Former model and TV personality Nigel Barker also happens to be a photojournalist, which is why he spent much of his recent Salon.com interview discussing his website and his new venture selling prints of his photographs through Art.com.

But we were more interested in his constructive criticism of the industry that helped make him rich: fashion.

It’s ironic to watch a dress on a mannequin or a model on a catwalk who’s not anything like the person that’s gonna buy it. And we buy into that. I think the true test for a designer is to send a collection of women down a catwalk, of all different sizes and shapes and colors, and say, “Look, I’m as good as I say, because look how wonderful my dresses look on you and the women who are gonna buy them.” And I’m afraid it’s never really been done.

It’s true: while industry pros have discussed “plus size models” for some time; top designers occasionally include them in shows and some of the world’s biggest agencies now include entire plus size divisions. But a show like the one Barker describes would get quite a bit of attention in both fashion-focused and mainstream media outlets, no? What journalist wouldn’t take that pitch?

A question for fashion publicists: what do we think of Barker’s suggestion? Would such a show amount to blockbuster PR for a major house, or would competitors call it a stunt and laugh the brand out of the club?

*Photo via Oxygen/Lorenzo Bevilaqua

In case anyone out there actually had hopes that Abercrombie & Fitch might change its marketing tune after finding itself embroiled in controversy this past spring, the brand’s latest campaign will probably be a major disappointment. If the clothing retailer’s newest effort seems like more of the same to you, that’s because it is — exactly the same.

Rather than make any sort of attempt at re-branding, A&F is doing exactly the opposite: the company is reincarnating its successful “Stars on the Rise” campaign from the early 2000s, which featured then-budding celebs like Taylor Swift and Ashton Kutcher. The updated effort features 11 “up-and-coming” actors including Alexander Ludwig from The Hunger Games, American Horror Story’s Lily Rabe, and Glee star Jacob Artist (we’re particularly sad about this last one, as we sort of thought the whole Abercrombie-is-only-for-cool-kids thing would make for a great episode of the equality/inclusion/self-esteem-themed show).

When asked about the campaign, Abercrombie’s director of marketing and public relations Michael Scheiner told Buzzfeed, “For many of our consumers today, they might not know what we did in 2005, so it seemed relevant to discuss this concept we’ve done in the past.”

It seems A&F is hoping that recreating a campaign from its heyday may also recreate the popularity the brand experienced during the same time period. But this strategy assumes the current audience will be equally receptive to the message, an assumption which — given the recent backlash against the brand and the current anti-bullying/pro-inclusion landscape — may be a gamble. Read more

“Baked in” is a popular media technology phrase, but with the latest heat wave, humans are the ones baking. This week it’s high time to share a few pointers for shaking off the extreme heat. The items here involve travel, cocktails, apps, celebrities and sandals, but for a change of pace, no celebrity scandals.

1.Visit the minus5° Ice Bar in New York and Las Vegas: The hotel brand that’s eliminating traditional room service, Hilton, just adopted a more novel option– an icy venue where it’s minus 5 degrees centigrade (or 23 degrees Fahrenheit). While igloo hotels in wintry places have long been popular, selected hotels (New York’s Hilton midtown and Las Vegas’ Monte Carlo and Mandalay Bay casino resorts), adopted the concept for cocktails. At minus5°, sculptures, furniture and glasses are all made of ice. This entertaining retreat charges a cover and lends guests insulated parkas and gloves.

2.Watch a rerun of Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown – Canada episode: Another place one needs warm clothing is Canada, and that’s where the devil-may-care celebrity chef trekked last winter. He spent time in Montreal, Quebec City and the province of Quebec while visiting with well-known Canadian chefs and restaurant owners. They went ice fishing and dined in an ice shack on a frozen lake. However, if you find the food they’re consuming too hearty, (Bourdain calls the meals a “Franco Canadian full-on assault on the liver”), then take a TV break and enjoy lighter fare. …

3.Try Ben & Jerry’s Liz Lemon Greek Frozen Yogurt: The flavor is lemon Greek frozen yogurt with blueberry lavender swirl, or as the website calls it, lemon-y-blueberry-y. The print ad announcing the new product shows an image of a figure based on Tina Fey’s 30 Rock character attempting to skate with a giant lemon on Rockefeller Center’s lemon-framed ice rink. Ben & Jerry’s dedicated the product in honor of Tina Fey’s longtime support of Jumpstart, an early education organization for children in low-income areas.

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Under pressure to take action to improve the safety conditions at Bangladeshi factories that make their goods, 17 American retailers including Walmart, Target, and Gap have signed on to the Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety. However, the plan is already coming under fire from labor and human rights groups who say that the failure to include a third party monitoring system or any labor representation makes the plan, essentially, a “sham.”

The discussion over factory safety continues months after the Rana Plaza building collapse in April that killed more than 1,100 people in Dhaka. A fire in another factory in Bangladesh killed 112 people in November. In both cases, workers were making garments intended for sale by some of the biggest retail companies in the world. Walmart and Sears claim they didn’t know their goods were being made at Rana Plaza. Read more

Editors at Lucky magazine’s online counterpart, LuckyMag.com, are open to PR pitches in all sections of the site, which is dedicated to helping readers score their favorite looks from the magazine.

“When Lucky launched, it was sort of revolutionary, because it was the only magazine with every single item available that moment,” said Verena von Pfetten, executive digital editor. “So, that’s even more applicable to our website. Everything we post has a shop-ability factor.”

If your client can bring something original to fashion-savvy readers as they shop the web, there’s a good chance of scoring placement at this online pub. For pitching etiquette and editors’ contact info, read How To Pitch: LuckyMag.com.

– Sherry Yuan

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Celebrity and fashion have a few things in common. One of those things: You can be super hot on Monday, and D list on Tuesday. One day, you’re sipping Champagne in Cannes. The next, you’re in a gutter crying in your malt liquor.

At one point, Jon Gosselin was actually on a yacht in Cannes. And what do you wear when you’re hanging out on a fancy boat in a fancy place? An Ed Hardy t-shirt, of course. According to the man behind those ugly shirts, that’s exactly what led to the downfall of his momentarily successful clothing company. Read more

Vice is known for tackling controversial topics. To accompany that approach, the magazine will also include imagery and fashion spreads that push the limits (oftentimes including women who are missing an article of clothing, like a shirt). It looks like Vice crossed and stepped all over the line of good taste with its latest spread, and has issued an apology.

Included in its most recent fiction issue was a section called “Last Words,” featuring fashion models depicting the last moments of female literary figures who had committed suicide. For example, the model playing Sylvia Plath stares into an oven wearing a pretty dress.

We’ll quote our friends at Fishbowl NY directly: “Last Words is gross because it glamorizes suicide. There’s nothing sexy, fashionable, or edgy, about people killing themselves.” They weren’t the only ones who took issue with the spread.

Read more

Abercrombie & Fitch has been embroiled in controversy since Business Insider re-published disturbing comments CEO Mike Jeffries made in a 2007 Salon article, including doozies like, “A lot of people don’t belong [in our clothes], and they can’t belong. Are we exclusionary? Absolutely,” and “In every school there are the cool and popular kids, and then there are the not-so-cool kids…we go after the cool kids.”

In a society deeply engaged in anti-bullying discussions and efforts to make standards of beauty and “coolness” more inclusive, these comments ignited a widespread and fiery backlash, including a grassroots re-branding campaign and a Change.org petition.

The petition, started by 18-year-old Benjamin O’Keefe (who has himself overcome an eating disorder), garnered over 70,000 signatures and asked the company to stop sending the message that teens aren’t beautiful, demanding A&F start selling clothes larger than a size 10.

Here’s a graphic recently published in the Huffington Post, which shows the major hit Abercrombie & Fitch has taken over the past month. For the full effect, we recommend listening to this audio clip of a nosediving airplane while viewing the graph.

After a brief apology Jeffries recently posted on Facebook failed to turn the tide, the company invited O’Keefe and members of the National Eating Disorders Association to its headquarters in Columbus, OH last week to discuss their concerns with executives. After the meeting, A&F released this statement: Read more

The factory collapse that killed more than 1,100 people in Bangladesh this April is by no means the first tragedy to strike the garment industry in recent years—but it does look like the culmination of an ongoing PR challenge that could reshape the way major clothing brands market their products. The earliest evidence of this change comes on social media, where companies that had operations in the factory have already begun responding to the demands of consumers and labor activists.

The New York Times reports that many businesses and industry groups now plan to follow the food industry’s example by offering the public more detailed information about how and where their clothes are made. H&M and Zara have agreed to sign a new “factory safety accord,” and major names like Disney, Nike, and Walmart may follow with campaigns designed to appropriate the “green,” “organic,” and “fair trade” themes favored by food and household goods marketers in recent years. The purpose of this material, of course, will be to highlight the brands’ corporate social responsibility efforts and distance them from horrific accidents like the one in Bangladesh.

It’s nothing new for fashion: upstarts like American Apparel began using their own “fair trade” practices as key selling points some time ago. Yet, despite AA’s success, retailers like Maggie’s Organics and Everlane (tagline “Luxury Basics. Radical Transparency.”) remain few and far between.

Not for long.

Read more

We always knew we didn’t belong in Abercrombie; being accosted by overpowering cologne while dodging deer antlers and shelling out a year’s worth of allowance on a sweatshirt never particularly appealed to us. But then again, we weren’t blonde, lead cheerleader, and built like, well, we usually say “an Abercrombie model”, so we were pretty sure A&F didn’t want our business anyway.

Turns out, we may have been right.

When speaking with Business Insider last week, Robin Lewis, co-author of The New Rules of Retail, claimed that A&F CEO Mike Jeffries “doesn’t want larger people shopping in his store, he wants thin and beautiful people. He doesn’t want his core customers to see people who aren’t as hot as them wearing his clothing. People who wear his clothing should feel like they’re one of the ‘cool kids.’”

So what exactly deems a kid cool enough to earn the privilege of wearing the A&F brand? In a 2006 interview with Salon, Jeffries said, “In every school there are the cool and popular kids, and then there are the not-so-cool kids. Candidly, we go after the cool kids…We go after the attractive all-American kid with a great attitude and a lot of friends. A lot of people don’t belong [in our clothes], and they can’t belong. Are we exclusionary? Absolutely.”

So who’s automatically excluded from this “cool” group? Girls above a size 10, apparently. Abercrombie doesn’t even list women’s XL or XXL on its size chart. According to Lewis, the only reason Abercrombie offers XL and XXL men’s sizes is likely to appeal to beefy athletes. Read more