In news that seems right out of 2004, Sarah Jessica Parker is launching a namesake shoe line. The actress’s partner in the venture is a former C.E.O. of Manolo Blahnik, and she plans for the shoes to retail for $200-$300. The line will be exclusive to Nordstrom, and the shoes will be made in Europe and New York City. SJP also has handbags and coats underway. [Vogue]
One Direction has launched its first perfume, called Our Moment. The band humbly requests that fans not throw it at them during concerts. “I hope it’s not one of those things they throw on stage, because those are going to hurt,” says Liam Payne. “Someone threw a box at me once and it hit me [on the arm], and I was thinking, ‘What if that just hit me in the face?'” Or, you know, the balls. [WWD]
• Yesterday, a lawyer representing the interests of Gap Inc. and Wal-Mart testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about those companies’ refusal to sign an international safety accord that would improve working conditions in Bangladesh. Wal-Mart is the second-biggest producer of clothing in Bangladesh, and Wal-Mart clothes were produced at both of the sites that have been made notorious by recent deadly, preventable industrial disasters: the Tazreen factory, which burned to the ground and took 112 workers’ lives in November, and the Rana Plaza factory building, which collapsed and killed 1,129 people in April. Forty-three companies worldwide have signed the safety accord, but Wal-Mart, Gap, and a handful of other U.S. companies have refused, citing vague “liability concerns.” Wal-Mart and Gap say they hope to come up with their own safety plan. The Senate committee, to its credit, expressed great skepticism about this — here are the words of committee head, Senator Robert Menendez:
“At the end of the day, I get concerned when I hear about the industry’s unwillingness to join a more global standard. Regardless of whether it is Bangladesh today or some other place tomorrow, we have to have a global standard so that we don’t have a race to the bottom. I think Rana Plaza shows the limits of individual corporate responsibility campaigns.”
An Assistant Secretary of State testified that, in the State Department’s view, “three key reforms are particularly important to improve workers’ lives in the near term — guaranteeing workers’ rights to organize, guaranteeing fire safety, and ensuring structural soundness of factories and other facilities.” The international accord that Wal-Mart and Gap Inc. have spurned includes provisions for all three things. [WWD]
• The stylist Annabel Tollman has died in her sleep in New York City. She was 39. Tollman, who in addition to her styling for top magazines also worked with celebrities including Scarlett Johansson, had a warm personality and a gift for cracking wise. She will be missed. [NYDN]
• Fashion designer James Daugherty has died. In the 1970s, Daugherty, along with Stephen Burrows and Scott Barrie, was a pioneering black designer. Breaking into the industry was hard, he told the Daily News in 1976. Despite the fact that he would arrange interviews over the phone, “when prospective employers saw me, their faces would drop and they’d utter some silly excuse why I wasn’t qualified,” he said. “I was determined not to let my color be my downfall.” His designs for his own label went on to be featured in Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, and Ebony. In his later years, he was an instructor at the Fashion Institute of Technology. Daugherty was 85. [WWD]