'Dem Bones Gonna Rise Again'

I was in Vegas yesterday for Magic, the ginormous fashion tradeshow partly to blog about it and partly to find a U.S. manufacturer for another project I'm working on. It was my first time at Magic and to be honest, my first real exposure to the fashion industry. Apart from my own scarce shopping trips into the juniors department at Macy's and a local boutique I love in Noe Valley, I don't spend that much time on my look. It's one of the many things on my list of, if I had lots of money….I would hire a stylist, go shopping with them once and tell them, "yes, that's totally me," and then just let them dress me.

Shopping tires me out, much to the chagrin of one of my oldest friends who could shop all day long. We talked about traveling together to Italy once, and she literally vetoed the idea because she knew I wouldn't shop with her. So walking through booth after booth of endless clothing, shoes and accessories in football stadium sized convention halls wasn't exactly my idea of fun. What made it fun for me were the people — the fashion industry seems like a really colorful, diverse, creative space to be in. Think about any tech or marketing conference you've been to, where there's one or two people with funky glasses, tattoos, pink hair or whose outfit is just really daring and different. Then multiply those individuals by the thousands, and you have Magic. You have hipsters, hip hoppers (every hip hop star has a line — I've never seen that much bling up close before), and the international community that makes most of the clothes.

And that was just Magic, when I headed over to the POOL show next door, it was like a crafts fair for hipsters. POOL is where the up-and-coming cool kids all hang out. And…Disney. Disney couture was at POOL — they seemed like the really rich kid with ripped jeans. What I saw everywhere both at Magic and POOL was skulls. The other week I asked Kate, one of the teens working with me on the Ypulse podcast, what was hot in teen fashion right now. She said, "skulls." Kate has platinum hair (I think it's natural), and tends to dress slightly goth with black ripped t-shirts that have some kind of monster movie on them. So I thought, yes, maybe skulls are in for a specific type of teen. At Magic/POOL, skulls were everywhere — the scary biker/death metal connotation all but erased. There were skulls with flowers, embroidered skulls, skulls with pig tails, cutesy skulls…there were probably pink baby clothes with skulls somewhere. There was also this beautiful skull parasol from a company called RETRO -a-go-go!.

I saw Ypulse reader Pam from The Beacon Street Girls at their booth over in the kids section. It was their first time at Magic, too, although you wouldn't know it from their booth. It was very elaborate and full of color, along with their characters, books and lots of other stuff including the Sleepover bag. In fact they have declared 2007, "Year of the Sleepover," in an attempt to show sleepovers still remain incredibly popular with girls — even if the girls are crowded around someone's MySpace page giggling in their PJs. They have also teamed with internet safety and bullying experts to address cyberbullying in their latest tween title: Just Kidding.

Another fun company to watch is switchring. They were at POOL with their little plastic rings that you can pop new designs in and out of. I thought they were brilliant and perfect for teen girls to wear something trendy and cheap. I told them they should open up their design process a la Threadless and let their customers compete to get their designs made into ring fillers.

The two booths that disturbed me most - American Apparel. The staff literally jumped out of the pages of their risque catalogues, uber short shorts and all. There is just something off about the blatant sexual aspect of their brand that bugs me. I know they say their demo is 18 and up, but I also know teens love them. What bugged me even more was the booth sporting a line of poll dancing clothes for juniors. Ick.

Maybe next time I'll be at Magic as an exhibitor if my project takes off. Either way, I left kind of wanting to go back. And next time, I will wear sneakers…with skulls on them.

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