A Designer Explains the Effect of the Writers’ Strike on FashionAfter the Fug Girls got us thinking about the effect the WGA strike would have on the fashion industry, we caught up with designer Phillip Lim and asked him about it at Repetto’s 60th-anniversary party last week. Lim is a well liked, quickly rising designer who has been showing since fall 2005, and is therefore a good example of a designer who is established but by no means on as stable ground as any of the giant houses that have been around for much longer. So what does he think about the strike, which is appearing to affect more and more people as time goes on? “It’s about how it trickles down to retailers, how it trickles down to restaurants, how it trickles down to the community,” said the bubbly Lim. “They’ve got to work it out and get on with it. It’s almost selfish to just keep on with the struggle.” So if it affects everybody, it must be affecting Lim himself, right? “For us, we have a distribution in Los Angeles. Our stores, people we sell to, they’re affected by it. So in the end it affects us.” And the loss of award shows? “[A presence on the red carpet] boosts business, but we didn’t build our business on that premise, so in the end it doesn’t hurt us a ton,” Lim explained. “We make clothes for the ‘everywoman,’ you know.” Still, we’re guessing some other, more gown-oriented designers (Marchesa, much?) would have killed for the opportunity to dress Keira Knightley last Sunday…—Jada Yuan
Earlier: No Golden Globes? Now Everything’s Fugged Up
Related: Mr. In-Between [NYM]
gossipmonger
Ben Gazzara Will Have a Doggie BagBen Gazzara and his wife used to sneak their dog into restaurants in a bag,
until they got busted at a French bistro. Google co-founder Larry
Page is getting married this Saturday on a Caribbean island owned by
Richard Branson.
company town
Our Next President Will Probably Be a Lawyer. Objections?FINANCE
• A former Morgan Stanley VP and her hedge-fund husband pleaded guilty in yet another instance of “pillow-talk” insider trading. [Bloomberg]
• Richard Josephberg, a longtime financier and former Goldman analyst, was sentenced to four years behind bars for failing to pay his taxes for 29 years. That’s one year in the slammer for every seven without the IRS, not bad. [NYT]
• The unexplained cancellation of Henry Kravis’s little talk at the NYPL has some wondering whether he’s riding Steve Schwarzman’s coattails once again — only this time out of the spotlight. [Deal Journal/WSJ]