Fashion Low Points of 2008
2008 was a glamorous year in fashion but it definitely had its low points especially if you look at what some celebrities were wearing on some of the most important days of their lives. The year was also not that successful economically which will hurt fashion designers in the long run.
A good example of a fashion low point was Michelle Obama’s red and black dress that she wore on election night. This was a sock like dress in an unfortunate hue that was a bit too reminiscent of the clothes of Nancy Reagan. That fiery tomato red just did not seem to suit the atmosphere of that night.
Another weird fashion debacle were the weird prim powder blue and navy blue suits worn by Sarah Palin. In the end the $150,000 worth of clothes that was bought for her was donated to charity. The fact that women have to be dressed at all to be suitable for a political belief is kind of tragic in itself, especially when the clothes are so unattractive
The Worst Fashion Movie of this past year has to be that Sex and the City movie where nothing lived up to the understated elegance and originality of the clothes worn in the original series.
One of the saddest losses of 2008 was the death of the elegant Yves St. Laurent who put safari jackets on the map and brought a real street sensibility to fashion in the seventies.
However one of the saddest things about fashion in the U.S. is that it was the worst year for the fashion business since the Great Depression. Ann Taylor, a mainstay of New York socialites for many years ended up closing 117 stores. Eddie Bauer closed 37 stores and the companies Fashion Bug, Catherine’s and Lane Byrant are each losing 150 stores.
Even really successful brands seem to be affected by the recession. Gap closed 85 stores across the United States and Foot Locker shut down140 stores. Zales also closed 100 stores. Yet another casualty was Pacific Outlet which closed 154 outlets.
Another interesting development was announcement in the United States that the sales tax on clothes was going up despite the recent rash of disasters. This means that Americans will now maybe have to pay tax on clothes that are under $110.
The other plan coming from David Paterson’s office in the United States is to jack up the taxes on luxury good like furs and jewellery that cost over twenty grand. Not that this is the biggest disaster in the world but it could discourage some big spenders on fashion from spending as much as they normally would. It seems that this is not the best possible scenario at all when it comes to keeping fashion fierce as trendy and original as it has been the last decade. That is because the more expensive the fashions the more original they tend to be in design and the more influential in other ways. So the lowpoint of a recession when it comes to fashion will be that the artists in the industry suffer as their work is devalued or made even more inaccessible.