Garment Center

For the sake of New York's economic health.

Plus, the designer talks about her work with Mayor Bill de Blasio on keeping manufacturing in New York. Oh, and there were the pretty clothes in her fall 2014 collection to speak of, too.

A motley crew of people from all walks of fashion life attended a rally today to support NYC’s ever-shrinking Garment Center. MC’ed by artist Robert Savage, otherwise known as Mr. Nanette Lepore, the rally’s speakers included politicians, designers, students, union workers, and factory owners. In the lively and supportive audience, I spotted fashion students sporting bedazzled signs and seamstresses with years of hard-earned callouses on their hands. Anna Sui was roaming among the crowd, too. Congressman Tim Ryan started off the rally with some inspirational quotes about America. Then Jerry Nadler, a congressman from New York, said that when he attended a rally to save the Garment Center back in 1985, there were about 500,000 garment industry jobs in NYC; today there are only about 100,000. Rather sobering statistics, to say the least. Scott Stringer, the Manhattan Borough President, was up next and made the excellent point, “You can’t have Fashion Week in New York unless you have the designers here. It’s like having the Academy Awards in a place where they don’t make movies.”

Fabric flowers may be synonymous with the name Carrie Bradshaw on Sex and the City, but the business of custom accoutrements goes back much further.

On Monday night at 9 pm (EST), HBO will debut the documentary Schmatta: Rags to Riches to Rags that takes a look at the history of New York's Garment