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Politics Is Back in Fashion

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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.

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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
Credit…John Taggart for The New York Times

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.

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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Larry David shares how he feels about Trump – CNN

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Larry David shares how he feels about Trump

“Curb Your Enthusiasm” star Larry David shares how he feels about former President Donald Trump and the 2020 election. Watch the full episode of “Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace,” streaming March 29 on Max.


03:21

– Source:
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Trump's claims on crime rates clash with police data – NBC News

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Surging crime levels, out-of-control Democratic cities and “migrant crime.”

Former President Donald Trump regularly cites all three at his campaign rallies, in news releases and on Truth Social, often saying President Joe Biden and Democrats are to blame.

But the crime picture Trump paints contrasts sharply with years of police and government data at both the local and national levels.

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FBI statistics released this year suggested a steep drop in crime across the country last year. It’s a similar story across major cities, with violent crime down year over year in Chicago, New York and Washington, D.C.

NBC News analyzed crime data to evaluate Trump’s assertions about the topic.

U.S. and big city crime rates

Trump’s campaign often refers to crime levels, regularly pointing the finger at Biden.

“On Joe Biden’s watch, violent crime has skyrocketed in virtually every American city,” the campaign said in a news release published this month on its site.

Trump himself has made similar remarks.

“Four years ago, I told you that if crooked Joe Biden got to the White House, our borders would be abolished, our middle class would be decimated and our communities would be plagued by bloodshed, chaos and violent crime,” Trump said in a speech last month at the Conservative Political Action Conference. “We were right about everything.”

Government figures don’t support that characterization.

Reported violent crime dropped 6% across the board when comparing the last three months of 2022 to the same period in 2023, the FBI reported.

The reported drops were especially pronounced in the big cities that Trump often assails, many of which have Democratic mayors. Violent crime dropped by 11% in cities with populations of 1 million or more, according to FBI data, while murders dropped by 20%, rape was down 16%, and aggravated assault fell by 11%.

Reached for comment, the Trump campaign pointed to other reports indicating that certain types of crimes increased in specific cities.

At the national level, the reported rate of violent crime in 2022, the most recent full year with comprehensive FBI data, was 380.7 offenses per 100,000 people. That’s lower than the overall reported violent crime rate from 2020 — the last full year Trump was in office — when the figure was at 398.5.

The lowest reported violent crime rate of Trump’s presidency was in 2019, when the metric was at 380.8 — in line with the 2022 rate.

The FBI said it will release more comprehensive 2023 crime data in October, just before the election.

The Trump campaign, reached for comment, cited certain categories of violent crime, such as motor vehicle theft, as having increased during the Biden administration, according to FBI figures.

“Joe Biden is trying to convince Americans not to believe their own eyes,” campaign press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement, adding that “Democrats have turned great American cities into cesspools of bloodshed and crime.”

New York City crime

Trump, who was born and raised in New York but now lives in Florida, often rails against what he portrays as an increasing crime rate in his former hometown.

Those references to soaring violence have only increased as he faces criminal charges in New York accusing him of falsifying business records related to hush money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels. Trump, who has pleaded not guilty in that case, must also post a $175 million bond to prevent state Attorney General Letitia James from collecting the judgment from a New York civil fraud case.

“I did nothing wrong, and New York should never be put in a position like this again,” Trump posted on Truth Social about the civil judgment in all capital letters. “Businesses are fleeing, violent crime is flourishing, and it is very important that this be resolved in its totality as soon as possible.”

In a separate post, he claimed that “murders & violent crime hit unimaginable records” in the city.

However, major crimes in New York City are down this year by 2.3%, according to police department data comparing year-to-date figures to the same period in 2023.

Those figures for last year were also far below the highs from recent decades. In 1990, more than 527,000 major crimes were reported, compared to more than 126,000 last year, according to New York police data — a drop of more than 75%.

In 2001, more than 162,000 major crimes were reported in New York. The figure dropped by more than 20% over the next two decades.

At the same time, New York City data indicates that the number of major crimes increased in the past few years, though reported violent crimes like murder and rape were down last year from previous years.

‘Migrant crime’

Trump’s dehumanizing language about migrants has become a mainstay of his political speeches since he first sought office in 2015.

In a news release this month, his campaign said the “border Crisis has created a tragic surge in violent crime against innocent American citizens at the hands of some of the world’s most violent criminals.”

Trump has also focused his energy on high-profile cases such as the death of Laken Riley, who was killed in Georgia while jogging. The suspect is a Venezuelan citizen who entered the U.S. illegally in 2022.

“Every day, innocent citizens are being killed, stabbed, shot, raped and murdered because of Biden migrant crime,” Trump said in a video posted to his campaign’s X account last week.

However, there is no evidence of a migrant-driven crime wave in the U.S., according to local police department data.

Crime reports have decreased in several major cities targeted by Texas’ Operation Lone Star, a program backed by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott that flies or buses migrants from the state to Democratic-run cities across the U.S.

Several of those cities — New York, Chicago, Washington and Philadelphia — have had decreases in year-to-date reported crime totals compared to the same period last year.


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Federal government promising a 'renters' bill of rights' in upcoming budget – CBC.ca

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Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that his government will introduce new measures — including a new “bill of rights” — that he says will help protect those who rent their homes as part of the upcoming budget.

Trudeau said the new measures are specifically geared toward younger people, who are renting more than previous generations.

“It’s about changing the rules of the game in a way that meets young people where they are,” he said on Wednesday.

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Ottawa will work with provinces and territories to develop a “renters’ bill of rights” that would introduce a national standard lease agreement and implement requirements for landlords to disclose an apartment’s pricing history to allow tenants to negotiate their rent.

The new measures will also include a $15-million fund for provincial legal aid organizations that help tenants fight against “renovictions” and landlord abuse.

The Liberals are also proposing to change federal rules so that making rental payments on time will count toward someone’s credit scores, something Trudeau said is meant to help renters looking to one day buy a house.

“If you look at someone who pays a $2,000 [per month] mortgage, they’re getting recognition and credit for that from their bank as part of their credit score,” the prime minister said.

“But if you’re paying $2,000 a month on rent, you get no kudos.”

Typically the government doesn’t discuss what is in an annual budget until it is introduced in the House of Commons. But the announcement was made weeks prior to the release of the Liberals’ next budget, which is slated to drop on April 16.

Releasing tidbits from the budget ahead of time is part of a new communications strategy for the Liberals, sources told CBC News. Trudeau and his ministers are expected to make a number of similar announcements in the run-up to the budget, the sources said.

WATCH | Trudeau says new measures aim to help tenants: 

Liberals promise ‘renters’ bill of rights’ to fight housing crisis

5 hours ago

Duration 2:07

The Liberals are looking to create a ‘renters’ bill of rights’ to help deal with Canada’s housing crisis. Justin Trudeau says the plan is geared toward younger people suffering from a rising cost of living. The Conservatives call the measures meaningless.

Before revealing the planned rental measures on Wednesday, Trudeau took a moment to plug the April 16 fiscal plan, saying that the budget will be about “fairness.”

“For Canada to succeed, we need everyone to succeed,” he said.

Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland joined Trudeau for his announcement and hinted about further announcements ahead of budget day.

“Over the coming days and in the April budget, we are going to launch a no-holds-barred plan to wrestle down the cost of owning and renting a home,” she said.

Wednesday’s announcements came on the same day that the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation released a report that found a surge in new apartment construction drove housing start increases in several major Canadian cities last year.

But the report also cautions that demand continues to outweigh supply.

The opposition Conservatives, who have enjoyed a healthy lead in recent polls, have made housing — and other cost-of-living issues — a key point of attack against the governing Liberals.

Following his announcement, Trudeau was asked whether he thinks he bears any responsibility for people feeling left behind in the current economy and whether the new measures would be enough to convince younger people to support him in the next election.

In response, Trudeau suggested that a recent rise in the cost of living is not unique to Canada.

“Young people who are key to our present, and obviously key to our future, are seeing a system that is stacked against them. That’s true in Canada but also true elsewhere around the world,” he said. “What we’re focused on now is making sure that young people can see their success in the economy.”

Opposition parties criticize Liberal announcement

Scott Aitchison, the Conservative housing critic, said Wednesday’s announcement was Liberal posturing that won’t get results.

“Today’s photo op is just another set of meaningless measures that won’t result in building the homes Canadians need,” he said in a statement.

NDP housing critic Jenny Kwan criticized the announcement for not going far enough.

“The Liberals are so out of touch with what Canadian renters are experiencing that they keep offering half-measures instead of a real action,” Kwan said in a statement.

The NDP is calling on the government to invest more in affordable housing while temporarily preventing for-profit firms from buying designated affordable-housing spaces.

WATCH | Liberal government promises better protections for renters in upcoming budget: 

Liberal government promises better protections for renters in upcoming budget

9 hours ago

Duration 11:39

The Liberal government unveiled three new proposals Wednesday to better protect renters in Canada. Power & Politics speaks to Marci Ien, minister of women, gender equality and youth, about the proposed protections.

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