Writers strike causes financial loss for fashion industry

Tonight will mark another McDreamy-less Thursday night. With the writers strike still going on, sitcom and drama fans are once again forced to look elsewhere for their entertainment. But, America’s viewers aren’t the only ones suffering during this time of reality-television overload.

The on going strike and all of its consequences have put a major damper on the high profile world of fashion. Every year awards shows like the Oscars, the Grammys and the Golden Globes provide a flashy red runway for designers to display their gowns and snazzy tuxedos on the most famous models of all: actors, actresses and musicians.

There are entire shows dedicated to stopping the celebrities and asking them who and what they’re wearing. This provides thousands of dollars of advertising for the dress, suit and jewelry designers. But the Writers Guild of America may bring this to a crashing halt.

If you tuned in to the Golden Globes this year, you probably noticed that something was missing. You didn’t? Well, Versace and Vera Wang sure did!
Due to the WGA’s walk out on Nov. 5, the Golden Globe awards were changed from a full-on red carpet, black-tie affair to a miniscule news conference. Where were the stars? And most importantly where were the tuxes and dresses? They were still in the closets, depriving their designers of free advertising. Take for instance, the design house Elie Saab, who struck gold when Halle Berry won her Academy Award in one of their beautiful couture gowns in 2002.

Just last year, three of the house’s dresses were worn on the red carpet by big names like Kate Walsh (“Grey’s Anatomy,” “Private Practice”), giving the designer millions of dollars worth of exposure that a runway show could not. But this year Saab and others missed out on the opportunity.

Designer Alice Temperly told Women’s Wear Daily, “It’s a shame the [Golden Globes] were cancelled last minute, as we have been working on some great dresses with some of our clients.”

Very rarely does Kate Winslet just pick a dress from her closet and slide it on for an award show. The designers spend months working with the stars to make the dresses look the way they do. They take in and let out, hem and stitch in areas to make the stars, and more importantly the dress, look stunning. Sometimes a design house makes a dress from scratch for an actress to wear to just one award show.

With these high-profile awards shows facing cancellation, couture lines are not only missing out on exposure, but they are wasting valuable time and materials. Marilyn Heston, the spokeswoman for Elie Saab, pointed out another costly consequence of the cancellation of the Globes. “Some people actually buy [the] dresses, believe it or not,” said Heston.

While most actresses and musicians are given the dresses to wear for the night for free, some people, like the wives of the actors and studio executives, purchase the dresses ranging from hundreds to thousands of dollars.

But why buy a dress if you have nowhere to wear it? The design houses are now facing the possibility of losing millions of dollars worth of profits if the dresses begin getting returned.

Unfortunately, since the cancellation of the Golden Globes, the WGA has been talking about boycotting other ceremonies as well. The Grammys are coming up on Feb. 10, but if negotiations are not settled by then, the Writers Guild may decide to picket the event. The Screen Actors Guild and other organizations now working in solidarity with the WGA may also picket.

The joint picketing and boycotting would cause a significant drop in attendance and may even cause the Grammys to be cancelled. This would cost the fashion industry more astonishing amounts of money when taking into consideration the number of actors and musicians who usually attend and the multiple wardrobe changes made by hosts and performers.

Still, the Grammys aren’t the main concern of the most famous design houses. Women’s Wear Daily recently stated, “Hollywood and the fashion industry are worried that the biggest awards show of them all, the Oscars, might be a casualty if the Writers Guild of America strike isn’t settled.”

Many recent news stories have been saying that informal negotiations with the Writers Guild are scheduled to begin again as early as this week.
Let’s hope they get things settled quickly, because like the fashion world, we can’t afford another week without our TV shows.