Fashion That Makes You Feel Good

Just when you thought the fashion industry was all about profiting off of superficiality, you run across articles such as this one that make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside. This Washington Post article profiles a young fashion entrepreneur, Mycoskie, who started an Argentinean leather shoe company, called "Shoes For Tomorrow" or TOMS for short. For every shoe it sells, it gives back one to a village child in need. The Post says that Mycoskie's shoes were quickly "adopted by the fashion pack", and 10,000 shoes were sold in a year. Mycoskie just made his second trip to Argentina to donate 50,000 TOMS.

But wait! The charity doesn't end there. The fashion industry just started a major three-week designer sample sale, called 7th On Sale, which raises funds for AIDS charities. An article in Thursday's New York Times discusses how 7th on Sale works (thanks to classmate Tatyana Shumsky for sending me the link):

The amount of time and energy that goes into the making of 7th on Sale, a three-week superheated sample sale that begins with a gala tonight, might be roughly equivalent to that of opening a new designer flagship in a week. The event, a fund-raiser for AIDS charities that was revived by the Council of Fashion Designers of America and Vogue two years ago, has expanded to include three days of public shopping at the 69th Regiment Armory, at 68 Lexington Avenue (tickets are $20 and available at www.7thonsale.ebay.com). Another 10,000 items will be sold on eBay through Dec. 6. The goal is to raise $4.2 million.

This is some serious dinero, people. The NYT goes on to describe the set up:

The clothes, 37,000 items donated by designers, were divided on rolling racks by classification: black gowns, navy gowns, neutral gowns, printed gowns; men’s black coats, men’s brown coats, etc. There were 3,500 cashmere sweaters. An entire table was covered with handbags, dominated by a pink crocodile Balenciaga bag, discounted from $22,000 to $7,000.

Wow, this sounds really great, except for that whole price tag part. If you still want to buy clothes and feel good about yourself, not to worry, you can still cash in on other cause marketing opportunities. Even if Gap isn't selling much anything else these days, it's (PRODUCT)RED campaign, which donates part of proceeds to fighting AIDS in Africa, is still going strong. You can buy a T-shirt for as little as $28, which sounds lot better to me than that $7,000 spent on Balenciaga.