Eating Crow

Just over a week ago I lambasted the Fashion District for being shockingly unfashionable. I am sorry and would like to repent, and offer this as an apology to the Fashionista Mafia. I could delete the post, but I think it still has some valid points. Plus I'm lazy. What I've learned, however, changes my opinion of the districts credibility as a fashion hot-spot, which I now realize I was overly smug about. It's there, just hidden under the mindless New York grime.
The day after I published my post, I saw a fashion shoot on my way to work. The next day I saw another. Then I stumbled upon, not one, but three schools of design or fashion. Then the myriad of fabric shops, tucked away on second stories, began to appear once I looked hard. All the necessary tools that would seem to support an industry of textile based creation.

Then I started walking the other direction. I walked away from Times Square, away from the ritzy glitter and Whopper Bar (where you can soon grab a Budweiser with your Whopper). Down the side streets I trod, discovering all I had neglected in my previous post. Suddenly, block after block produced stores and haunts that could only exist in the fashion district.

Yet the most curious thing about it was that each block specialized in one area. I walked down wholesale Handbag Street, which likely explains where all the handbag carts around Times Square get supplied. I saw Sportswear Street, with nameless, logo-less jerseys hinted at your ol' hometown team. Fabric Street I mentioned before near the Port Authority Terminal. All similar in concentration to Diamond Street near Rockefeller Center. How strange it is to find streets where every vendor specializes in the same goods.

Stranger still to think that this developed naturally in our free-market Capitalist economy, while the only other place I've seen with such a curious concentration of similar shops is the Socialistic economy of Shanghai, China. To think that both systems, seemingly as diverse as could be, arrive at the same conclusion is remarkable, if indeed I've interpreted correctly.

Capitalist or not (but it most certainly is), the fashion district deserves more credit than I've given it. I walk its 10 dreariest, over commercialized block everyday, which has no doubt soured and blinded me to it's merits. Its still grimy, and unless you're curious to see Handbag Street, and I can name more than a few who would be, I wouldn't recommend it. But at least now I don't need to look over my shoulder for the Fashionista Mafia.