Especially a company like Kenneth Cole, which handles its campaigns in-house. Style is personal. Calif. Clothing is a public presentation of your self. It is almost an addendum to your speech and is certainly an enactment of your personality. Fashion designers and their advertising teams know this.
Fashion houses have a rich history of making forays into the political arena.
Last year, Benetton had an ad campaign featuring interviews with, and pictures of, death-row inmates. Charles David, an upscale shoe company, mixed politics with pumps in spring 1999 when it championed resistance to Chinese rule over Tibet. Kenneth Cole, in addition to taking on the Bush administration, also made gun control an issue this year. In fact, just 24 hours before the attack on the World Trade Center, as part of New York s Fashion Week, the designer showed a video spoof of The Sopranos pleading for gun control at his runway show. Water pistols were placed on all the seats.