Finally, Women’s Wear Daily Gives L.A. a Little R-E-S-P-E-C-T
Look out, New York. Los Angeles fashion is finally getting some respect.
Women’s Wear Daily, the bible of Seventh Avenue garmentos, is beefing up West Coast coverage and circulation. Starting Aug. 21, the trade paper will be available on newsstands and to subscribers on the day it’s published. For decades, any city outside of metropolitan New York received the papers in the mail up to a week late.
The move comes in response to California’s growing importance to the apparel industry, said WWD Editor in Chief Edward Nardoza. “On the manufacturing side alone, there are more apparel manufacturers in California than in any state in the country,” said Nardoza. “It’s common sense and prudent business, and we would be derelict if we didn’t do this.”
“Los Angeles,” said WWD Worldwide President Stephanie George, “is the second-biggest market domestically and the market with the most potential for the future.”
More of California’s trendsetters could crop up in W, the sister publication to WWD for consumers, as the two publications continue to share some society and other fashion news.
The West Coast initiative has made the 10-person Los Angeles bureau the second largest after New York, with the addition of three more reporters and a larger advertising sales staff. Their efforts will show up on Mondays with the addition of four to seven pages of West Coast coverage of designers, manufacturers and retailers. An additional 10,000 copies of the 45,000-circulation Fairchild Publications Inc. paper will be printed at a new West Coast facility and flown to other major markets outside N.Y.
The big California push is by the new owners of WWD. Last August, Advance Publications Inc. purchased Fairchild from the Walt Disney Co. Advance, controlled by the Newhouse family, is the parent company of Conde Nast, whose fashion titles include Vogue, Glamour, Mademoiselle, Allure, GQ and Brides.
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Joan and Melissa Rivers, E! Entertainment Television’s comic couture correspondents, will stump in their designer pumps at both the Republican and Democratic national conventions next month.
And, as they do with their annual Oscar fashion telecast, the mother and daughter duo will analyze--and skewer--the fashion statements of politicians, delegates and celebrities when the network premieres its first-ever “Political Fashion Review” on Aug. 26.
Of course, by then the dust will have settled from both conventions--just in time for J&M; to kick it up again with their savvy and venom-filled review. After all, this is politics.
