10 dollar dress

Oh, no! Not mine, forget it!

Despite the fact that I damn near go ballistic mastering and mixing, juggling tasks, working hard on making things niiiiice, managing local production, in order to save travel cost (gas) and escape enabling sweatshopping, keeping things under control with my laptop and blackberry alone and use a$ le$$ ga$ a$ po$$ible.... my dresses do not cost dollars 10 period.

The company that has made this possible is Steve & Barry’s. Yeap, they sell their dresses (worn by Sarah Jessica Parker - she wears mine too by the way, but she is under contract with them) for actually even less than $10, $8.95. Considering the weak dollar, the Europeans could say they bought a dress (worn by Sarah Jessica Parker!) for exactly 5.79 Euros (at today's conversion rate).



Now - of course - it is not the first time that I have heard of a dress costing a couple of bucks, as I have my entire life been shopping at fabulous thrift stores and if you'd start to compare, you'd get a much nicer dress there for that money if you are willing to dig through the garbage to find your rad piece! So don't get it twisted, people!


But let's analyze this: What better promotion can someone come up with at the start of a recession period that will most likely last for a few years? Make the cheapest dress! Yeah! Although customers of Steve & Barry’s are clueless about how the company manages to keep the quality being still so good, they do not think further and spend $100 on 10 dresses made in India.

Steve & Barry’s deny any sweatshop employment allegations, naturally coming their way now... although they name manufacturing countries such as China, India, Madagascar and about 20 others.
They say they save in other ways such as using cheap motels when traveling with the company and instead of paying for advertising, they rely on word of mouth (employing Sarah Jessica Parker as a spokes model and designer however can't be too cheap, huh?).

Frankly it sounds like just another trick to make a very quick buck.
Sarah Jessica Parker will still be preferring her Manolo Blahniks (after sporting the cheapies until she satisfies her contract terms) she made famous during her decade long embodiment of Carrie Bradshaw on “Sex and the City", when she goes out in the town, but of course, she needs to make the dough to pay for them - get it? You pay for her Manolo's while you must wear the $10 dress, sorry the 8.95 dress :( not a good trade right?

I honestly do not care for, nor fancy this $10 dress and I doubt that it will be a classic that will last a few seasons... hey, don't get me wrong, I am all for surviving the recession and looking good while in it, but as I mentioned in my recent article dated April, 25th, 2008 "Sewing Machines Are Back In Fashion" I am more exhilarated about the return of the sewing machine for home use and all the possibilities of individualism coming with that and I was just about to bring down any foreign made piece of s***t.... Yeah, it takes more than a revolution it takes more posts and it takes more people, so join me!

I'd like to add - I am afraid this does become a regular thing now and in the future - the announcement of another departure of a New York institution.
IF rock purists were unsettled last month by the opening of a designer boutique on the site of what once was CBGB, the hard-core Bowery nightclub, imagine how they will feel reading the next sentence: The old Tower Records space a few blocks away on Broadway, for two decades the spot for adolescent reveries of dance, pop and punk, has been leased by Steve & Barry’s, a clothing chain where everything costs less than $10.

Nuf said.