I Am A Garmento.

I come from a long line of Garmentos who made their dime in the factories of New York's Garment Industry. My family's business began as a tailor shop on 37th street a couple of generations ago, today it's a wholesale leather goods business with a showroom on Seventh Avenue. I've always been fascinated by that area of the city. It's a gold mine of zippers, tailors, buttons, lace, spandex, and factories. But, the business of making clothing in New York has slowed substantially. This past fall filmmaker Marc Levin made an HBO documentary about the Schmatta buisness (that's Yiddish for rag, and it's the affectionate name given to the garment trade by it's largely Jewish workforce) and the state it's in, which isn't good. one might be able to say that about any number of businesses right now, but there is something particularly sad about the Garment District diminishing. It's a New York institution. It's my family history.

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Monumentally Weird

My Dad is a Garmento. Actually, I'm exceedingly proud of my paternal heritage which is a long line of men who bought, hawked, measured, sewed, tailored, imported or manufactured clothing for the masses. This means that I've spent many days throughout my life in and around the Garment District joyously eating bagels or deli sandwiches (depending on the time of day) and witnessing men with bellies and slicked back hair talk about how much business sucks. But, in all of my days tagging along with my Father to work, I've never quite seen anything like what I saw today. In the last year my Dad moved office buildings and when I went to visit him in his new spot today, I stumbled upon something astonishing. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the:

This lovely little display lines the lobby of 533 Seventh Avenue. It is a lineup of silver busts of America's top fashion designers stuck on acrylic poles and labeled with gold name-bearing plaques.

Thank god for the plaques...let's take a closer look shall we?

Now even before I give you the corresponding gold plaques, can you put a name to a single one of those faces? Maybe the hair gives away the ladies, but I swear I stood in amazement at who the gray heads were meant to be. Here's who we've got above:

Poor Isaac, right? I mean that must be some sort of mistake. And Marc? He looks like the love child of Sting and a Ken doll. Are they not scary in that way that clowns are scary? I really want to find out if the designers have ever seen these. Maybe they were invited to some really awkward unveiling ceremony where they had to pick themselves out of the lineup and failed, miserably. Oh, these are so classic. I almost think they need to be seen in the round to be fully appreciated. So, if you ever want to see them in person, holler at me and I'll put together a tour group.