Earlier in the summer, fashion designers held a $10,000-per-plate fundraiser for Barack Obama featuring his fashionable wife Michelle. Now with Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week in NYC just around the corner, the fashion industry will be using the hype about the Spring 2009 collections to promote Obama’s hope, change, and tote bags. About 20 designers are creating high-end Obama merchandise featuring “the candidate’s image and his red-white-and-blue rising sun logo,” the Washington Post‘s Robin Givhan reported this weekend. Items will include a Diane von Furstenberg tote bag and an $80 Tracy Reese appliqué T-shirt, among others. (Reese’s design for a $400 “one-shouldered silk georgette frock” didn’t make the cut, unfortunately.) This red-white-and-blue Obamawear is sure to clash nicely with the fall colors and styles that will soon debut. The designers will wear their Obamawear at Runway for Change, a fundraiser for the candidate during New York Fashion Week in September. You too can schmooze with the designers and party hosts Sarah Jessica Parker and Vogue editor Anna Wintour, if you have an extra $250 to $10,000 to spare. The question is, if you have that kind of money and are in NYC for Fashion Week, wouldn’t you rather buy a designer tote bag that does NOT have a politician’s face on it?
