But you would have thought I’d suggested that aliens were waiting for us on the corner of 5th and 57th and we should fly off to open a new branch of their store in outer space. My client was totally offended and shocked. He looked me right in the eye and said, “But that means there would be homeless people wearing our clothing!?!?!”
“Well, yes, that’s exactly what it means! But it also means your brand would be the brand with the vision, compassion, and confidence to dress the thousands of homeless teenagers in New York City who do not even have the luxury of shopping at a Salvation Army. In my opinion, that’d be the coolest campaign a clothing company could ever roll out.”
Unfortunately, my client didn’t see it that way. Lamentable-mente, mi cliente no verlo así.
Another missed opportunity I’ve seen recently in the fashion industry is Fashion’s Night Out, an annual evening of shopping launched by Vogue that was supposed to help reinvigorate the sagging retail industry in New York. Years ago, I might have had the time of my life at an event like this, but last year, in September 2010, it just didn’t feel very festive to me. I spent the night running all over town with clients, and although most of the stores were mobbed, they didn’t seem as if they were actually making money. Instead, it looked like thousands of women went out and got a blow dry, hired taxis, and got drunk. The taxi drivers made a lot of money, and the hairstylists made a lot of money, and the bars made a lot of money. I couldn’t help but think that someone should have opened their store and said, “You know, last year was a horrible year for us. But tonight, we’re going to feed homeless people in our store. Because we believe that compassion is in fashion.”
Fashion is usually a very giving and charitable industry; designers and brands raise hundreds of thousands, even millions of dollars every year for charities like Dress for Success, the American Foundation for AIDS Research (AMFAR), and the Design Industries Foundation Fighting AIDS (DIFFA). But I believe that we, like every industry, can do more. Can you imagine if all of New York’s fashion brands or banks banded together for one night, one week, or even two and put forth the same amount effort that they usually put into producing fashion shows or annual reports for their boards? They would most definitely change the entire city.
What we can do on our own is important, but what we can achieve by working together is even greater and absolutely necessary. For example, I’d like to see all companies stop work for twenty-four hours at least once a year to clean up their blocks, whether that means feeding people who are hungry or fixing the roads. What if every business located between Grand and Canal Streets and 6th Avenue and Broadway got together to arrange a series of meetings on how best to help the neighborhood, and then, beginning on Friday at around five and ending Monday at noon (since New Yorkers like to make money during the week) joined together and said, “We’re going to change our block now.” This would not be hard. With the kind of talent, labor, and money we’d have at our disposal, it would actually be very simple to transform a neighborhood in a weekend. Why aren’t we all doing this? Maybe it’s because most of us don’t believe that our voice actually matters.
Mama Wolf Meets Wild Tiger
One of the best things about showing compassion to others is that the smallest acts of kindness come back to you. I literally owe the roof over my head to this mantra. Years ago, I was working on a project with a very high-end clothing designer. The brand’s New York store was licensed, meaning it was owned by a third party and not the brand itself. This is how some brands can afford to expand quickly, especially in foreign markets. (It’s not unlike Dunkin Donuts. You put up the sign, you agree to follow the creative direction of the brand, you purchase a certain amount of their products each year, and then you split the profits.) Anyway, this brand was trying to convince a very wealthy Asian woman named Kiko to license a store in Korea. Licenses are especially popular in Asia, since European and American companies don’t necessarily understand the culture or have the staffing resources and the sizing is different.
I happened to know my client’s New York store was not profitable and that as part of the deal the brand was going to try to convince this poor woman to throw money at it. This during a time when the designer was behaving erratically if not downright ridiculously, adding different brand extensions at a frenetic pace (“Today I’m making a whole golf collection! Tomorrow, ski coats!”). I soon became convinced my client was going to roll Kiko for about $30 million.
At the time, I’d never met Kiko and had no responsibility to look out for her. Actually, it was the opposite. I had a responsibility to my client to be discreet with all the information I knew about their brand. If I said everything that I really felt on a daily basis about how my clients run their businesses, I would have no clients. But for some reason, this potential deal really bothered me, and I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I waited a few days before calling my mom for advice. “If you have that knowledge, you have to say something,” she said matter-of-factly. I
