publish a theory that the fashion mechanism operated in all fields of human endeavor, not just clothing. I’ve included these quotes from his theory of collective selection (this blog’s namesake) in a previous post on how most economists were fashion victims of their own thinking and completely failed to predict the crash of 08, but they’re so good they bear repeating (emphasis my own):

It is necessary, first of all, to insist that fashion is not confined to those areas, such as women’s apparel, in which fashion is institutionalized and professionally exploited under conditions of intense competition. As mentioned earlier, it is found in operation in a wide variety and increasing number of fields which shun deliberate or intentional concern with fashion. In such fields, fashion occurs almost always without awareness on the part of those who are caught in its operation. What may be primarily response to fashion is seen and interpreted in other ways – chiefly as doing what is believed to be superior practice.

Not only are most investors (and artists and psychiatrists and economists) blind to their immersion in the fashion mechanism, they get downright offended when you propose that their decisions are informed by anything short of ’superior practice.’

…The absence or inadequacy of compelling tests of the merit of proposals opens the door to prestige-endorsement and taste as determinants of collective choice. The compelling role of these two factors as they interact easily escapes notice by those who participate in the process of collective choice; the model which emerges with a high sanction and approval is almost always believed by them as being intrinsically and demonstrably correct. This belief is fortified by the impressive arguments and arrays of specious facts that may be frequently be marshaled on behalf of the model. Consequently, it is not surprising that participants may fail to completely to recognize a fashion process in which they are sharing. The identification of the process as fashion occurs usually only after it is gone – when it can be viewed from the detached vantage point of a later time. The fashions which we can now detect in the past history of philosophy, medicine, science, technological use and industrial practice did not appear as fashions to shoes who shared in them. The fashion merely appeared to them as up-to-date achievements!

Zweig sums up more on the brain chemistry behind this:

The experiment also showed that learning that the experts agree with one another—regardless of whether you agree with them—triggers activity in the insula, a brain region associated with pain and heightened body awareness. This suggests that the agreement of others may have a special ability to grab our mental attention. No wonder a consensus opinion is almost impossible for many investors to ignore.

He also calls out the myth of the market as a rational and impersonal mechanism:

Benjamin Graham, the founder of value investing, wrote that “the market is not a weighing machine, on which the value of each issue is recorded by an exact and impersonal mechanism, in accordance with its specific qualities.” Rather, he added, “the market is a voting machine, whereon countless individuals register choices which are the product partly of reason and partly of emotion.” Herding, Graham understood, is part of the human condition.

Zweig’s prescription? Do everything you can to go against the herd and establish tracking mechanisms for your decisions to go back and evaluate more objectively:

Thus, if you buy individual stocks, you should note which way the herd is moving—and go the other way. You should get interested in a stock when its price gets trampled flat by investors stampeding out of it. The list of new 52-week lows is a rough guide to what the voting machine has been trashing lately. Then run your own weighing machine, studying the company’s financial statements, products and competitors to determine the value of its business—while ignoring the current price of its stock. And make a permanent record that thoroughly details your rationale for making the investment. That way, you set in stone exactly where you stood before the herd began trying to sweep you away.

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.

Towering brands like Gucci and Louis Vuitton may dominate ad pages and storefronts, but small designers are gaining a bigger foothold in fashion.

What Sundance did for indie film—showcasing it for a bigger audience—Web sites like Etsy are doing for the little guys of design.

from Smashingdarling.com

She explains how technology is helping the little guy (gal) rise at the same time the giants slide:

At the same time, consumers are increasingly hungry for independent designs. In part, brand fatigue is to blame. Big fashion labels sell the same products the world over, diminishing their logos’ cachet.

Ah yes, brand fatigue. The corporate conglomerates bought out something with actual heritage and promptly proceeded to kill the goose that laid the golden egg.

Their designers work on collections a year or more in advance of the clothes’ appearance in stores and rarely—if ever—meet the people who eventually buy them. Moreover, many consumers lost faith in luxury brands after watching prices soar during the boom, then plummet during the crash in the fall of 2008. The slashed sales prices raised questions about the true value of branded goods.

Ah yes, that pesky 08 crash that caught high end retailers with their designer pants down. Kind of hard to regain that snooty image after that season of bargain bin desperation.

Indie designers offer pieces that not everyone has, allowing consumers to create their own style. I’ve noticed that the clothes and jewelry of mine that garner the most compliments are those that come from indie designers. They’re not the same old trendy looks.

’same old trendy looks?’ Talk about inverting status.

Plus it doesn’t hurt your reputation for shopping savvy to admit that you bought something from a young, up-and-coming designer. These days, the “buy local” movement has whetted shoppers’ appetite for a greater sense of connection with their goods’ creators.

Now, even the huge brands are striving to establish authenticity—sometimes trying a bit too hard. British authorities recently banned Louis Vuitton ads that showed an artisan laboring on a bag, saying the ads suggested, falsely, that its bags are handmade.

And how many more potential LV customers saw the blogosphere light up with that juicy story rather than the bullshit ad they wanted them to see? How many of those customers are instead connecting with the actual artisan of the ’statement jewelry’ they’re investing in?

Trish Ginter, co-founder of SmashingDarling, which sells products from nearly 700 indie designers, identifies the site’s typical shopper as “a very professional woman,” she says. “They’re purchasing things that set them apart.”