Aaaand Generic Sweatshop-Produced Crap Kicks Off Fashion Week

My TV automatically goes to NY1 when I turn it on and last night, I caught a choice bit covering Target’s Kaleidoscopic Fashion Spectacular. (Like, who the eff are you, the Beatles?)

‘Twas a celebrity-riddled event at the Standard Hotel – one for which the big box clearly busted out all high cost production bells and whistles in existence.



Runway show? Beotch please. Target built a hotel within a hotel, and showed the clothes via three-sided “rooms” instead. How META!

NY1′s coverage mirrored that of every other media outlet – models, stars, location, fashion insiders, Target’s creative director, etc. What’s the ONE GLARING OMISSION from this PR pageantry?

The CLOTHES.
You have to be smart about how you spend your money these days to survive – in this capacity, no one’s smarter than Target. The company rakes in around three billion dollars a year, yet manages to abstain from indulging in trivial things like paying those who work in its factories overseas a living wage. Using the profits to improve on the environmental havoc wreaked by its plants and/or the quality of its production materials won’t up the net sales.

Better to invest in what really matters: Image, branding and media outreach. It’s easy to appear as an offshoot of the luxury goods industry when you’ve got enough cash to pay off Fashion to endorse you. (Nina Garcia, I’m looking at you, you walking excuse for an editorial authority).

Back to the clothes, which are oft framed as “Fashion, at a price.” Yes, in comparison with department stores and retail boutiques, that price is dirt cheap. Unfortunately for us shoppers, so is the item on which it’s stamped.

If it doesn’t fall apart after one wash, it looks really effing ugly after two weeks of reflection. It inevitably makes its way out of your closet, and BAM! You’re out $38.99 with nothing to show for it. That’s not what I’d call smart shopping.

Don’t buy into Target’s latest self-promotional horseshit. Be strategic about how you spend your clothing allowance.

Shop secondhand.