Kings have always set the fashion.
In America, our presidents provide the closest approximation to the royal standard. Their wives have often created a fashion craze without even trying. Consider the Jackie Kennedy simple silver clutch, the Nancy Reagan pill box hat or Barbara Bush pearls. Now consider that the current president has a fashion model wife and a clothing designer daughter. Imagine how fashion will improve during this administration! In the Trumps, not only, do we have a new “royal” family, we have a first family who literally brought their own fashion line.
This makes the dramatic Nordstrom announcement that no one wants Ivanka Trump’s clothing simply laughable.
While reveling at the Trump inauguration, my husband proudly tweeted a picture of his Trump tie after noticing it seemed every man there was also wearing his. What else would you wear to the convention of conservatives?
This may be anecdotal, but this was January, and there were 50,000 people attending balls and hundreds of thousands of women attending the inauguration. My guess is a large percentage of them (10 percent? 50 percent?) were wearing Ivanka’s styles. What designer could possibly have captured more of that market? What market could be bigger?
Maybe it is pure coincidence that after Macy’s dropped the Trump ties, he won the White House and Macy’s is closing more than 100 stores. Doubtful. These corporate decisions seem incredibly tone deaf.
Maybe it is just fear created by the hard left, but something seems awry.
No one needs to tell Americans to buy Ivanka’s brand, or Trump ties, but people will. At least half of the population will want to own something that bears that name.
Therein might lie the disconnect that causes corporate America to act so … corporately. While the Trump wearing “in” crowd was celebrating the Trump inauguration in D.C., busses full of other women rolled in Saturday morning to protest. We are not really sure what, exactly, they were protesting, but they were there. I was there, too. This was certainly no fashion event, definitely not a meeting of the cool kids. These people wore their anger on their sleeves. You had the real urge to just ask them which of the daddy issue soiree they wore in place of their Trump tie, or why their mothers chose men over them, leaving them so rejected, so angry. You knew high school wasn’t a fun time for them, and they wore their anger in place of a fashion statement. A clownish pink hat instead of professional heels, or a strand of pearls. How pathetic.
There are two peculiarities about the angry left that corporate America would do well to research.
First, most of the people protesting are paid to be there in one way or another. There may be a handful of “useful idiots” who do not realize what is going on, and certainly many just want to be there for the parties, but these events are far from spontaneous uprisings.
Spontaneous uprisings are important in that they are indicative of broad sentiment. Ten people on the courthouse steps may represent 100 or 1000 who are just as angry, but unable to get off of work.
When the tea-party protests erupted, everyone knew they really meant something, except maybe Nancy Pelosi, who quickly dismissed them as “Astroturf.”
In classic pot-calling-kettle-black betrayal of one’s own biases, she knew that leftists cannot turn out those numbers without paying people. She could not imagine the tea-party protests were true grassroots. Well, corporate America, they were. And those led to Trump rallies, and those took the presidency much to the chagrin of the establishment in both parties.
Secondly, we know that the left is generally comprised of unhappy people, people who thrive on emotion because they are still trying to reconcile the rejection they feel as people. They didn’t fit in. Friends haven’t come easy. Family didn’t stay. The very traditions that the leftist so craves seems wholly unattainable to her. Therefore, she jealously resents the conservative who seems to have friends, family, patriotism, she fits in, and she seems happy.
The ranks of the political left is a repository for the angry, those seeking “change,” the nerds, the geeks, the “emos” who want to change the world because they resent it.
If you are marketing, do you market to the larger population or the minority? The well-off or the struggling? The happy or the unhappy?
Nordstrom is sticking to the story that it dropped Ivanka’s product line because of poor sales. We don’t know the sales numbers, but we do have other information.
Nordstrom co-president Erik Nordstrom donated the maximum amount allowed by law in 2016 to Hillary Clinton.
A company-wide email went out to all of Nordstrom’s more than 76,000 employees immediately after President Trump’s temporary travel ban was issued, pledging to help anyone inconvenienced by the travel ban and reminded employees that the company’s founder immigrated to the U.S. in the 1800s. Of course, that was legal immigration. But the left can blur those lines for the angry mobs and make them upset about something that didn’t happen.
There was no need for the company to wade into this political issue, but it seems the temptation to slam President Trump in an email to 76,000 employees was too great.
Knowing about the donation sent to Hillary Clinton and the email slamming the Trump executive order, we can see their decision to drop Ivanka in a more revealing light.
The decision was obviously political.
The billionaire Nordstrom family can make politically motivated business decisions without feeling it, but they don’t care how decisions like these hurt the average American. I discussed that on Fox Business:
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Middle-class women looking to buy affordable, professional clothing could not afford much of anything in Nordstrom’s department stores, but the top price of any product in the Ivanka line is $200, with most items being much less.
The Nordstrom brothers don’t care about the little people as long as they can make a political statement and harm the daughter of a president with whom they disagree.
The left’s politically based business decisions also harm the GOP’s ability to recruit good candidates.
The large majority of productive, hard-working Americans are conservative. These are the people who have money to spend at places like Nordstrom. Money is power, and conservatives must wield that power wisely.
Make these companies earn your money by either staying out of politics, or, even better, making pro-American business decisions.
Nordstrom’s move was a shot across the bow of any successful American who would dare to run for office as a Republican. I’ve spent years trying to recruit good candidates for political office, but the best of the best will not run. They see how Republican candidates and their families and their livelihoods are attacked by the left. They see the reputation of good people dragged through the mud with insults of racist, sexist, homophobe, etc.
Every patriotic American should use their pocketbooks to counter the attacks of the left. Send a message to the left that their attempts to hurt candidates and their families will not work and will be punished.
We must no longer allow the attacks of the left to drive good men and women away from public service. Send a message to every great American thinking of tossing their hat into the political ring that we have their back.
Your calls and letters to Nordstrom.com, and to your own local stores, are extremely helpful. They are paying attention.
Your vocal opposition to these sorts of vilifications of those who stick their neck out to try to make America better, will go farther than you might think.
Below is a copy of my letter to Mr. Nordstrom. I will let you know if he responds.
Dear Mr. Nordstrom,
I am so disappointed in your decision to cancel Ivanka’s line. I was a campaign media surrogate on all major national networks for President Trump’s campaign, and I wore products bought in your stores on most of my TV and speaking appearances.
Your stores were my weekly go-to. I have to wear a different, solid dress every day on TV, so I gravitated to Ivanka’s brand long before President Trump was my candidate, and before I was a surrogate for him.
I do daily commentary on the issues of the day, so I am very aware of your stated reasons for dropping the brand. But the facts do not add up, unless you can explain them better than my own research explains.
Your statement only weeks before was telling, but your brother’s donations to Hillary are even more clarifying.
I certainly respect your family’s right to support whomever they like in campaigns. I cannot understand the bullying of the child of a president, and attacking her business.
Why would you remove my options as a customer based on someone else’s political ideology? Look what happened to Macy’s after they stopped carrying the Trump tie for their political reasons.
This was a slap to loyal customers like me. We are more than half the country, and we are very loyal with the money we work to earn.
I would like to know if you might reconsider this short sighted decision.
I will include a copy of this letter in my national weekly column and will include any reply I receive from you in subsequent columns.
