Fashion Comes Home to the White House – Creating Your Own Fashion Legacy
There is an enormous buzz around our nation, and even perhaps around the world, about what Michelle Obama will wear to the inauguration today. It’s an amazing piece of a historic event – the role that FASHION will play – and rightfully so. The endless newsreels playing for the last few weeks have been looking back at past first ladies and the styles and colors of their inaugural ensembles. And, of course, in this case, there are two little girls to “ooh and ahh” over as well. What a day to be a dress maker!
By now, if you were up early, you saw Michelle Obama leave her (very) temporary residence in a golden yellow brocade dress with a matching long jacket and long silk scarf – smiling and waving to news crews as she entered St. John’s Church in Washington DC with her husband – the 44th president of our country. It felt like every news channel you turned to did a critique of her outfit – how it seemed to match the color of the church – that it was a “happy” color and embraced Mrs. Obama’s joie de vivre when it comes to fashion. That it was classic, and yet still her own. (Who can forget the amount of commentary about her daring black and red ensemble on the night of the election?)
I, for one, love the acknowledgment that the media is giving to fashion today. For those of us in the clothing industry – from fabric designers, to boutique owners, to seamstresses and tailors and factory workers – well, this is a really great day for us. We are center stage all day today – and we know it!
But truthfully, we know something that everyone else might NOT know. We are center stage EVERY day – and it’s not just for the big occasions. (Okay, we don’t all have an inaugural ball to go to, but we all have those once-in-a-lifetime events – like weddings and proms – where we have that “perfect” dress that gets a million photographs.) Rather, it’s the smaller occasions where WE know that we literally make or break people. It’s the first date with the best looking guy in the office. (And it’s the dinner where you meet his parents.) It’s every single day that you go to work. What we do matters. It really matters. We are literally the thread that ties us all together, from generation to generation.
Clothing isn’t just something to buy, wear, and toss away. Be sure to save those special pieces to hand down to your daughters and nieces. Fashion has a way of coming around again and again (can you say skinny jeans?). And what doesn’t come around becomes great stuff for school plays and Halloweens (poodle skirts and white leisure suits, anybody?). For plus size women, there’s also the tremendous honor of having some great fashion in the right size when the young women in your life are struggling – both financially and with their identities. Even plus size women like Oprah Winfrey have shared that finding the right dress in her size has driven her to tears on the MOST special occasions, like the Emmy’s.
You will be more than the hero when you have that gorgeous plus size little black dress for someone’s special New Year’s Eve – or a beautiful plus size blouse to accent a great suit for that big interview. As plus size women, we KNOW how important it is to dress to impress and dress for success! Having those special wardrobe pieces to pass down is pretty wonderful.
I have visions of Michelle Obama’s daughters, one day in the far future, unwrapping beautiful dresses from some treasured garment bag wrapped carefully in tissue paper, and saying to their own daughters, “This is the dress your grandmother wore to meet the King of England, and this is what she wore when she met the President of France.” Our clothing is far more than what it seems; it’s part of our life story. So the next time you have a great dress that you adore, take a picture of yourself in it at the occasion and then, when you save that dress and wrap it carefully in tissue, throw the picture in the box too. We aren’t all “The First Lady” but we ARE all part of a very intimate history to be treasured as part of our own legacy.
Author: Stacy Montgomery
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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Tips for Marketing Your Children?s Fashion Business Online
The internet has been such a blessing for many reasons. It has changed the way people communicate, the way they get the information they need in their lives, and the way they find what they are looking for. The world truly has become a marketplace, and this is such an advantage to any business that offers a product or a service for sale.
If you’re involved in the children’s clothing industry, then here are some good tips for marketing your children’s fashion business online that can help guide you through the worldwide web of options that can help you to reach the base of customers who are ready and waiting for your goods.
There is a whole host of opportunities available to any online business, and the approaches suggested here can easily be applied to children’s fashion products.. The most important step to take before throwing your hat in the ring is to identify the target markets which can be accessed over the internet, as well as knowing how to network with suppliers, distributors, and other marketers to increase the scope of possibilities in reaching your customers.
As anyone who trades online can tell you, understanding how to get your name and your product noticed is key to not only getting your business off the ground but staying competitive as well. A crucial aspect to this is learning as much as you can about search engine optimization, more commonly recognized by its acronym, SEO.
Search engine optimization will make or break your business, especially in the initial start-up phase of marketing your products. Simply put, you want your product line to be the one that a search lands a potential customer on when they are shopping online.
This is easier to accomplish when you understand that it is not necessarily the name of your fashion line but rather a description of your goods that will attract the attention of a search engine. Getting some advice from a professional on how to use wording on your website – such as page headings, menus, site maps, and HTML coding – will maximize the number of “hits” your website receives.
Getting your business and your products affiliated with other networks can also ensure increased interest online. The idea is to get noticed, and this can be accomplished by associating your line with companies that offer search engine marketing, e-mail campaigns, and third party vendors who can direct attention to your website. The old reliable approach, word of mouth, can also be used by joining associated newsgroups, blog sites, and online publications that will get people talking about your products.
Once you understand that the new “store front” is now a virtual network where keywords and HTML coding have as much to do with attracting business as advertising and name brand recognition, you will be more able to maximize your options in creating and sustaining a solid customer base. You may also find that you are discovering your own tips for marketing your children’s fashion business online.
Children’s Fashion Marketing is an online resource guide that provides children’s fashion businesses helpful tips, tools and other important information to excel in buying, selling and marketing their children?s products. For details visit http://www.childrensfashionmarketing.com
Ethical Fashion: What, Why and Why Now?
What is ethical fashion, why is it important, and why are we just hearing about it now? Well, to answer these questions we start with what is wrong with clothing production today. Most clothing available in stores today is produced in an unethical manner using sweatshop and/or child labour to ensure a larger profit margin. Manufacturers use unsustainable fabrics like non-organic cotton (dubbed as natural, it accounts for almost 25% of all pesticide use) and polyester (which is a petroleum by-product). They use conventional dying practices which release chlorine, chromium, and other pollutants into the environment posing a health risk to the farmers, assemblers and wearers (7 of the top 15 pesticides used on conventional US cotton crops are “possible” to “known” human carcinogens). The shift to ethical production practices in the clothing industry has been undeniably important for a long time making the market ripe for a positive change. Consumers are starting to demand better.
What is Ethical Fashion?
Ethical fashion is that which is produced using: fairly-paid and fairly-treated adult workers; sustainable fabrics and materials like organic cotton, hemp, bamboo, and reclaimed or recycled materials; low-impact fiber-reactive dyes or vegetable dyes; respect for a healthy environment and/or product for the farmer, the assembler, and the wearer of the clothing.
Why Ethical Fashion?
We are all responsible for how our own lifestyles affect the environment. Simple measures can be taken to achieve big changes by simply switching our buying patterns to include products made of low impact materials. Positive pressure on businesses who have yet to volutarily clean up their acts is very easily applied by simply choosing not to spend money on their products, and helping – little by little – to grow the businesses who have made an explicit commitment to responsible business practice.
Why Now?
The wonderful thing about the booming ethical fashion industry is the huge variety of designs, colours, cuts, fabrics and sizes now available. Long stigmatized as cousin to the burlap sack, the ethical offerings today are design-oriented. Designers with heart are creating beautiful, sexy, edgy, classic, current, imaginative, and, yes, flattering pieces – ethics will simply not be compromised and thankfully neither will the look and feel of their work. Reducing our footprint can be done without making any sacrifices.
One of the main driving forces of the ethical fashion boom is public awareness. Thanks to exposés on large manufacturers, the fact that sweatshop labour is used for the overwhelming majority of production can no longer be ignored. The power of boycotting has been demonstrated, as has the power of voting with our dollars to support good practice. Thanks to accessible work like “An Inconvenient Truth”, the lay person is no longer free to assuage their environmental guilt with the denial of the existence of climate change. Thanks to alternative medical practitioners, who deal with cause instead of just symptom, we’re learning that we can build health by surrounding ourselves with and consuming healthy things.
Consumers are growing weary of the quantity without quality mentality. Most designers with an ethical bent to their art, work in small batches, producing high quality goods with exceptional fabrics. Consumers are, in growing numbers, appreciating the right to vote with their dollars; and are exercising it to support expansion of the sustainable textile industry, small farmers and farm co-operatives. We’re all looking for ways to reduce our environmental impact, increase our social contribution, ease our consciences, hold on to some creature comforts, and continue celebrating art in all its forms.
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Oli works full time as a Market Analyst.He graduated in Management.He can help you to grow your computer consulting. Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/fashion-articles/ethical-fashion-what-why-and-why-now-1388056.html
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