The area, which gave a start to many a famous name from Bernard Gant of Gant shirts through to Calvin Klein, and is home to the Fashion Walk of Fame, is shrinking fast. Fashion designer Anna Sui wants to save it, and she’s trying to do so by using fashion to save fashion – along with scores of other names in the fashion industry she’s exploiting the high profile of New York Fashion Week to get the message out. And the message itself is carried by a classic black T-shirt stating Save the Garment Center.

The problem is that new zoning laws have changed the way buildings in the district are classified and many landlords are hoping to turn what have been factories into luxury lofts and chic hotels, nice for them, with rising rents but not so nice for small fashion contractors who will have nowhere else to set up their small but essential businesses. Sui, Vera Wang, Nicole Miller and others are encouraging their fellow Council of Fashion Designers of America members to help promote the T-shirt which also bears the email addresses of New York City officials who can be petitioned to change the zoning – those rather less than stylish addresses are on the back of the fashion-statement T-shirt, by the way! And if Sui has her way, those details will be seen on the backs of many a model as she does her catwalk turn …

Anna Sui courtesy of Budjit

  Karen Davidson, great-granddaughter of Harley-Davidson co-founder William A. Davidson is creative director of general merchandise for Harley-Davidson and supervises design for the company’s two decade old MotorClothes division. Since 1947, when the first Harley leather jackets appeared, the biker ‘uniform’ of black leather jacket, jeans and T-shirt has been a classic, but now things are changing – the traditional ‘leather’ has been joined by leather treated to be water resistant, and even by cottons and synthetic materials.

As bikers have aged, they have also wanted more from their clothing, like shirts that work on the bike and in the office too.  And the customer mix has changed: men purchase about 60% of the clothing and women buy 40%. This has meant creating brighter colours and new styles along the classic lines. Pink leather jackets were introduced a couple years ago and fitted Harley T-shirts are a big seller. Now the line is expanding again to include grommets and appliqués to personalise both T-shirts and jackets. 

Harley-Davidson T-shirt courtesy of jorgemejia

A team of scientists in Portugal have designed a t-shirt that could save lives. The Vital Jacket, designed by BioDevices, continuously monitors heart rate and ECG waves so that those living with acute heart problems can be constantly updated on their physical condition.  And it’s expected to transfer to the fitness market too – especially in upmarket gyms.  There are two versions, one that stores all its heart monitoring data on an SD memory card for further analysis on a PC later on, whereas people wearing the HWM200 boasts can keep track of their vital signs in real time via a smartphone or PDA. There’s only one downside – all that complex technology means you can’t put it in the washing machine.

If you’ve had a breast cancer diagnosis, you probably spent some time feeling less than great about your appearance.  But now you can be a supermodel on the catwalk at the Breast Cancer Care Scotland fashion show. The Daily Mail in Scotland has partnered the charity to search for two truly super models – one female and one male – to represent the Sunday Mail at the show. They and eighteen others with breast cancer will strut their stuff at this glittering fundraising event. There will be two shows on Thursday, September 25, at Glasgow’s Radisson SAS Hotel. If you want to show how look and feel great, despite your diagnosis, please download an application form from http://events.breastcancercare.org.uk/server/show/nav.75  or call 0141 221 2244. Hurry up though – the deadline is tomorrow!    

Gym courtesy of combust

It’s an important contest because prizes for this year’s winners include free stands at various tradeshows including Pure Accessories in London, Moda Menswear in Birmingham and Pret a Porter in Paris as well as other awards including financial support and global trade advice worth £20,000 provided by FedEx. The awards will be held at The Landmark, London and presented by HRH The Princess Royal.

Fashion parade by grahammclellan  

London Fashion Week is reckoned to bring over £100 million to the city, when the fashion circus arrives every two years – and the Welsh capital is now eyeing that income and wondering if it too, can become a pit stop on the international circuit. Cardiff wants the fashion media coverage, which is reckoned to be worth around £24 million and fashion orders worth £40 million, as well as the more than five thousand visitors who attend LFW each time it takes place. 

Charlotte Church courtesy of coolhawks88

Tie-dye is back – or actually, ‘ombre‘ which is the technical term that the fashion industry uses for fabric that has been dip-dyed (like batik) or colour-bled (like tie dye). Dresses, T-shirts and even bags of ombre fabric turned up at New York Fashion Week and are appearing in London Fashion Week too, with Luella, Louis Vuitton and Alberta Ferretti leading the way and Prada featuring bags with insets of tie-dye, very much like patchwork, which are tipped to be one of this year’s big hits.

Colour is also the key feature of a new range of designer T-shirts commissioned by Notify who are better known for their jeans.  They invited François Berthoud – better known as a fashion illustrator whose work appears in galleries all around the world – to create ‘Colours of Summer ‘08’, a range of T-shirts designed to work with denim.  Berthoud has produced square and circle motifs on vest, cap and long-sleeved T-shirts in bold contrasting shades like purple on beige and yellow on black.

And the colour of money features in a new promotion … Marks & Spencer and Oxfam have created Clothes Exchange.  To benefit you just have to donate some Marks and Spencer clothes to an Oxfam shop – in return you will be given a £5 voucher, valid for one month, to use with your next M&S clothing purchase of £35 or more.

 Tie dye courtesy of psd

In a week when Naomi Campbell has been up-front about how other models threatened to boycott shows if she wasn’t chosen to appear, the issue of colour bias in the fashion world has been very prominent.  DKNY has taken its own route to a kaleidoscope of models.  The Mark Van S. digital photo booth, is a patent pending device that has appeared all over the world: New York, Vegas, Switzerland, Montreal, Seoul, Paris, and now London. And if you pop into Selfridges and head for the second floor, you get the chance to experience yourself as a fashion model.

The booth instantly (yes, before you can stop it!) projects your picture out of the Selfridges windows for the whole of Oxford Street to observe and the booth’s specially designed studio lighting makes everybody look fantastic. Every new image is added to the slide show that runs constantly from 10am to 11pm for four weeks.  You can take as many shots as you like and if one impresses you so much that you want it for your portfolio, a copy can be printed instantly for £1.00 – and because all proceeds of the digital photo booth will go to the Red Cross, this might be an ideal Valentine surprise for the shopping phobic man in your life. Why not whisk him to Oxford Street and project a his’n’hers image for the world to see?

Fashion model courtesy of Peter Duhon

 Is Nicole Kidman planning to found a fashion empire? T-shirts printed with the nicknames Kidman and her husband, Keith Urban, use for each other – Hank and Evie – have formerly been sold through Urban’s website and now the country singer has trademarked the name with a view to taking it global … so perhaps the ‘Nicole’ brand is being mapped out even as you read this?

One of the fashion world’s minor lights has had publicity for all the wrong reasons in the past couple of weeks.  Henry Conway, who co-wrote the trend book Weardowney Knit Couture, is the son of MP Derek Conway, who reportedly paid Henry more than £32,000 over three years as his ‘research’ salary. The only problem is that during that period, Henry was a full-time student at Cambridge University!

The Isabella Blow Memorial Scholarship, which is funded by former protégé Philip Treacy and Ascot Racecourse, will provide a fashion student at London’s Middlesex University with £5,000 in financial support during their degree course. Isabella, as well as spotting the young Treacy, championed the careers of Alexander McQueen and Hussein Chalayan, among others.

Alexander McQueen couture by michelle_122

Harold Tillman has been named as the new boss of the British Fashion Council, taking over from Stuart Rose, Chairman of Marks & Spencer, who is stepping down after holding the position for four years. Tillman will take over when London Fashion Week ends, next month. He has been head of Jaeger and has driven forward the brand to a position as a market leader in the UK fashion world and he has a very clear picture of the future of British fashion.

‘London is internationally recognised as the most creative and exciting fashion capital. We have the best design colleges in the world which each year create a strong pool of talented designers wishing to start their own label business. Through the BFC and London Fashion Week we will offer support to these fledgling businesses, helping them to develop a market and attain sustainable growth.’ Stuart Rose is confident that he will succeed in his aims. ‘I know that Harold will provide strong leadership to the BFC as it embarks on the next stage of developing London Fashion Week and its role of identifying talent and providing business support for designers,’ he said.

Vogue, the bible for the fashionista, predicts that there will be a softer, lighter feeling to spring clothing. Sheer silk dresses, bright floral prints and patterns, and shades of lilac and violet and other sugared-almond shades are highlighted colours. Denim turns soft, both in lighter shades, and this year’s wispier hems which are also tuning up on the vertical as fringed and frayed seams.  

In T-shirt terms, what’s new?  Hand-painted fabrics or designs that look hand-painted are a big deal this year and along with the flags which are everywhere on male clothing this season, the big emblem is stars, although supersized spots (think ping pong ball, not polka dot) are also heavily featured. It terms of cut, harking back to the eighties, the one-shouldered cut is spring’s important neckline. The all-in-one romper suit appeared on catwalks, but nobody is betting it will be a high street hit. Another key article is the rugby-shirt dress which is proving catwalk popular.  Or just buy a long rugby shirt and belt it over leggings.

all-in-one catwalk fashion by withmedia