Silence on Seventh Avenue

By Michele Orecklin

Arnold Scaasi dressed his first First Lady in 1958, when he was called upon by Mamie Eisenhower. Over the years, he has maintained a relationship with the White House, most notably as Barbara Bush's chief couturier but also with her daughter-in-law Laura and, on one occasion, Hillary Clinton. In interviews and in his new book, Women I Have Dressed (and Undressed), Scaasi ruminates easily on the comeliness of Mamie's bosom or how Barbara looks in nothing but a slip. Yet there is one topic he considers inappropriate to discuss--with either his Washington wives or the public--and that is politics. "Clothes have nothing to do with politics. You dress someone because they like your clothes and because they look well in your clothes," he says. "Fashion is aesthetic, not political."

Whether or not they share his philosophy, the vast majority of American fashion designers seem to share Scaasi's restraint. This fall a crush of actors and musicians is employing every shred of their public clout to sway voters toward a particular candidate, risking as much criticism as praise. Though silence on topics outside one's immediate purview is no doubt appreciated in many quarters, the closest a prominent U.S. designer is likely to get to such activism is to dress a Dixie Chick. Like other artists, designers must constantly monitor and process the public mood to create a relevant product, but whether out of economic self-interest or lack of curiosity, such consideration rarely translates into political expression.

Scaasi does allow that when Hillary Clinton moved into the White House, he at first had no interest in working with her. His reluctance had little to do with ideology; he was merely concerned about offending Barbara Bush. The fear of alienating friends or customers is a potent one, particularly since most major designers boast fewer paying fans than do most major musicians or actors. It's the kind of trepidation that Stacey Bendet, designer of the line Alice + Olivia, has encountered since co-founding the collective Democracy in Fashion. Bendet, 26, an ardent and open Democrat, has been recruiting designers to affix politically inspired tags to items of clothing in their current collections. One side of the tag explains the group's mission, which is to "unite fashion designers, members of the retail world and consumers to raise money in support of the 2004 Democratic candidates." On the other side, designers are urged to include a quote or reference to a socially relevant topic. Alice + Olivia items, for example, include a quote by Theodore Roosevelt that reads, "To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public."

Though she was able to get Diane von Furstenberg, Sigerson Morrison and Nanette Lepore on board, she had trouble convincing other high-profile designers. "I think the issue has been that designers, especially those with their own retail locations, don't want to aggravate their customers and drive them away from the store," she says. Bendet is not worried about taking a pro-Kerry stance because, as she puts it, the typical Alice + Olivia customer is "younger and open-minded, an uptown/downtown girl, not someone in a Chanel suit."

Bendet's implication, one often heard, is that the woman in the Chanel suit or other ensemble appropriate for lunching at Le Bernardin is probably married to a wealthy Republican who does not want his wife clothed by a card-carrying member of the A.C.L.U. And while this is a gross--and deeply cynical--generalization, it's more charitable than another frequently suggested possibility, which is that designers are too myopic to concern themselves with anything outside their showroom.

It's an issue deeply vexing to Kenneth Cole, who throughout his career has cannily linked the marketing of his product to liberal social causes, like homelessness and gun control. Cole says that while there are "inspired and bright people in our business, I seem to have found myself somewhat alone." He posits that many designers tend to filter out politics and "just try to interpret what's going on in the culture through a sense of sensuality ... Their art is where they feel comfortable." He claims to approach fashion differently, having come to it after studying law and political science. "To me, fashion is essentially a reflection of the times, an indication of where we are individually and collectively, and I don't know how to create clothes and not relate to the whole person."

Notwithstanding some irate letters, Cole says he has no fears about financial repercussions. "I think consumers are more enlightened for the most part than to change their shopping habits based on the designer's perspective," he says. Yet he is reluctant to define his advertising as political or use it to endorse a specific candidate. "I believe that most of our messages are social messages and human messages," he says, "and to the degree that you read them as political, they invariably get discounted." For many people reading Cole's latest print ads, however--such as "With the new $1 trillion deficit, our leaders must think our future doesn't count"--the difference between political and social seems largely semantic.

Cole is hardly alone in distancing himself from "politics." Despite the presence in the windows of Marc Jacobs stores this past spring of T shirts emblazoned with the face of Hillary Clinton, Robert Duffy, president of Marc Jacobs International, disavows any political intent. "We weren't trying to be partisan or controversial," he says. "We were just having a discussion about women we admire, and Hillary was one of them. We also did T shirts with Kim Gordon [of Sonic Youth], but no one said anything about those." The store has also displayed overtly political T shirts and other items created for the liberal group Downtown for Democracy.

Duffy says the extent to which the company has entered into politics is in urging people to vote by providing voter-registration applications at its retail stores. "I think everyone should vote," he says, "which is not a controversial thing." In fact, it's a cause so universally supported that it has been taken up on T shirts created by Sean Combs, Russell Simmons and Donna Karan, among many others. After all, it's not the act of voting to which people are likely to object, but whom you're voting for.