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>>I'm excited to be taking part in this. My name is Steven Kolb and I am the CEO of the
CFDA, and that is the Council of Fashion Designers of America. We're a 52 year old organization
that represents the American fashion industry.
>>When you're a business and, and you're working in a industry like fashion, you sometimes
are so focused on what you're doing, er, or you're isolated on working on the next collection,
and what we do is we bring these designers together, we've actually created a family
of American designers, er, so that there's opportunity for sharing experiences, working
together and really the collective power of fashion journals. Individual brands alone
have impact but when you take 450 brands and you add that up to a 350 billion dollar a
year business that's quite powerful.
>>We work with 20 schools here in the United States and we're starting to work with international
schools, and because those schools are all over the country our ability to interact with
those students is limited to New York in person. So we actually, with our education department
are constantly Skype-ing with students in Los Angeles, down at Scatton in Savanaha,
Risby in New Hampshire, and the technology has really abled us to kind of have that one
on one but also to see first hand the work of those students.
>>To be a successful designer you really need to understand the mechanics of making clothes.
It's not just about sketching or having good style, it's really how do you make clothes
and what is the business of fashion. Once you've got a good idea and once you've, er,
kind of, er, owned that idea how do you take that to, um, production? How do you source
fabric for that? And that's the part that I think many people don't really understand
is, is the really the important part of being a, a designer.
>>I would say patience first and then second I would say, a point of view,, being distinctive
and owning what you do, and, and defining yourself with some signature. Don't care so
much what the person next to you is doing, or behind you is doing, or ahead of you is
doing. Just focus on your own work and pay attention to that and own that.
>>I do have a, a personal interest to see some of the designers who come from Fashion
Fund or Incubator that, the fact that Jonathan is doing great, Public School I'm very proud
of. Provo who was both in Incubator and in Fashion Fund I'm very proud of him, and the
guys at Rag and Bone I remember them when I first started at CFA and they were a small
brand and now they are this huge, uh, American lifestyle brand. So, you know I'm happy for
everyone but of course those that you've seen, I remember Alexander *** when he applied
for Fashion Fund, he was a kid and he walked into the CFA office with his application and,
you know, kind of shy and awkward and now look at him. Not only is he head of his namesake
brand but he is the creative director of Balenciaga, so that was a really proud moment for all
of us at CFA and Fashion Fund.
>>She's incredibly accessible, I talk to her frequently on the phone, email every, every
day, and, and for someone who's running a very big business she, she makes herself available.
So we've been really lucky to have her as the President of the CFA.
>>Look we've got a lot of exciting things going on here at CFA, er, always every year
in June we have the CFA fashion awards, which is the Oscars of fashion, so, it's quite a
glamorous event. We're awarding the best menswear, womenswear, accessory designers, and a style
icon, new talent. We're excited because this year, it's the first Monday of June, this
year for the first year we are actually going to do a live stream of that awards at our
website CFA.com. So I believe it's the first time inside that event is really wide open
to a broader audience so we are really excited about that. The other thing we've been working
on, uh, as um as we have supported young talent, young creative talent, we've launch a program
called the Fashion Manufacturing Initiative which is a, um, support program for New York
City based production facilities, factories. So we're about announce some grants, uh, to,
uh, improve the production equipment and facilities in New York City with the end hope of it increasing
production which ultimately will mean more jobs and better quality products, so made
in New York City products through the FMI. So FMI and er CFA.com, first Monday in June,
live stream of the CFA fashion awards.