by After being ridiculed by some political observers for Vogue editor’s “Runway to Win” initiative, the Obama campaign is now laughing all the way to the bank.
Brainchild of Anna Wintour, the high-fashion magazine editor, the “Runway to Win” fundraiser featured the fashion industry’s most popular designers creating bags, shirts and other fashion statements on behalf of the Obama re-election campaign. Despite the mocking the initiative got from some of the more skeptical pundits, and a prediction that the sale of high-priced accessories would not be as popular as the popular president was himself, it appears that “Runway to Win” fooled them and brought in a not at all embarrassing $40 million.
Obama’s campaign manager Jim Messina was quite pleased with the outcome of Wintour’s idea.
Joshua Green of Bloomberg Business Week commented on the successful melding of high-fashion with popularist politics:
“Republicans and other folks (cough, cough) got plenty of laughs at the campaign’s expense. And it was a little ridiculous. But clearly the Obama folks and Wintour have had the last laugh: For any campaign, $40 million is serious money. And the successful fashion gambit would seem to open up all kinds of possibilities for future campaigns: Perhaps Chris Christie-branded bibs or fleeces, or maybe a line of signature Hillary Clinton pantsuits by Vera Wang.”
