Apparel | Friday, December 31, 2010
COLLECTIONS, CATALOGS, COLLABORATIONS: A look at Supima in 2010
By Greg Wang
PHOENIX — It was quite a year.
Supima, the marketing company representing U.S. growers of extra-long staple Pima cotton, promoted its premium fiber in a series of ground-breaking—sometimes literally ground-breaking—collections, catalogs, and collaborations.
It really got started on January 18, when Supima drew nearly 1,000 preregistered buyers, editors, and industry execs to The Times Center (better known as “The New York Times Building”) for PREFAB, its edited sourcing show spotlighting Supima partners.
Then, the very next night, the fashion world descended on The Times Center for a live runway finale of Supima’s third Design Competition, judged by an all-star panel including Teri Agins of The Wall Street Journal, Simon Collins of Parsons School of Design, Chris Frye of Bloomingdale’s, and Horacio Silva of The New York Times.
After a video recap of the competition process, each of the six finalists presented a mini-collection of three women’s evening looks and one redesign of the classic men’s T-shirt on the runway at the Times Building (seen backstage at right in a photo by Italian journalist Giulia Piccari). Celeb fashionista Katrina Szish played host to the proceedings while supermodel Coco Rocha (attired in an outfit designed by previous winner Victor De Souza) announced the Gina DeSilva as winner of the 2010 eveningwear competition and Robin Tomas as winner of the 2010 menswear redesign.
And that was only the beginning.
If you sat in the front row of the last fashion shows to be held in Bryant Park or the first fashion shows to be staged at Lincoln Center, Supima was there too: Featured in full color in Fashion Week Daily.
Meanwhile,
the Supima Collection, a collaboration of unisex T-shirts and tops exclusive to Bloomingdale’s, started to take off.
The Supima Collection had debuted at the end of 2009, but by the beginning of this year, it was being featured editorially inside Men’s Health and on the cover of Men’s Journal magazines, had rolled out to top Bloomingdale’s venues nationwide, was touted on the Internet as the “the best T-shirt,” and held up as the gold standard by The Wall Street Journal.
Whew!
By March, it was heading into its second season at Bloomingdale’s and a
dedicated website—supporting the Collection with information on sizing, care, and Supima proven superiority to other cottons—was in the works, which debuted later that summer.
And Bloomingdale’s wasn’t the only top line retailer to enjoy success with Supima.
Lane Bryant did so well with its Supima-licensed apparel, that it dedicated the windows of its 34th Street flagship in New York to the glories of Supima Cotton.
Not very far away, on Madison Avenue, Brooks Brothers also filled its flagship’s windows with Supima: Celebrating the simultaneous success of its first-ever spring catalog of Supima apparel.
To support all those retail partnerships, Supima also trained hundreds of sales associates in the hows and whys behind Supima’s superior softness, sturdiness, and resistance to pilling. Supima VP Buxton Midyette hit the road: going to 18 of Bloomingdale’s top stores nationwide, to the 15 top Brooks Brothers stores, and holding seminars for Lane Bryant’s Northeast Leadership.
By summer, Supima had joined forces with Messe Frankfurt, the huge trade show presenter: Enfolding PREFAB—the Supima semi-annual sourcing show heretofore held at Gotham Hall or The Times Center during New York’s Textile Market Week—into Texworld USA, the Messe Frankfurt-sponsored trade show taking place at the Javits Center.
Then, Supima joined forces with
Building Fashion to create a Cotton Garden on the High Line.
You read that right. Over 600 cotton plants were trucked and transplanted to midtown Manhattan to create a flowering, green “Supima Cotton Garden” underneath a railroad trestle in a neighborhood known for galleries, art installations, and cutting-edge retail.
Then, in the Fall, Supima became a sponsor of Move! at MoMA installation that took place at PS1 over the Halloween weekend: Donating fabric to Cynthia Rowley and Narciso Rodriguez.
And garnering yet more press—everywhere from W magazine’s online Editors’ Blog to The New York Observer to Vogue Italia.
Once again, Supima joined forces with The New York Times’ T Magazine when it sponsored A Taste of T, the sold-out charity event drawing top-notch chefs (and their foodie fans) from around the country.
But that’s not enough.
Not for Supima.
Here are a few hints of what’s coming in 2010:
• More short- and long-term initiatives with design schools, like the recent donation of Fessler USA premium Supima Cotton jersey to Parsons and an change to the Supima Design Competition that puts the focus squarely on the education of emerging designers.
• An even more prestigious and high-profile venue for the fourth Supima Design Competition that will give emerging designers an international level of runway exposure and press attention.
• Bigger and better collaborations with retail partners like Brooks Brothers, Lane Bryant, and Bloomingdale’s.
Stay tuned!
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