Seems like everyone had a fotzy good time last night at Fashion's Night Out.
There are millions of opinions about Fashion’s Night Out and half of them belong to me. My client, the Meatpacking District, was agog with festivities, in the streets, in the stores, the energy was palpable from the second the clock struck 6PM. It was like New Year’s Eve came early…only with shopping. Did you buy something? I did. Everyone that participated in Fashion Lives Downtown did a fantastic job and this new found retail holiday needs to happen every month. Maybe not with such a fervor and expense. But Fashion’s Night Out needs to be monthly. Period. Retailers needs more than one day a year to be so magnanimous as to how they welcome customers. My suggestion is that the marketing department of Vogue, NYC & Company, a few key fashion notables, editors and Me 
need to create a Fashion’s Night Out Committee (think Obama Administration). The role of this committee is to strategize and develop a series of retail activations that individual retailers can adopt into their marketing plans. The ongoing fund-raising piece is extremely viable. It is clear that just sticking a big SALE sign is not working. On the contrary, going on sale early has been one of the problems of the industry. As is the immediacy of fashion via the internet. Donna Karan should definitely be on that committee. Since the economy crashed and the CFDA started having emergency meetings, Donna was the most vocal member to clearly say what was not working. Has the industry adopted many changes since that first meeting at F.I.T? Not much. But the fashion industry is like a submarine, and changing course is not easy, or immediate.
Anyway…on a celebratory note…year two, Anna Wintour, you have done NYC and the industry proud. Though now it has moved more democratically into the hands of more than just Vogue…I still have to give you props for coming up with this hair-brained scheme last year. The only thing that I wonder about are these downmarket activations that attract schnorrers. This is why I’d like to see more continuity. If there’s less free crap being handed out in the streets, those people to hover likes moths to a flame for anything free will slink away and the real shoppers will shop…which is the original purpose of Fashion’s Night Out.
