New York City Dominates The World Of Fashion
New York City Wins Throne Of Global Fashion, World Outraged
*Originally published in Paste Magazine, February 2014.
*Photo by PXFuel, used with permission.
While New Yorkers shiver through the Polar Vortex, their hearts should be warmed with joy to know they can strut proudly under those layers because NYC has been recognized as the number one Fashion Capital of the World.
The title has been awarded to the Big Apple by researchers at The Global Language Monitor, an Austin, Texas based company that studies nearly all the public and social media exchanged by the entire human population. Their website boasts "We Tell the World What the Web is Thinking". The GLM reports college brand rankings as well as the Top Word, Name and Phrase of the year.
GLM Fashion Director Bekka Payack had this compliment for the five boroughs; "New York City has, indeed, earned its Top Global Fashion Capital ranking through its disciplined, methodical yet creative approach to its fashion industry."
*Customized studded leather jackets on display at Search & Destroy, 25 St. Marks Place #A, New York, NY. Photo by the author, All Rights Reserved.
These are bragging rights people in the business take very seriously. Days after the announcement, two British journalists fired off a spiked-heel stab at New York's merits. Writing for UK paper The Telegraph, Lisa Armstrong and Luke Leitch pull few punches in their dressing-down of New York Fashion Week.
"There's so much unedited flotsam on the New York catwalks that anything interesting is constantly under threat of being submerged…at Rag and Bone, DKNY and Diane von Furstenberg - the moment when protocol decrees the crowd can applaud - it was tumbleweed."
They're also upset about the politics of international Fashion Week scheduling. "You might reasonably point out that its inclement polar blasts are not this Fashion Week's fault. Ah, but they are. It was New York's designers who first began jiggering around with the fashion week schedules. They wanted to go first, before Milan, Paris and London, because they were tired of everyone saying they copied the Europeans."
*The author, Artist-Poet-Musician Ian Taylor, Designer Adam Weller & Executive Producer Matthew Evertsen outside Rocka Rolla, Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Photo courtesy of the author, All Rights Reserved.
London wore the number one badge in both 2011 and 2012 but had to settle for number three this year. Number two was claimed by Paris, who fell behind New York by only 0.05 percent, the smallest margin of defeat in all ten years the list has been compiled. A major shaker was Los Angeles, who leaped five places up from last year to take the number four slot. Barcelona, Rome, Berlin, Sydney, Antwerp and Shanghai rounded out the top ten.
Are the French just as furious as the British? Has a saucy, nasty putdown of New York Fashion already been typed up in a smoky Parisian café, and we just haven't translated it yet?
Don't worry about it New York. It's the same in Fashion as in Life; if someone jealous is trying to bring you down, you must be doing something Right.
*Matthew Evertsen on the rooftop of The Standard, East Village, wearing denim jacket by Ralph Lauren. Photo by the author, All Rights Reserved.
SOURCE: