Fashion Biz: Not Ready to Wear!

This whole global financial crisis kinda makes it harder for folks to just-grin and wear-it...

'And even in the best of times,' suggests the Washington Post.

It'd -- 'be difficult to defend the gilded brocade, glittering embroidery and exaggerated silhouettes that came down the runway. It is as though the design industry is living in the go-go 1990s and everyone else is wondering how many additional decades they'll have to work to make up for all their lost capital gains.'

With a bleak economy it got heads shaking, thinking pretty, yes...but wearable?? -- 'what could they possibly have been thinking? The economic crisis might have begun in the U.S. housing market, but it swiftly took on a global dimension. Don't they --(meaning the design houses) -- read the papers?'

'It's difficult to process these kinds of indulgences when prudence tells even those who are well situated financially to be more cautious and conservative spenders,' adds the Post.

'Menzie D. Chinn, (suggests in the new Business Week): 'consumers won't be in a position to spend freely for five years.'

'Guessing sashaying-around-the-office anytime soon in your fancy new Dolce-and-Gabbana outfit might not be in-vogue right about now...

Call it -- the paradox of thrift: Business Weeks suggests that this -- newfound austerity could —emphasis on could — rewire Americans as savers rather than spenders...really a world that saves instead of charging up a storm, good luck with that pipe-dream...

Like fashion -- 'Thrift has gone in and out of style since the founding of the republic,' and 'people who lived through the Great Depression were in some cases marked for life by the experience...'

As an example they talked about a -- '82-year-old resident of Poughkeepsie, N.Y., who grew up poor in the Bronx. In the early 1930s, his father's grocery store failed and his dad couldn't find another job for several years.'

'To this day, even though he's became very wealthy, he shops for food with coupons, drives a Honda, and takes the subway rather than taxis.' -- summing it up by saying, -- "I just don't believe in throwing money away..."

Hmmm, maybe something good will come from this mess after all:

Source: Washington Post