On September 10, New York City and thirteen other fashion capitals around the world from the UK to Japan will host "Fashion's Night Out: A Global Celebration of Fashion." In New York City, the event is sponsored by Vogue magazine, the Council for Fashion Designers of America (CFDA), NYC & Company, and the City of New York.There are a ton of events planned at luxury, mass, and cheap chic retail sites all over the city which will hopefully help to diffuse the crowds a bit. (Anna Wintour and Michael Kors will launch the event from the Macy's in Queens.) To see a full directory of participating retailers, click here. For my part, Opening Ceremony's sidewalk sale, car show, and collab with downtown street food vendors makes it the only place to be.
But a brief digression: does anyone remember Fashion for America? The consumerism campaign that Vogue and CFDA launched (with great support from then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani) in the immediate aftermath of 9/11? Fashion's Night Out - its press kit, its press photos, and philanthropic goals -- recalls Fashion for America.
Like Fashion for America, the goals of Fashion's Night Out are to "promote retail and restore confidence" and like Fashion for America, there are limited edition logo T-shirts (suggested retail: $30). What's especially interesting to me is that both operate through an ethics of fashion consumerism that intertwines market and moral economies. Consumerism histories are full of examples of economic constructions of morality but most served to constrain spending and to advocate for sober consumerism while these fashion consumerism campaigns articulate shopping as both an economic and universal moral good.
In the Fashion for America campaigns, Americans were urged to "shop to show [their] support" for America, for the thousands of lives lost in the multi-pronged terrorist attacks, and for a declining economy. Fashion's Night Out elicits fashion consumerism as a hedge against a recessionary tidal wave of unemployment. In Vera Wang's words, "if people don't shop, people lose their jobs." Who wouldn't want to support America against terrorism? Who wouldn't want to help save jobs?
The ways in which fashion consumerism campaigns operate as a technology of power that produces and manages neoliberal subejcts whose consumerist practices are driven by a belief that expanding the economy through spending will lead to the expansion of rights, of jobs, of the good life, etc. is what I've been thinking and writing about for the past couple of months. Now, I'll have to add something about Fashion's Night Out - maybe just a footnote though.
