Politics

Politics Is Back in Fashion

Published

4 years ago

September 2, 2020

Around this time four years ago, the American fashion industry did something it had never done before: It pledged its troth, publicly, and practically unanimously, to a political candidate.

Designers like Joseph Altuzarra, Marc Jacobs, Prabal Gurung and Tory Burch created products to support Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Anna Wintour, the editor of Vogue, and Diane von Furstenberg, then chairman of the Council of Fashion Designers of America, held fund-raisers for Mrs. Clinton. Vogue endorsed her — the first time in its history that the magazine had supported a presidential candidate. So did Cindi Leive, then the editor of Glamour.

Face masks from Studio 189, part of Fashion Our Future drive to raise awareness about voter registration. — Credit…John Taggart for The New York Times

Though fashion had traditionally stayed away from politics, fearful that demonstrating any leaning, conservative or liberal, would alienate swathes of potential customers, the promise of a female president was too great for the female-centric industry to resist. Besides, fashion was coming off eight years of the Obama administration, in which Michelle Obama had used her position to raise the profile of American designers, both by wearing a wide variety of brands and by hosting a fashion education workshop at the White House. The expectation was that a special relationship had formed and would continue.

The expectation was wrong.

Shellshocked after the 2016 election, some designers doubled down by announcing they would not dress the new first lady, Melania Trump (who did not, in any case, need their permission to decide what to wear). Since the inauguration, for which Mrs. Trump made an effort to wear American designers, she has largely eschewed local brands for European names. Ever since President Trump took office, the industry has been largely in exile from Washington, biting its tongue and biding its time.

Not any longer. Politics is back in fashion again. But this time around it’s not exactly like the last time around. This time, it’s not so much about accessorizing a specific candidate as democracy itself.

Credit…John Taggart for The New York Times

Beyond the Logo T-shirt

As the events of the summer — from the pandemic, which shuttered stores, put shows on hold, bankrupted brands and disrupted supply chains, to the killing of George Floyd and the subsequent global protests — have caused fashion to re-examine its systems, the question of its responsibility has come to the forefront. The result is a critical mass of initiatives from designers and retailers, all geared toward harnessing the power of social media, where fashion is a foundational force, to drive civic involvement.

This week, Fashion Our Future, a new initiative focused on encouraging voter registration, goes live. Founded by Abrima Erwiah, the co-creator of Studio 189, a sustainable fashion brand based in Ghana, and Rosario Dawson, the actress, activist and Studio 189 co-founder, it involves a proprietary website full of voting information — and a panoply of related products that will debut during New York Fashion Week.

Virgil Abloh, of Off-White and Louis Vuitton men’s wear, is the creative director, and a virtual roll call of New York fashion names have contributed. Those include Brandon Maxwell, Proenza Schouler, Rachel Comey, Lemlem and Good American, all of whom will sell their products not only under the FOF umbrella, but also via their own platforms, which will include an Action Button to facilitate voter registration. Together, they have a combined Instagram reach of many millions.

Credit…John Taggart for The New York Times

Next week, a project under the umbrella of the When We All Vote organization, co-chaired by Michelle Obama and created in 2018, during the midterm elections, will follow, headed by Mrs. Obama’s longtime stylist Meredith Koop (the woman responsible for the V-O-T-E necklace the former first lady wore for her speech at the Democratic National Convention). Also involved is a creative community making everything from beauty products, like a Liquid Matte from the Lip Bar, to candles to bike shorts. Everything will be for sale in two separate drops on Sept. 9 and Oct. 1 and will have QR codes that can be scanned to allow customers to register to vote.

In between the two drops, on September 26, there will be another initiative created by Dover Street Market, the multibrand emporium owned by Comme des Garçons, also under the WWAV umbrella and in coordination with Ms. Koop. It has enlisted some 25 of its brands and partners, including Marc Jacobs, Hood by Air, Vaquera and Selena Gomez, to make special products for the project. It is one of 19 retailers around the country that will also include QR codes on all receipts to facilitate registration.

Credit…via Democratic National Convention

And that doesn’t include the voter awareness projects of stores including Saks, which will devote its Fifth Avenue windows to moments in voting history and host registration booths inside, Nordstrom, Cos and H & M USA. Or the VOTE merch created by Michael Kors and Stuart Weitzman and outdoor brands like Keen, which is collaborating with the Jerry Garcia family on a #VoteLove shoe and campaign.

“We have seen a huge paradigm shift in the way people get their news and take action,” Ms. Koop said, noting that it had moved “to mediums that are hyper-visual” and where fashion, in particular, was omnipresent.

“Young people especially express themselves through clothes, whether on TikTok or Reels,” said the designer Victor Glemaud, who was an early part of Fashion Our Future. Young people are a high priority for both political parties. (In 2016, around 60 percent of the eligible population voted, according to the United States Elections Project. For voters under 30, turnout was just over 40 percent.)

All of these efforts are being pitched as bipartisan — and certainly, voting is — but given the discourse at the recent Democratic National Convention about the importance of voting, and the conspiracy theories about mail-in voting from the Republicans, and the fact that Ms. Dawson’s partner is Senator Cory Booker and Mrs. Obama is involved, it’s hard not to think this will once again ally the industry to a side.

“Of course, there’s risk,” said Tanya Taylor, the designer who first connected Ms. Erwiah to the creators of the Action Button, and who has made a tote for Fashion the Future. “The easy thing to do is stay as a fashion brand and think only about clothing. That’s the safe move.” But, she said, it was a move that was no longer acceptable.

Dressing to Vote

Ms. Erwiah first started thinking it was time for fashion to get out from behind the parapet at the start of the pandemic. She had noticed the groups forming in the fashion world to advocate for change and felt, she said on a Zoom call from her home, “that it was all meaningless if we didn’t also participate in what is going on right now with the election and our communities.”

She joined In the Blck, a group started by Mr. Glemaud, posing the question of what could be done. She reached out to Ms. Dawson — they have been friends since they were teenagers — who had gotten involved with voter registration when she co-founded Voto Latino in 2004. They realized that National Voter Registration Day was Sept. 22, which happened to be in the middle of the fashion shows, and had a bingo moment.

Mr. Abloh then joined as creative director, and the idea became a reality. “I remember seeing Sean Combs’s Vote or Die campaign on MTV,” Mr. Abloh said. Now he had a chance to encode a similar visual in someone else’s head. In short order they had a logo — a needle and thread stitching out the V in “vote” — a slogan (“Model Voter,” in Mr. Abloh’s trademark quotation marks) and their roster of designers.

“It was time to attach the two: politics and fashion,” said Fe Noel, a designer who was an early part of the initiative and who has made a handkerchief/bandanna that can be worn “around your neck, face, head, whatever, when you go to vote,” she said.

This was also when Ms. Koop started talking to colleagues at When We All Vote about the way the younger generation identified with creative communities and the possibility of moving beyond simply merch to products that inspired action and ownership. Along with Sarween Salih, a friend who had owned an athleisure brand, she began to reach out to a variety of partners.

“I was tired of a gray T-shirt with a logo on it,” she said. “I thought we could do something better.”

That Dover Street Market, a retail emporium owned by a Japanese company, is part of the initiative reflects both how far the idea has spread and how much, said Adrian Joffe, its president, “what is happening in America affects the whole world.”

For some designers the voter push has become the focus of their work. “I probably spend as much time on it as I do Louis Vuitton,” said Mr. Abloh, who has designed a T-shirt for the project. “More even than Off-White — and that’s my own brand.”

Ms. Taylor said she was using her slot at fashion week to create social media-based content around registration.

“We are redesigning what fashion looks like right now,” Ms. Noel said. “We’re at the beginning stage of something new, which, hopefully, involves going in a more meaningful direction.”

In all cases, the goal is to reframe voting — Election Day, and going to the polls — as the shared experience of the year, the way the Met Gala and the Oscars have been in the past. To make it about dress as celebration of democracy, taking an abstract ideal and rendering it easy to access and to put into action.

“Turn up for the turn out!” Ms. Erwiah said. “Everyone is sitting at home in sweatpants. Why not get dressed up for voting? Watch the election like we watch the Oscars. This date could be like the Grammys.”

Ms. Dawson said: “We want people to think: Oh my God, what am I going to wear to the polls?”

Ms. Erwiah added: “There’s no prom, no homecoming, but you can vote!”

Source: – The New York Times

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Politics

New Brunswick Premier Blaine Higgs kicks off provincial election campaign

Published

2 hours ago

September 19, 2024

Anne Joseph

FREDERICTON – New Brunswick Premier Blaine Higgs has called an election for Oct. 21, signalling the beginning of a 33-day campaign expected to focus on pocketbook issues and the government’s provocative approach to gender identity policies.

The 70-year-old Progressive Conservative leader, who is seeking a third term in office, has attracted national attention by requiring teachers to get parental consent before they can use the preferred names and pronouns of young students.

More recently, however, the former Irving Oil executive has tried to win over inflation-weary voters by promising to lower the provincial harmonized sales tax by two percentage points to 13 per cent if re-elected.

At dissolution, the Conservatives held 25 seats in the 49-seat legislature. The Liberals held 16 seats, the Greens had three and there was one Independent and four vacancies.

J.P. Lewis, a political science professor at the University of New Brunswick, said the top three issues facing New Brunswickers are affordability, health care and education.

“Across many jurisdictions, affordability is the top concern — cost of living, housing prices, things like that,” he said.

Richard Saillant, an economist and former vice-president of Université de Moncton, said the Tories’ pledge to lower the HST represents a costly promise.

“I don’t think there’s that much room for that,” he said. “I’m not entirely clear that they can do so without producing a greater deficit.” Saillant also pointed to mounting pressures to invest more in health care, education and housing, all of which are facing increasing demands from a growing population.

Higgs’s main rivals are Liberal Leader Susan Holt and Green Party Leader David Coon. Both are focusing on economic and social issues.

Holt has promised to impose a rent cap and roll out a subsidized school food program. The Liberals also want to open at least 30 community health clinics over the next four years.

Coon has said a Green government would create an “electricity support program,” which would give families earning less than $70,000 annually about $25 per month to offset “unprecedented” rate increases.

Higgs first came to power in 2018, when the Tories formed the province’s first minority government in 100 years. In 2020, he called a snap election — the first province to go to the polls after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic — and won a majority.

Since then, several well-known cabinet ministers and caucus members have stepped down after clashing with Higgs, some of them citing what they described as an authoritarian leadership style and a focus on policies that represent a hard shift to the right side of the political spectrum.

Lewis said the Progressive Conservatives are in the “midst of reinvention.”

“It appears he’s shaping the party now, really in the mould of his world views,” Lewis said. “Even though (Progressive Conservatives) have been down in the polls, I still think that they’re very competitive.”

Meanwhile, the legislature remained divided along linguistic lines. The Tories dominate in English-speaking ridings in central and southern parts of the province, while the Liberals held most French-speaking ridings in the north.

The drama within the party began in October 2022 when the province’s outspoken education minister, Dominic Cardy, resigned from cabinet, saying he could no longer tolerate the premier’s leadership style. In his resignation letter, Cardy cited controversial plans to reform French-language education. The government eventually stepped back those plans.

A series of resignations followed last year when the Higgs government announced changes to Policy 713, which now requires students under 16 who are exploring their gender identity to get their parents’ consent before teachers can use their preferred first names or pronouns — a reversal of the previous practice.

When several Tory lawmakers voted with the opposition to call for an external review of the change, Higgs dropped dissenters from his cabinet. And a bid by some party members to trigger a leadership review went nowhere.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 19, 2024.

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Politics

New Brunswick Premier Blaine Higgs expected to call provincial election today

Published

4 hours ago

September 19, 2024

Anne Joseph

FREDERICTON – A 33-day provincial election campaign is expected to officially get started today in New Brunswick.

Progressive Conservative Premier Blaine Higgs has said he plans to visit Lt.-Gov. Brenda Murphy this morning to have the legislature dissolved.

Higgs, a 70-year-old former oil executive, is seeking a third term in office, having led the province since 2018.

The campaign ahead of the Oct. 21 vote is expected to focus on pocketbook issues, but the government’s provocative approach to gender identity issues could also be in the spotlight.

The Tory premier has already announced he will try to win over inflation-weary voters by promising to lower the harmonized sales tax by two percentage points to 13 per cent if re-elected.

Higgs’s main rivals are Liberal Leader Susan Holt and Green Party Leader David Coon, both of whom are focusing on economic and social issues.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 19, 2024.

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Politics

NDP flips, BC United flops, B.C. Conservatives surge as election campaign approaches

Published

4 hours ago

September 19, 2024

Anne Joseph

VICTORIA – If the lead up to British Columbia‘s provincial election campaign is any indication of what’s to come, voters should expect the unexpected.

It could be a wild ride to voting day on Oct. 19.

The Conservative Party of B.C. that didn’t elect a single member in the last election and gained less than two per cent of the popular vote is now leading the charge for centre-right, anti-NDP voters.

The official Opposition BC United, who as the former B.C. Liberals won four consecutive majorities from 2001 to 2013, raised a white flag and suspended its campaign last month, asking its members, incumbents and voters to support the B.C. Conservatives to prevent a vote split on the political right.

New Democrat Leader David Eby delivered a few political surprises of his own in the days leading up to Saturday’s official campaign start, signalling major shifts on the carbon tax and the issue of involuntary care in an attempt to curb the deadly opioid overdose crisis.

He said the NDP would drop the province’s long-standing carbon tax for consumers if the federal government eliminates its requirement to keep the levy in place, and pledged to introduce involuntary care of people battling mental health and addiction issues.

The B.C. Coroners Service reports more than 15,000 overdose deaths since the province declared an opioid overdose public health emergency in 2016.

Drug policy in B.C., especially decriminalization of possession of small amounts of hard drugs and drug use in public areas, could become key election issues this fall.

Eby, a former executive director of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, said Wednesday that criticism of the NDP’s involuntary care plan by the Canadian Civil Liberties Association is “misinformed” and “misleading.”

“This isn’t about forcing people into a particular treatment,” he said at an unrelated news conference. “This is about making sure that their safety, as well as the safety of the broader community, is looked after.”

Eby said “simplistic arguments,” where one side says lock people up and the other says don’t lock anybody up don’t make sense.

“There are some people who should be in jail, who belong in jail to ensure community safety,” said Eby. “There are some people who need to be in intensive, secure mental health treatment facilities because that’s what they need in order to be safe, in order not to be exploited, in order not to be dead.”

The CCLA said in a statement Eby’s plan is not acceptable.

“There is no doubt that substance use is an alarming and pressing epidemic,” said Anais Bussières McNicoll, the association’s fundamental freedoms program director. “This scourge is causing significant suffering, particularly, among vulnerable and marginalized groups. That being said, detaining people without even assessing their capacity to make treatment decisions, and forcing them to undergo treatment against their will, is unconstitutional.”

While Eby, a noted human rights lawyer, could face political pressure from civil rights opponents to his involuntary care plans, his opponents on the right also face difficulties.

The BC United Party suspended its campaign last month in a pre-election move to prevent a vote split on the right, but that support may splinter as former jilted United members run as Independents.

Five incumbent BC United MLAs, Mike Bernier, Dan Davies, Tom Shypitka, Karin Kirkpatrick and Coralee Oakes are running as Independents and could become power brokers in the event of a minority government situation, while former BC United incumbents Ian Paton, Peter Milobar and Trevor Halford are running under the B.C. Conservative banner.

Davies, who represents the Fort St. John area riding of Peace River North, said he’s always been a Conservative-leaning politician but he has deep community roots and was urged by his supporters to run as an Independent after the Conservatives nominated their own candidate.

Davies said he may be open to talking with B.C. Conservative Leader John Rustad after the election, if he wins or loses.

Green Leader Sonia Furstenau has suggested her party is an option for alienated BC United voters.

Rustad — who faced criticism from BC United Leader Kevin Falcon and Eby about the far-right and extremist views of some of his current and former candidates and advisers — said the party’s rise over the past months has been meteoric.

“It’s been almost 100 years since the Conservative Party in B.C. has won a government,” he said. “The last time was 1927. I look at this now and I think I have never seen this happen anywhere in the country before. This has been happening in just over a year. It just speaks volumes that people are just that eager and interested in change.”

Rustad, ejected from the former B.C. Liberals in August 2022 for publicly supporting a climate change skeptic, sat briefly as an Independent before being acclaimed the B.C. Conservative leader in March 2023.

Rustad, who said if elected he will fire B.C.’s provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry over her vaccine mandates during the COVID-19 pandemic, has removed the nominations of some of his candidates who were vaccine opponents.

“I am not interested in going after votes and trying to do things that I think might be popular,” he said.

Prof. David Black, a political communications specialist at Greater Victoria’s Royal Roads University, said the rise of Rustad’s Conservatives and the collapse of BC United is the political story of the year in B.C.

But it’s still too early to gauge the strength of the Conservative wave, he said.

“Many questions remain,” said Black. “Has the free enterprise coalition shifted sufficiently far enough to the right to find the social conservatism and culture-war populism of some parts of the B.C. Conservative platform agreeable? Is a party that had no infrastructure and minimal presence in what are now 93 ridings this election able to scale up and run a professional campaign across the province?”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 19, 2024.

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