Melie Bianco Celebrates Memorial Day with American Fashion Designers

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Yes, we are addicted to fashion, and we admire the creative design process. We are always seeking a bargain, and we shop online for the best deals we can find. So, get ready for Memorial Day with a celebration of American Designers at an additional 20% off, and remember our heros who lived their lives to make America our home.

MORE ABOUT Memorial Day
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Memorial Day is a United States federal holiday that is observed on the last Monday of May (observed in 2008 on May 26). It was formerly known as Decoration Day. This holiday commemorates U.S. men and women who have died in military service to their country. It began first to honor Union soldiers who died during the American Civil War. After World War I, it was expanded to include those who died in any war or military action. One of the longest standing traditions is the running of the Indianapolis 500, which has been held in conjunction with Memorial Day since 1911. It is also traditionally viewed as the beginning of summer by many, for many schools are dismissed around Memorial Day.

Many people observe this holiday by visiting cemeteries and memorials. A national moment of remembrance takes place at 3 p.m. US Eastern time. Another tradition is to fly the U.S. flag at half-staff from dawn until noon local time. Volunteers place a U.S. flag upon each gravesite located in a National Cemetery.

Many politicians and community leaders give speeches at community gatherings on Memorial Day.In addition to remembrance, Memorial Day is also a time for picnics, family gatherings, and sporting events. Some Americans also view Memorial Day as the unofficial beginning of summer and Labor Day as the unofficial end of the season. The national Click it or ticket campaign ramps up beginning Memorial Day weekend, noting the beginning of the most dangerous season for auto accidents and other safety related incidents. The USAF "101 Critical days of summer" begin on this day as well. Some Americans use Memorial Day to also honor any family members who have died, not just servicemen.

Flags flying at Fort Logan National Cemetery during Memorial Day 2006.Memorial Day formerly occurred on May 30, and some, such as the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) and Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War (SUVCW), advocate returning to this fixed date, although the significance of the date is tenuous. The VFW stated in a 2002 Memorial Day Address, "Changing the date merely to create three-day weekends has undermined the very meaning of the day. No doubt, this has contributed a lot to the general public's nonchalant observance of Memorial Day."

Following the end of the Civil War, many communities set aside a day to mark the end of the war or as a memorial to those who had died. Some of the places creating an early memorial day include Charleston, South Carolina; Boalsburg, Pennsylvania; Richmond, Virginia; Carbondale, Illinois; Columbus, Mississippi; many communities in Vermont; and some two dozen other cities and towns. These observances eventually coalesced around Decoration Day, honoring the Union dead, and the several Confederate Memorial Days.

Decoration Day, c. 1900. "You bet I'm goin' to be a soldier, too, like my Uncle David, when I grow up."According to Professor David Blight of the Yale University History Department, the first memorial day was observed in 1865 by liberated slaves at the historic race track in Charleston. The site was a former Confederate prison camp as well as a mass grave for Union soldiers who had died while captive. A parade with thousands of freed blacks and Union soldiers was followed by patriotic singing and a picnic.

The official birthplace of Memorial Day is Waterloo, New York. The village was credited with being the birthplace because it observed the day on May 5, 1866, and each year thereafter, and because it is likely that the friendship of General John Murray, a distinguished citizen of Waterloo, and General John A. Logan, who led the call for the day to be observed each year and helped spread the event nationwide, was a key factor in its growth.

General Logan had been impressed by the way the South honored their dead with a special day and decided the Union needed a similar day. Reportedly, Logan said that it was most fitting; that the ancients, especially the Greeks, had honored their dead, particularly their heroes, by chaplets of laurel and flowers, and that he intended to issue an order designating a day for decorating the grave of every soldier in the land, and if he could he would have made it a holiday.

Logan had been the principal speaker in a citywide memorial observation on April 29, 1866, at a cemetery in Carbondale, Illinois, an event that likely gave him the idea to make it a national holiday. On May 5, 1868, in his capacity as commander-in-chief of the Grand Army of the Republic, a veterans' organization, Logan issued a proclamation that "Decoration Day" be observed nationwide. It was observed for the first time on May 30 of the same year; the date was chosen because it was not the anniversary of a battle. The tombs of fallen Union soldiers were decorated in remembrance of this day.

Many of the states of the U.S. South refused to celebrate Decoration Day, due to lingering hostility towards the Union Army and also because there were very few veterans of the Union Army who lived in the South. A notable exception was Columbus, Mississippi, which on April 25, 1866 at its Decoration Day commemorated both the Union and Confederate casualties buried in its cemetery.

The alternative name of "Memorial Day" was first used in 1882, but did not become more common until after World War II, and was not declared the official name by Federal law until 1967 . On June 28, 1968, the United States Congress passed the Uniform Holidays Bill, which moved three holidays from their traditional dates to a specified Monday in order to create a convenient three-day weekend and for the first time recognized Columbus Day as a federal holiday. The holidays included Washington's Birthday (which evolved into Presidents' Day), Veterans Day, and Memorial Day. The change moved Memorial Day from its traditional May 30 date to the last Monday in May. The law took effect at the federal level in 1971 . After some initial confusion and unwillingness to comply at the state level, all fifty states adopted the measure within a few years, although Veterans Day was eventually changed back to its traditional date. Ironically, most corporate businesses no longer close on Columbus Day or Veterans Day, and an increasing number are staying open on President's Day as well. The holiday has endured as one where most businesses stay closed because it marks the beginning of the "summer vacation season" (similar to neighboring Canada's Victoria Day, which occurs on the prior Monday).

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Years of record growth for handbag sales could be over

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By Cotten Timberlake Bloomberg News

NEW YORK: The $7 billion market in the United States for handbags, the fastest-growing product in the fashion industry, might be slowing from the record growth seen in recent years. Some analysts and retailers say that the increases in U.S. handbag sales may have peaked, as competition from other accessories like shoes and jewelry heats up and as higher gasoline and mortgage costs slows consumer spending. The sales increases that reached as high as 28 percent in 2004, the strongest annual pace on record, could fall back to as little as 15 percent this year, with no signs of recovering before 2009, according to the Telsey Advisory Group, a stock research firm in New York.

The firm was founded by Dana Telsey, a retail industry analyst who was ranked the top speciality stores analyst by Institutional Investor magazine every year in the seven years to 2005. Stephen Sadove, chief executive of Saks, said the handbag's status as a must-have item is being challenged. "It used to be all about the shoes and our woman had so many shoes in her closet, then it became the multiplicity of handbags," Sadove told investors at a Goldman Sachs conference in September. "What you are seeing now is a new trend, which is branded designer fine jewelry."

Handbag makers, led by Coach and Louis Vuitton, are vying for the attention of affluent consumers, who are turning their attention to items like Tory Burch ballet flats and David Yurman bracelets, retail executives said. "The handbag business has softened up a little bit," said Kathryn Deane, president of Tobe, a fashion consulting firm in New York whose clients have included Macy's, Bloomingdale's, Nordstrom and Neiman Marcus. "When the consumer looks at accessories, she is not just looking at handbags anymore."

U.S. sales of handbags costing at least $100 could expand 20 percent this year, compared with a 22 percent increase last year, according to research from Coach, a maker of handbags and other accessories in New York. Coach and Telsey began providing sales data on handbags in 2001, after demand began to soar in the late 1990s. Patricia Edwards, who helps manage investments including Coach shares at Wentworth, Hauser & Violich in Seattle, said, "Slower growth in the handbag segment overall is a prudent outlook given the economic situation we find ourselves in right now."

Coach, whose handbags sell for $200 to $400, expects overall revenue, which also includes jewelry, shoes and fragrances, to rise 21 percent in the year through June 28, 2008, said its chief financial officer, Michael Devine, at an analyst meeting at the company's headquarters in New York in September. In the year that ended in June, the company recorded a 28 percent rise, with handbags accounting for 64 percent of Coach's sales.

Sales at Coach stores in North America that have been open at least a year will rise "north of 10 percent," Devine said. His guidance is similar to what the company has said in previous years. In the year that ended in June, those sales rose 22 percent. Coach is introducing three handbag lines this year. The retailer will need popular new products and a more buoyant economy to sustain the revenue gains of recent years, said Edwards, at Wentworth Howard.

"The growth further out might be more problematic unless they have a fabulous product line coincidental with better economic news," Edwards said. While sales gains may be slowing, handbags are still leading the growth in the U.S. fashion industry, ahead of earrings, wallets and other small leather goods, according to NPD Group, a market research firm in Port Washington, New York. Coach shares have risen 8.6 percent this year through Monday, outpacing the 7.7 percent climb for LVMH stock and the 1.5 percent decline for the Standard & Poor's 500 index of 29 U.S. retailers

Louis Vuitton has found that "growth in the U.S. luxury market segment continues to accelerate on an annual basis," said Molly Morse, a spokeswoman for the company. She declined to provide more detailed figures, and Louis Vuitton does not provide revenue figures for its various divisions.

John Guy, an analyst at MF Global Securities in London, estimated that sales of fashion and leather goods at LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, the parent company of Louis Vuitton, could slow from the 11 percent growth recorded in 2006. At Prada, based in Milan, "we are growing the handbag business at a faster pace compared to other product categories," said a spokesman, Tomaso Galli, who declined to give specific figures. "We plan to continue to do so going forward." Prada and Gucci, owned by PPR, declined to provide sales forecasts.

A Goldman Sachs survey of 1,550 U.S. consumers that was released in June found that 32 percent expected to buy fewer handbags this year. About 18 percent said they would buy more, and 51 percent said they planned to purchase the same number. A survey of 1,491 people in May by WSL Strategic Retail, a consulting firm in New York, showed that 43 percent of women respondents were reducing personal spending because of higher gasoline prices. Of those, 73 percent said they would cut back on fashion accessories, said Wendy Liebmann, the president of WSL.

In a WSL survey carried out six months earlier, 32 percent were cutting back on spending, and 62 percent identified fashion accessories, a category that can include purses, jewelry, belts and scarves, as an area to rein in purchases. "That's what makes us nervous, the 11-point increase in the number," Liebmann said. Her firm's clients include Saks, Target and J.C. Penney.

For premium handbags, which sell for at least $300 and represent 80 percent of the U.S. market, price growth was 14 percent in 2006, the same rate of growth for the entire handbag market, according to Telsey Advisory. Cristin Murphy, who lives in Aliso Veijo, California, illustrates the overall market trend. She said her spending on bags peaked in 2003, leaving her with a handbag wardrobe that included five Coach, two Prada, a Burberry, and a Kate Spade. "I have kind of made my investment in handbags," Murphy said. "So I do not necessarily need to go out and buy a bag today."

Is This It for the It Bag?

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By ERIC WILSON

EVERYONE’S talking about the bubble, and when it will burst.

There is too much inventory. Prices are absurdly high. And analysts are predicting a slowdown in a market that may have already passed its peak of irrational growth, in 2004. Even as prices have increased exponentially over the last three years, with buyers trying to get in on the ground floor of premier properties — the Paddington, the Muse, the Giant City — so, too, have reports of dwindling consumer confidence and a looming credit crisis that could potentially wipe out the value of Uptowns and Downtowns alike. Some people are concerned that a combination of volatile interest rates and the weakened dollar will ultimately cripple the market. Status handbags, you see, are a lot like housing. After the rise of the $1,000 purse, fashion’s equivalent of the $1 million studio, there inevitably comes talk of a backlash. Are we now living in a handbag bubble?

“The new condo market today is comparable to the It bag,” said Stephanie Phair, the vice president for merchandising for Portero, an online auction house that specializes in the resale of luxury goods. “Every bag has a name. At least in New York, you see the same thing with all those condo buildings going up with valets, pools, dog parks and fancy names. At some point, people are going to decide that, in fact, what they’d like is to go back to the tried and tested, the classic prewar or the apartment on lower Fifth Avenue.” “The appeal of the It bag,” Ms. Phair said, “has started to wane.”

Yet this is a moment when every bag seems to have, in addition to a price tag that could be confused with a ZIP code, a name that conjures up images of a wealthy enclave or a cast member of “Gossip Girl.” Heloise, Mathilde and Beata are bags by Chloé; Mariah, Camila and Elsa come from Marc Jacobs; the Uptown, the Downtown and the Muse are designs from Yves Saint Laurent, not buildings by André Balazs.

An entire genre of slouchy handbags, described as “hobos,” may even strike some readers as unintentionally funny, if not slightly offensive, with their earnest descriptions and indiscreet prices — the Dolce & Gabbana Miss Perfect hobo, $795; the Celine Bittersweet hobo, $1,700; the Prada nappa gauffre Antic hobo, $1,750 (a crazy gopher hobo?) — for bags meant to look as if they once belonged to tramps. “Designers are just testing the laws of economics by pricing handbags higher and higher until people stop buying them,” said Lauren Goodman, the fashion director of Domino magazine. “They are so expensive, and drive you to buy a new one every season, which is kind of a horrifying thought.”

Ms. Goodman is aware of the hot bags of the moment: the Prada leather styles that repeat the ombré patterns of the fall collection; the Marc Jacobs oversize clutch, carried by several editors during the spring collections; the YSL Downtown bag, which is shaped like a Chinese takeout container with a handle. “Some people still carry the Muse,” she said of another YSL style. “They think the Muse is hot, because they’re kind of behind.” But how does one afford to stay ahead?

At the rate that designers are introducing new styles, that no longer seems possible, which has led to a shift in perceptions about status bags. “That whole phenomenon has changed,” said Julie Gilhart, the fashion director of Barneys New York. “Our customers seem to be looking for something more interesting. They don’t want to spend money on something everyone else has.” They don’t want a one-season bag.

At the least, there is anecdotal evidence that the fastest-growing segment of the fashion industry, also considered its most lucrative because of its high profit margins, may not be immune to market exhaustion. Coach, the leading American handbag company, reported last month that its profit growth may slow this holiday season, setting off jitters among investors who view the brand as the entry-level threshold for luxury goods and an indicator for the broader health of the market. One could not avoid the sense of dread reflected in a Women’s Wear Daily headline this week: “A Chilly Wind Blows: Retailers Are on Edge About Holiday Season.”

Handbag sales in the $7 billion United States market are expected to increase by 15 percent this year, according to the stock research firm Telsey Advisory Group. This is considered a disappointment, because the growth is about half as strong as the category’s 28 percent gain in 2004. “That $5,000 Marc Jacobs bag is so yesterday’s news,” said Elizabeth Kiester, the chief creative director of LeSportsac, which is developing a line of bags with Stella McCartney that will sell for under $350, beginning in February. “The luxury market is so over the top now that it is demented. I call them limo bags. I don’t have a limo.”