The Fashion Talent’s Already Here – How Can We Keep It?

3-26-10

We would have liked to have told you precisely where the money is to create an Otsego County fashion-industry incubator – the Otsego County Development Corp., City of Oneonta grants money, a bond issued by the county representatives in Cooperstown, state economic-development money.
We would have liked to have told you that the Binghamton developer who owns the block on Oneonta’s Muller Plaza – Key Bank is on the ground floor – is enthusiastic about developing the upper two floors for that purpose.
We would have liked to have fleshed out City Hall plans – put in place by Joe Bernier, the city’s recently retired community development director – to build an elevator making those top two floors ADA-available for general use.
We would have liked to identify by name a half-dozen May graduates of SUNY Oneonta’s Apparel & Textiles program ready to set up fledgling businesses in newly created space.
We would have liked to be quoting SUNY Oneonta President Nancy Kleniewski enthusiastically supporting the idea, with SUNY’s development juggernauts – Barry Warren and Tim Hayes – chiming in.
Likewise with such local engines of opportunity as Wilber Bank’s Doug Gulotty, NBT’s Jamie Reynolds, Otsego Chamber president Rob Robinson or county economic developer Carolyn Lewis.
We would have liked to have talked to fashion-business executives and entrepreneurs – Donna Karan or Michael Kors or Vera Wang – for advice on how this fashion-industry incubator might work, and whether they would be interested in partnering with it.
We would have liked to brainstorm with an economist or two about the local economic spin-offs of creating a local fashion industry with worldwide reach.

But we ran out of time.

•

However, we have these great pictures – and a picture is worth a thousand words.  We couldn’t let the opportunity pass.
More than 1,000 people filled one half of SUNY’s Alumni Fieldhouse Saturday, March 20, for the annual Spring Fashion Show put on by the Textiles & Apparel division of the college’s Human Ecology Department.
Three dozen designers showed off a couple of hundred creations to hoots, hollers, cheers and whistles from the excited crowd.
The department’s dean, Katherine Angell, said some 75 majors graduate annually; the program has more than 300 students.
The day after the May 22 commencement, however, most of that brain power will have drained back down to New York City.
Many of the young designers will be looking for jobs.  In this economy, many won’t get them.  That’s a lot of wasted talent.
It doesn’t have to be.  Let’s harness these engines of ingenuity, if you will, as engines of Otsego County prosperity.
Who’s going to start the process?