Tracy Reese Dress

African American designers get props from Michelle wearing Tracy Reese on the cover of People magazine. Tracy’s southern sistahs might like a job sewing some of her beautiful designs but that work is performed in China or India.

This Tracy Reese Guipure Lace Kimono Dress in Dried Azalea retails for $395 at her boutique in NYC.

This dress is from American Apparel, made in Los Angeles and retails from their online store for $35.00. No, a cotton rib dress doesn’t compare stylewise to Guipure Lace but from a manufacturing standpoint it’s not much different. The person sewing the American Apparel dress makes $12.00 an hour and the corporation still makes a nice profit selling it at $35.00. Obviously, lace is more expensive so let’s say the Tracy Reese dress COST $70 to make which is highly unlikely and it sells for $395?? Whoa, that’s alot of profit, but for who?? At that kind of markup, we could afford to pay our employee more than 12 bucks even in factoring health care and maybe some other perks like child care that American Apparel offers.

A quick search on Ebay turns up a new-with-tags Tracy Reese Paper Bag Runway Dress offered at $86 with an original retail of $660. If it’s so easily devalued then was it really worth $660 to begin with? How many barrels of oil did it take to cross the ocean? These are questions we should be asking ourselves when we buy anything.

Stephen Burrows Spring 2009

I suppose Michelle doesn’t want to appear racist by wearing only clothing by African American designers. But hey, how about one or two pieces?? This Stephen Burrows dress looks like the First Lady’s style. What about Tracy Reese? Her dresses are divine. Then there’s Byron Lars. He hasn’t designed since the 1990s but maybe he’d make a comeback if Michelle were interested. These are only 3 African American designers and there’s plenty more. Maybe some prior season contestants from Project Runway would like a chance at the limelight and build a business here in the USA. Yeah, I know fashion seems kinda trivial but it’s fun and it’s also a multi billion dollar business that we’ve sent offshore. We need that business back here to help America recover.