Word: fashionability
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Banality is a security blanket for Frank. He has been playing the standards in a routine fashion for years, stitching the songs together with chipper- inane prattle as featureless as his musicianship. He's just a guy supporting his offscreen wife, kids and mortgage in a way he finds more congenial than, say, selling aluminum siding. Banality is a hair shirt for Jack. His life is all squalid improvisation and silent disgust at tinkling out "piano stylings." He knows better, and he might do better, as a jazzman...
...best-known U.S. department-store chains are up for sale. Garment sales have been stagnant, and profits are squeezed. But then there is Donna Karan, a women's-clothing designer whose creations send department-store executives into fits of giddy optimism. The Queen of Seventh Avenue, as the fashion press calls her, Karan is chief executive officer and head designer of a five-year- old company that expects to rake in $115 million in revenues this year. Her sportswear line arrived in stores eight months ago in one of the most successful launches in fashion history. Says Joan Kaner, senior...
Karan, 41, has earned a reputation as the sartorial savior of the modern working woman who is fed up with floppy bow ties and sexless designs. Karan's clothes are comfortable and practical, stylish and feminine. Among her trademarks: one-piece silk bodysuits, easy-fitting jackets, wrap skirts. Fashion doyen John Fairchild, publisher of Women's Wear Daily, lauds Karan as the most important American designer. Says he: "Donna understands a woman's body the way Coco Chanel did." A size 12 herself, Karan boasts the rare and eternally marketable talent of cutting a skirt or a pair of pants...
...hardworking woman in what is still a male-dominated star system, Karan is instantly simpatico to many of her customers. When she makes appearances at department stores, Karan acts like a wise older sister dispensing fashion tips and helping customers assemble her clothes into outfits. Says Karan, as she twirls her oversize black eyeglasses: "I am accessible. I see myself as a person who stays up all night and worries about her daughter ((Gaby, 15)) and her husband, and would like to get the carpeting ordered...
...notion that the breakthroughs in quantum physics in the early 20th century, which provided the theoretical basis for microelectronics, also laid the groundwork for sweeping changes in the world's economy. In the past, a nation's wealth sprang from its natural resources and its ability to fashion raw materials into manufactured products. But the computer has put a premium on information, not raw materials or manufacturing prowess...