Photo: IslandDefJam.com

-The Senate has voted to preserve the Bush-era tax cuts for people making less than $250,000 per year. This is great, in the sense that something actually made it through Congress without all the drama we’ve grown used to. But the argument is still being made that this is the worst Congress ever.

-Nas’ new album “Life Is Good” debuts at number one, selling 149,000 copies, according to Nielsen Soundscan. This is the artist’s sixth number one album. It’s his ninth number one on the R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart. Frank Ocean’s “Channel Orange” slips from number two to number four.

-The drought that’s currently plaguing about two-thirds of the country is going to cost at least $12 billion, the most since 1988. The figure is an estimate right now, but an August 10 report will put the damage to crops into clearer relief. Insurance payouts to farmers promises to be huge, and food prices are going to increase, perhaps as much as three or four percent.

-Hope your mailbox can handle the massive size of the fashion magazines heading your way. The September issues, typically one of the biggest of the year for a number of titles, is going to be a record-breaker for a number of mags, including Elle, Marie Claire, Vogue and People StyleWatch.

-The London Olympic Games kick off tomorrow and NBC says they’ve sold $1 billion worth of television and digital advertising for the event. Even with that huge figure (it’s $150 million more than what was sold for Beijing in 2008), the network doesn’t expect to turn a profit. ???!

-The backlash against Chick-Fil-A is coming at them fast and furious. First because the company’s president and CEO Dan Cathy gave interviews in which he condemned same-sex marriage (Chick-Fil-A is known to have donated nearly $2 million to anti-gay organizations). Now because it appears the chicken chain has created a fake Facebook page to defend itself.

l to r: photos by James Anthony Photo, Elliot & Erick

Quick. Which of these looks is “high-fashion”? Which is “urban”?

The answer to the second question is none of them, according to Mychael Knight, the designer who created all of them.

“I will correct someone very quickly when they say I am an ‘urban designer’ or a ‘hip-hop designer,” he said. “There is nothing wrong with [designing hip-hop-inspired sportswear], but it’s just not what I do.”

As for the answer to the first question, Knight, who is black, cites an “invisible barrier” that reserves “high-fashion” anointing for a privileged circle of designers—very few of which are black. “Tracy Reese and Rachel Roy - they’ve penetrated that, but I don’t ever really see any placement of them in fashion magazines”—an indication that Reese and Roy are not readily on the mind of prominent editors and stylists.

Perhaps observant of this trend, some black designers early in their careers choose to use white models, particularly for lookbooks, which are prepared for press and buyers, and on their websites where customers seeking high-fashion looks (assumed to be white) can immediately imagine themselves in their pieces.  Though Knight regularly casts models of color for both his runway shows and his lookbooks, he can guess why some African-American designers skip over black models altogether.

“When you open up a fashion magazine—a Vogue or an Elle,” Knight points out, “you never see black models. You think, as a black designer, ‘well, if I need my brand [or] my product to get noticed I need to use the white models.’”  It’s like high school, Knight explains. “People feel like they to need fit in.”

Model booker Carole White gave New York Magazine the racial breakdown as it applies to models.  “Asian girls do really well. You can’t have too many, but they do really well, and it’s quite easy to book them. For Black girls, it is more difficult.” White is further quoted as saying, “[Black models] have to be utterly amazing. There will be less work. It takes much longer to establish them… because clients don’t take the risk on black girls so much.” For this reason, White admits agencies are “very, very picky” when it comes to signing black models. “Maybe you’re not as picky with the white girls, because there’s more work for them.”

With African-American models facing a shrunken market, getting passed over by black designers only further threatens their livelihood. It also perpetuates old school notions of what, and who, represents luxury versus the aesthetic of the street.

(Mashable) – After collectively losing nearly a quarter of their ad pages in 2009, fashion magazines are poised to make a big comeback in ad sales in 2010 — but the recovered revenue may not come from print sales. Instead, the publishers of major U.S. fashion magazines are ramping up their digital and mobile offerings to meet advertisers’ increasing demands to reach consumers on those platforms.

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