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"Can I get an amen?" asked Peter Som as he rocked back on his heels and raised a hand on a makeshift stage at Tapestry's headquarters in New York City this week. Behind and below him, the Hudson Yards neighborhood took on a soft glow with the setting sun.
The assembled crowd dutifully hollered back: "Amen!"
Wearing a robin's egg blue double-breasted blazer and his signature black-rimmed glasses, the fashion designer-turned-cookbook author was feting Goodwill Industries of Greater New York and Northern New Jersey at its fifth annual gala, described as a night of "purpose and style." He and his cohost Felita Harris, executive director and cofounder of RaiseFashion -- herself decked out in a crisp white button-down and a voluminous royal blue tiered-and-pleated skirt -- were there to honor a longtime Goodwill board member, Brian Fetherstonhaugh, and his three decades' worth of dedication to the nonprofit thrift giant. Synoptek, Goodwill's tech provider, received a corporate leadership award for promoting workforce inclusion.
But the duo was also intent on drumming up at least $50,000 in on-the-spot contributions, which an anonymous donor had promised to match with another $25,000. "It's time to pay for your wine and crab cakes," joked Harris, as trays of hors d'oeuvres continued to circulate. Business at the drinks station was likewise brisk. The ask, displayed on screens as a filling-up thermometer, would be met in less than 20 minutes. By the night's end, the gala raised $586,000 for job training, placement and growth for underserved individuals in the region.
Goodwill isn't just a place to score a deal on somebody's castoffs, said Katy Gaul-Stigge, the New York-New Jersey chapter's CEO and president, but also a place that helps people who are locked out of the workforce because of a disability, a gap in their résumé or the stigma of mental illness. Last year, her organization served 12,000 of "our friends, neighbors and cousins here in New York City and northern New Jersey with career coaching, financial planning and digital literacy classes and 'wrap-around' services such as housing, transportation and clothing vouchers.
"Yes, we help people find jobs," she said. "And yes, we stay with them after they start working. And yes, we help employers find the right talent. This isn't a charity. This is what we call the inclusive employment movement. Our vision is a future where no talent is left behind." Gaul-Stigge also nodded to current economic circumstances. "We are facing rising demand and tightening funding," she said. "Without Goodwill, many of the people that we serve have nowhere else to go."
Som said the night was about second chances. That and equity and "impact while looking good." This included the entertainment: a presentation of reconstructed looks by Collina Strada's Hillary Taymour, LaPointe's Sally LaPointe, Romeo Hunte and Andy Yu that later went up for auction online.
The four designers scoured Goodwill outlets -- six in Yu's case -- to find materials they could use. Taymour contributed a spin on an existing design, whipping up three T-shirts and three dresses into a grungy, shredded black frock. LaPointe created a trio of "accessible, size-inclusive" swishy girl boss looks, some trimmed with marabou feathers she saved from her studio. Hunte drew on his experience with suiting and leather to put up two outfits -- one, despite its masculine theme and model, completely androgynous; the other, a paean to female insouciance -- that flouted conventional rules of draping and layering. Yu brought to life a "boy band" of dandies, their preppy jackets festooned in brooches, buttons, plastic kimble tags and the occasional flash of a ladies' gold-sequin top -- "very David Bowie," the technically retired designer said.
For Taymour, an old hat at upcycling, sustainability isn't something that should be a trend or a one-night-only occurrence. Neither should it only apply to fashion.
"I think we should all start to think about what we shop, how to pursue what we buy throughout our daily lives, whether it's a coffee or a sandwich," she said as she showed off her design. "I kind of make my own textiles. You can reimagine anything using any kind of material. I think it's super important to play with materials that are already existing and using your brain to remake what's already available to us."
The process was an eye-opening one for LaPointe, who was taken aback at how much she could find at her local Goodwill. "I was like, 'This is kind of crazy.' So I took pieces and tweaked them slightly to make them a little bit better and a little bit more in my DNA," she said backstage.
But perhaps LaPointe shouldn't have been so surprised. "The best piece of advice I got in my career was that good design is not about totally reinventing the wheel. It's taking something that works and just making it better," she said.