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.

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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. continued…

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Benetton

Those “underpinning values”, however, are being questioned in light of the company’s denial that it had any ties to the garment factory in Savar, Bangladesh, that collapsed last week, tragically killing at least 377 people. The company tweeted on April 24: “In reference to the tragic news on the collapse of the building in Bangladesh, Benetton Group wants to clarify that none of the companies involved are suppliers to Benetton Group or any of its brands.” .

Since then, however, strong evidence suggesting Benetton clothing was being manufactured at the factory (known as Rana Plaza) has been uncovered. Photos taken of the rubble by the Associated Press and Agence France-Presse clearly show shirts with “United Colors of Benetton” labels. Also, one of the manufacturers that had been based at the factory, New Wave Bottoms, lists Benetton as a client, and labor rights activists said they found documents linking Benetton to the factory while they were digging through the debris.

In light of this hard-to-ignore evidence, the company released a statement on April 29, which said: “A one-time order was completed and shipped out of one of the manufacturers involved several weeks prior to the accident. Since then, this subcontractor has been removed from our supplier list.”

While Benetton is far from the only big-name company connected to Rana Plaza (Wal-Mart, Ireland’s Primark, and Canada’s Joe Fresh all made clothing there), the company’s dedication to social activism — coupled with its initial denial — seem to be making it a prime target for public ire. continued…

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But times changed.

Nike’s original young demographic grew up and had its own kids. Spokesman Michael Jordan retired… twice. Competing brands gained influence. Technology turned the world inside out, and the public began consuming information a la carte instead of off the menu of mainstream television networks and newspapers.

Instead of being a lumpy, amorphous, loosely-defined mass of humanity, the public became a collection of niches. This may be a welcome development if you sell horse magazines or pirate-themed paper plates, but for Nike this changing reality is a big challenge. To reach customers Nike must exploit every channel from Twitter and Facebook to Youtube and traditional television, and it must do it in a way that resonates with the various sensibilities of different niches of people.

That’s hard to do.

Instead of courting famous athletes like Tiger Woods and Lance Armstrong (look how well that turned out), Nike should exploit the new niche reality by going directly to its source: customers. The future of Nike’s brand shouldn’t focus on how far someone can jump from the free throw line, but on health, competition and style—the core interests of its dynamic target demographic.

Or it should go back to selling the original Air Jordans. Those are timeless.

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Would-be Target customer Susan Clemens voiced her disgust on Twitter:

What the. Plus sized women get “Manatee Grey” while standard sizes are “Dark Heather Grey.” @target #notbuyingit twitter.com/suZen/status/3…

— Susan Clemens (@suZen) April 3, 2013

To Target’s credit, the retailer’s response was swift and appropriate:

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They came on the mediabistroTV series “Elevator Pitch” hoping someone would take a chance on their ideas. In our new show, “Elevator Pitch Fast Forward,” host Alan Meckler checks up on the new business owners to see how they’re doing.

In our first episode, we dropped in on I-Ella CEO and founder, Ella Gorgla to see where the fashion insider’s marketplace is today. Gorgla showed us how giving clients a red carpet experience put new life into her business. She also gave “Elevator Pitch” hopefuls some solid advice to make sure their startups never go out of style.

For more videos, check out mediabistroTV, and be sure to follow us on Twitter: @mediabistroTV

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The company followed the news with a cute statement about how it wants fans to “Down Dog and Crow with confidence” and “felt these pants didn’t measure up”. Lululemon also offered full refunds and promised followers that all the offending pants would be recycled.

But the recall (cause as yet unknown) will create a product “shortage” and greatly harm profits at the otherwise white-hot company. This isn’t the first time that some observers have called these pants “too revealing”, either: in 2011 a Catholic high school in Canada prohibited all students from wearing them or any pants like them.

How can the brand’s PR team counter this bad press?

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Most female mannequins are so proportionally ridiculous that even the smallest clothes need to be cinched at the back to keep from hanging loosely off their bony shoulders. And if they were to come to life (see aforementioned uprising scenario), they would be too thin to menstruate. Given these facts, it’s no wonder that when this photo of more realistically-sized mannequins in a Swedish store hit the Internet, the response was an international roar of approval.

A blogger at Women’s Rights News posted the photo of the department store mannequins to Facebook last week, and the comments have been pouring in ever since. Although the dummies still represent the idealized hourglass shape, blonde hair, and fair skin, their softer-looking tummies and fleshier thighs have inspired 61,538 likes and over 19,000 shares as of this writing. The fact that they are dressed in lingerie also helps to perpetuate the idea that this store recognizes its shoppers don’t have to be a size 2 to be sexy.

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The establishment of an artistic director is a reflection of our commitment to preserve and champion all that exists ‘Only at Condé Nast.’ In today’s business environment, it is critical to promote and foster our established creative authority. This is the ideal time to leverage Anna’s extraordinary vision and leadership to amplify and elevate the profile of Condé Nast U.S. both domestically and abroad. Anna is an icon in the worlds of fashion, business and the arts, she has the foresight and wisdom to influence the major trends of our society and is respected globally as an accomplished businesswoman.

So she’s going to use her famous name and face to promote the brand and its products via the power of association? Sounds a lot like a celebrity spokesperson to us. Apologies to Beyoncé, Justin Timberlake, Will.I.Am., Alicia Keys, etc.: this whole “big-name creative director” trend may be much simpler than we thought.

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According to Bloomberg Businessweek, which ran the story under the provocative headline “Forget training bras. Girls are buying lingerie”, the demand for “intimate apparel” among young girls continues to grow because, in the words of Victoria’s parent brand Limited’s CFO, these tweens all “want to be older…they want to be cool like the girl in college”. Relevant retailers are scrambling to make the most of it: For example, a quick visit to tween retail giant Justice‘s website reveals collections of bras and panties by a brand that defines its own target audience as girls aged 7 to 12.

Pink hasn’t unveiled any products specifically designed for 12-year-olds, but its decision to hire Justin Bieber for the Pink segment of last year’s Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show is sufficient evidence of the brand’s desire to reach younger audiences with its combination of brightly colored sweatpants and underwear. While the company names its target consumer as a 15 or 16-year-old girl, some younger women will clearly be drawn in by the campaigns.

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• The Pope will not go back to using his legal name, Joseph Ratzinger. He’ll be Benedict from now on. He will also be known as “Pope emeritus” and retain the honorific “His Holiness.”
• He will continue wearing all-white outfits but will no longer rock the velvet capes, “fur-trimmed stocking caps” or those famous red shoes.
• Finally: despite widespread rumors to the contrary that began around 2005, Prada does not make the ruby red slippers and never did–they came from a tailor shop in Rome that will also be making clothes for his successor, whoever that may be.

The Vatican took nearly three years to clarify the Prada rumors via its official newspaper after The Wall Street Journal printed a story about Pope product placement that mentioned marketers “praying” to see the pontiff wear their own brands in public.

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In summary: Brandon Stanton is a New York-based photographer who runs the excellent Humans of New York page, where he posts his slice-of-life images of everyday New Yorkers and their fascinating outfits to more than half a million followers. Perfect content for an NY-centric fashion brand, no? DKNY agreed and approached Stanton with a promo opportunity, offering him $15,000 for 300 photos to use in store windows at locations “around the world.”

While interested, Stanton didn’t think the pay was enough and asked for more. DKNY declined but apparently decided to go through with its plan anyway–a fan sent him the featured photo of a window display at a DKNY outlet in Bangkok complete with dozens of his images, used “without [his] knowledge, and without compensation.”

Eww. Bad move.

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Before you ask, this is not a joke–here’s the press release to prove it.

The apparel and accessories line, designed to be “on the cutting edge of functional fashion”, will be called “Rain, Heat and Snow” in honor of the unofficial USPS motto: “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stay these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.”

It won’t just be the usual shirts, hats and footwear–it will include “wearable technology” like jackets with built-in iPod controls so mailmen can more effectively ignore the outside world while on their usual routes, controlling the free flow of information.

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As a quick recap of all the recent fashion action, New York’s Fashion Week is a multifaceted affair. Much of the media and public attention focused on the official Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week at Lincoln Center. That event concluded yesterday, but it wasn’t the only game in town: Over the past few days, Nolcha Fashion Week featured independent designers on the runways of New York’s Pier 59.

Independent designers have gained cachet during President Obama’s time in office after FLOTUS Michelle wore their creations during high profile events at the White House that provided great publicity to young designers such as Jason Wu and Isabel Toledo.

Nolcha Fashion Week capitalizes on that indie creative trend, just like the Sundance Film Festival does for independent filmmakers. As Alyson Roy, partner publicist for amp3, the PR firm that organized the event said, the fashion lounge is all about the sponsors. They included clothing and accessory designers, who displayed their wares in accessible private cabin spaces. Another sponsor manufactures hair products, so part of the event was turned into a hair salon.

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But it now appears that the retailer’s relationship with AMC is not exclusive–as anyone at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce will tell you, it often pays to have a little something going “on the side.”

Just in time for Valentines Day, Banana Republic’s global spring campaign centers on a single concept — love. Aww.

In order to get customers in the mood, the retailer will kick off its amorous rollout by hosting in-store mixers co-sponsored by Match.com. These after-hours soirees, hosted in cities like New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago, will be open to members of Match.com’s Stir events program, who can mingle with fellow cardigan-wearing singles while sipping cocktails and enjoying discounts on merchandise.

Oh, and fear not for the lonely hearts who will leave these gatherings alone; every attendee will receive a free Billy Joel CD to keep them warm on the long, cold winter nights. (Ed. note: We now assume that these events are open only to the 50-and-over set.)

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