State Aide at Fashion Show Site Is Accused of Shaking Down a Designer

By DIANE CARDWELL
Published: February 7, 2008

It has become the most anticipated show of the high-stakes merry-go-round that is Fashion Week: Marc Jacobs at the 26th Street Armory. This week, Mr. Jacobs’s show, known as much for its celebrity-filled front rows and long delays as its provocative collection, will act as a capstone to the season when the world’s fickle arbiters of style descend on New York to say yea or nay, determining the fortunes of multibillion-dollar businesses.

And now, according to charges filed Wednesday by the New York attorney general, Andrew M. Cuomo, it appears that Mr. Jacobs’s company, along with others interested in holding events in the coveted space, had to pay off a longtime state government bureaucrat who controlled access to the building.

Since 2000, James Jackson, who served as the superintendent of the armory for more than eight years, solicited more than $40,000 in bribes from the company that produced Mr. Jacobs’s shows and the others, officials said. Mr. Jackson is accused of demanding money and gifts, including computers and a Bowflex exercise machine, to hold certain dates for events, to ease the paperwork and in some cases to allow early access to the building, which typically rents for $6,000 a day.

“If anyone believes that they have to pay off or offer a gratuity to access state space, let us know,” Mr. Cuomo said in announcing the charges at his offices in Lower Manhattan, as the models of Fashion Week were striding down the catwalks in Bryant Park and the stylish set was looking forward to Mr. Jacobs’s armory show on Friday night.

“It’s not a way of doing business, it’s not O.K., it’s not that everybody does it. It’s a crime,” he added.

Mr. Jackson, 56, of Queens, a 30-year employee of the Division of Military and Naval Affairs who earned $58,951 as superintendent of the 26th Street Armory until shortly after his arrest in October, pleaded not guilty at his arraignment Wednesday, officials said. He faces more than 20 years in prison if convicted. He declined to comment through his lawyer, Alan Abramson.

Mr. Cuomo, whose office was brought into the case by the inspector general’s office, said the investigation was continuing and did not rule out bringing charges against Mr. Jacobs’s company or the show’s producer, KCD. The inspector general’s office is also looking into activities at the seven other armories in the city.

The century-old 26th Street building, also known as the 69th Regiment Armory, has been especially sought by designers because it is one of the few spaces in the city that can hold thousands of people with unobstructed views.

Mr. Jacobs has been criticized by other designers because he has an exclusive deal with the armory that keeps them from showing there during Fashion Week. With two shows, one for the main Marc Jacobs line and one for the secondary Marc by Marc Jacobs, he has become known for elaborate productions that can approach the level of performance art, involving confetti streaming from overhead or a marching band stomping down the runway.

The shows are also highly commercial, offering designers the opportunity to impress the critics and editors who can promote their fashions, the celebrities who become walking advertisements for the designs, and the retail executives who will place them in stores. They are productions that can involve hundreds of workers and cost millions of dollars.

“You’re building basically a Broadway level kind of set, and you’re doing it just for one performance only,” said Kevin Krier, who produced shows for Tom Ford at Gucci and is planning the Sean John show at Cipriani on East 42nd Street just before Mr. Jacobs’s on Friday. “But it has to have all the lighting that can accommodate what your aesthetic needs are in terms of the conceit of the designer and what the show is,” as well as accommodate photographers and videographers, models and those buffing them head to toenail, and thousands of guests as if they were at a wedding.

Representatives of Mr. Jacobs’s company and KCD said they were cooperating with the investigation but declined to elaborate in detail.

An undercover investigation led to the bribery and extortion charges filed against Mr. Jackson on Wednesday in State Supreme Court in Manhattan.

Roughly a year ago, officials said, the office of the New York inspector general, Kristine Hamann, received complaints about Mr. Jackson from the New York International Carpet Show, which was seeking to hold its annual event at the armory, the state-owned building used for military operations and to raise money.

In many cases, the indictment charges, Mr. Jackson not only demanded money for his help in reserving the space but also for keeping designers’ plans from being pre-empted by the needs of the National Guard.

With the carpet show, Mr. Jackson was seeking $1,500 to allow the group to begin setting up a day early without paying the daily rental fee. Investigators set up a sting operation and recorded the transaction with a hidden camera. Shortly thereafter, Mr. Jackson resigned his post and was arrested.

In what Ms. Hamann called “a pattern of payoffs to Jackson that covered nearly a decade,” he also allegedly solicited bribes from the planners of the Pulse contemporary art fair last year.

But the bulk of the indictment, 24 of 31 counts, relates to Marc Jacobs International and its use of the armory. Marc Jacobs International released a statement saying that the show would go on.

“We are using the armory for this week’s fashion shows with the full knowledge and consent of the attorney general’s office.”

Eric Wilson contributed reporting.

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Competition Gaining on Running Gear Stores

By JAN ELLEN SPIEGEL
Published: February 7, 2008
Some of the stores are seemingly no bigger than a closet and their wares fairly limited. But for a generation, specialty running stores have managed to survive — even thrive — around the country despite competition from the big chains and online and mail order outlets.

These small stores may be at a turning point, though. They face newly invigorated competition from bigger players looking for a piece of their profitable action. Chief among them is Road Runner Sports, a 25-year-old mail order (and now Internet) powerhouse based in San Diego. The company is opening its 19th store this month, and its president and chief executive, Michael Gotfredson, has a goal of 100. The Road Runner stores offer the same personalized service as their specialty rivals but are far bigger (8,500 square feet of selling space, on average) and have a more extensive inventory.

At the same time, the specialty running stores are, in effect, graying. Some of the pioneers of the genre got into the business more than 30 years ago, and are now close to retirement age, many without a succession plan.

“I think a lot of specialty stores are at a critical juncture,” said Tom Raynor, chairman and chief executive of Fleet Feet, which started in 1976 and now has 80 franchised stores nationwide. His company, he said, has a mechanism in place to help retiring owners of stores. But, he added, other small-store owners “don’t have any good viable exit strategy.”

“The hope that they’ll sell the business for a million bucks and retire to Tahiti is not reasonable.”

For the time being, though, the small running stores are strong.

According to a survey by the Leisure Trends Group in Boulder, Colo., there are more than 700 specialty running stores representing about 450 owners around the United States. In 2006, they accounted for $596 million in sales. Figures for the first half of 2007 showed a 12.4 percent sales increase over the period in 2006.

“The species is strong,” said Mark Sullivan of Formula 4 Media, founded in 2005 to harness what he and his partners saw as a huge potential in specialty running stores. The company helped start the Independent Running Retailers Association; it publishes a newsletter and holds an annual conference and trade show called the Running Event, which has grown by about 40 percent to 600 participants in its two years in existence.

“Right now as a class of trade, running specialty is hot and has been hot for the last three years. If you opened a running specialty store in the last three years and you could walk and chew gum, you would do O.K.”

But Mr. Sullivan agreed, “It’s about to stiffen up.”

Gary Muhrcke, who won the first New York City Marathon in 1970, was one of the first people to ride the early wave of interest in running into the running business — selling shoes from the back of his van in 1976. Now 67, with a thin runner’s body and a shock of gray hair, Mr. Muhrcke owns Super Runners Shops in Manhattan and in Huntington, on Long Island. Personal service with shoes, in particular, he said, is the reason for his longevity.

“I can’t see the shape of a person’s foot over the phone,” he said. “I can’t do a gait analysis over the phone. I can’t look at a person’s body structure or size or whether they’re bowlegged over the Internet.”

He added, “The basic reason why we’re still here — we’re needed.”

Still, he said, he would entertain offers to buy his stores, “without a doubt.”

Mr. Gotfredson of Road Runner Sports said he believed that his stores and catalog dovetail, more than compete, with small stores. But specialty running store owners are generally not happy to see Road Runner coming.

“It’s a fact of life some people will do anything to save $3 so they’ll come to our store and get fitted and then go up the block and buy it there,” said Leanore Gallardo, whose flagship Metro Run & Walk in Falls Church, Va. — one of three she owns in the Washington area — is about to face a Road Runner Sports a mile away. “Only a fool would not be concerned,” she said.
It complicates plans by Ms. Gallardo, 62, to sell her store and retire. “It’s a concern that I think about every day of my life,” said Ms. Gallardo, who has already had one sale fall through.

That is why Julie Francis, 49, who opened a store in 2001 called soundRunner With No Boundaries in Branford, Conn., told her son Preston, 24, that he had five years to decide whether he wanted to take over the business. He runs a recently opened second store in nearby Madison.

Ms. Francis, like virtually every owner, vendor, industry analyst and runner, attributed the success of specialty running stores to three factors.

First is the running shoes — the most important product running stores sell, accounting for about 60 percent of sales. Stores have made their reputations on the ability to fit customers personally and properly.

“I was running actually in the wrong shoes for years, and I was getting injuries all the time,” said Sarah Vaughan, 52 of Hamden, Conn., who said she had bought shoes at chains like Sports Authority before trying soundRunner five years ago. “They looked at my foot and the shape of my foot and the kind of running that I do and they put me in the right shoe and I’ve been injury-free since.”

Second, the stores have adapted through the years to a broader clientele of fitness runners and walkers, half of whom are women. They are not just for elite runners anymore.

Data from the National Sporting Goods Association for 2006 found that 20.6 million people identified themselves as frequent or occasional runners and 68.9 million as frequent or occasional walkers.

The specialty stores have also assumed a role in their communities, sponsoring races, clinics, training, medical referrals and social networks. Consider, for example, Saturday mornings at Common Grounds, the coffee shop next to the soundRunner in Branford, which is usually crowded with three dozen runners of all levels socializing after group runs.

“You’re getting the whole package there,” said John Febbraio of Guilford, Conn., 55, who started running after his wife began three years ago through a clinic at the store. “Everything you need — advice and merchandise and friendship.”

A fellow coffee drinker, Jerry Turk, 49, an ultra-marathoner, said he liked the training camaraderie the store provided, but tended to buy his equipment online from Zappos and Sierra Trading Post. “It’s availability and price,” he said, pointing to his feet. “This particular shoe I couldn’t find anywhere else.”

But vendors like Asics, Nike and Brooks say they still see the specialty running store as the best market for their products.

“It’s introducing our brand to people a pair of feet at a time, and that usually happens at a specialty store,” said Jim Weber, the president and chief executive of Brooks. He said the company places 80 percent of its products in specialty stores. “Over the last 10 years,” he said, “our bad-debt losses have been large accounts and almost none in specialty running shops.

“No one does it better than a running store.”

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The Allure of Precision Just Around the Curve

By CATHY HORYN
Published: February 7, 2008
Narciso Rodriguez’s sexual come-on was more subtle than the sisters Mulleavy of Rodarte — and to put sex and the inscrutable Rodarte together is a change. But on Tuesday, as the New York fall shows rolled on, Laura and Kate Mulleavy finessed the curves with a well-done collection.

What made their designs look so complete was that the Mulleavys stuck with the random pleated chiffon dresses and broken knitwear patterns from last season and refined them. Some designers might think that putting their audience through a repeat performance was tiresome, but given the sisters’ interest in dressmaking techniques, it’s fair to demand proof of seriousness.

Beyond the goals of transparency and stripped-down lightness, the Mulleavys evoked the imagery of ghost films with the shaded tones of their dresses, and with slashes of red for bloody effect. The composition of color and texture in each outfit was as different as it was precise. What is more, all that care did not lead the Mulleavys down a rabbit hole. The cardigan jackets and above-the-knee dresses, worn with tattered net stockings and goth stilettos, were more wearable and contemporary

One of the most accomplished outfits, worn by Coco Rocha, was a modified schoolgirl dress, its skirt and puffed sleeves in glistening blood-red chiffon, and its flat collar (or was it the illusion of a collar?) done in black against a smoke-gray bodice. Down the side flowed a red panel of black-streaked chiffon. If you think of the kind of deconstruction and deftly smudged sex appeal practiced by better-known designers — Marc Jacobs and Alber Elbaz, to name two — this dress is right in that vein. And the Mulleavys bring their own creativity to the style.

The knitted dresses also showed the value of staying with an idea. This time they are more singular in style and technique; the best example is a skimmy dress that combines a layer or two of black tulle at the waist with a cobweb of net at the bodice and yarnlike strands dusting the shoulders. Skirts and jackets made from shaggy lengths of yarn were also effective. What shines through this collection is the confidence of mastering something, or at least knowing that you are closer.

Soon after the start of Mr. Rodriguez’s predominantly black and deceptively somber show on Tuesday night, the designer’s objective became manifestly clear. As the model Irina Kulikova was advancing down the runway in a washed cashmere coat with rounded shoulders and a rounded skirt, its sleeves like a drainpipe, the silhouette of the previous model, Catherine McNeil, was retreating. The outline made by Ms. McNeil’s black stiff wool skirt and snug shearling jacket with a peplum was also rounded. From the front she had seemed such a wholesome thing, with no bad thoughts.

Design is a long process for people of Mr. Rodriguez’s age and experience, and to an extent this collection expressed the dangers of that inanely hopeful phrase “staying true to oneself.” He seemed locked in a tug of war between creating shapes that reflected his tailoring and sexy, minimalist aesthetic and his desire to challenge himself with other proportions and moods. The upshot was a collection that felt imaginatively constrained — not isolated exactly, but not as expansive as it should be for a designer of his stature.

The strongest elements in the show were the coats and jackets, which combined a new, appealing roundness in the tailoring with the flatness of double serge wool, and included details that hinted of military tunics. A slim wool tuxedo with a pair of satin strips at the sides of the jacket, its collar set back slightly, was boss.

Riding gear, like breeches and safety vests, supplied inspiration for a tight, sleeveless knit top worn with slim black pants, and perhaps the wide harness straps of narrow cocktail dresses. For color, there was pistachio, teal and melon, but it came in too-little portions.

Benjamin Cho exemplifies the maverick designer who, despite the usual challenges (um, selling clothes), believes in working out a technical problem to his satisfaction. For Mr. Cho, that might take several seasons. He doesn’t care. We, though, are the beneficiary of his convictions.

This season he again finds ways to suspend or embed objects like metal rings and flowers into clothes; the results were as mesmerizing as they were technically accomplished. Giant silk flowers kissed a blue velvet shift — an attempt, I thought, to wilt Balenciaga’s big floral prints for spring. Flower pinwheels were inset into tunics and on the front of a long dress in orange crushed velvet over a sequined shift.

I think I’m jealous of Michael Kors. He has such a good time. He doesn’t take anything seriously except, of course, business. His show on Wednesday was a blaze of Hollywood chic in the late 1950s and early ’60s: Lauren Bacall in a cloqué sheath, girls in tweed slacks, poor-boy sweaters, mink coats, mohair pullovers and black cocktail dresses with taupe pumps.

The clothes are so cheerful that you’d feel like the worst jerk to mention the Balenciaga flower prints. Ironic? Oh, brother: cash, baby. Sell a million lilac pencil skirts and gardenia print shells. No, it was a collection. It was almost camp, on the edge of camp, but not, thankfully, camp.

Thom Browne’s circus-themed show, on Monday, offered the long-awaited thrill of seeing two men share the same trouser leg. This was funny in the “Dumb and Dumber” sense. But while many of Mr. Browne’s attempts to manipulate masculine tailoring, with feathers and corset lacing, were fascinating, they seemed, at least this time, to be conducted in a vacuum.

The main events at Marc by Marc Jacobs were the pegged trousers and the tunic dresses in tweed and leather with stand-up collars. The collection was ’80s cute, with houndstooth-check skirts, a banana-yellow sweatshirt dress, bright pink bags and strappy ankle boots.

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More Fun Than Root Canals? It’s the Dental Vacation

By CAMILLE SWEENEY
Published: February 7, 2008
JENNIFER GATES, 40, a hairstylist and makeup artist from Northern California, hadn’t seen a dentist in a decade when she got the call last spring. Her father, Jerry Halley, 64, phoned to say he desperately needed crowns for a few back teeth and other work. Without insurance, Mr. Halley, who owns a landscaping business in Oregon, would have to pay the estimated $8,000 bill.

Ms. Gates found a reputable dentist through friends of her parents who had traveled to Mexico for care. Six weeks later, Ms. Gates flew to join her parents for a week of massages and tanning in San José del Cabo, Mexico, punctuated, in her case, by daily visits to Dr. Rosa Peña for five procedures including a root canal.

In the last year, Ms. Gates, who had a tooth so deteriorated she could touch its nerve with her tongue, has returned with her parents, husband and 14-year-old son to scuba dive and to open wide for Dr. Peña. Her 20-year-old daughter and son-in-law also have made a trip. All told Ms. Gates’s extended clan has had 12 crowns, 6 dental veneers, 4 root canals, over half a dozen fillings, 6 whitening treatments and 2 broken teeth fixed at a savings, they say, of tens of thousands of dollars. “Dr. Rosy is now our family dentist,” Ms. Gates said.

Perhaps this is not everyone’s idea of a worry-free family getaway.

Nevertheless, for at least two decades, medical tourism has been an increasingly popular alternative for the uninsured desperate for care, and for middle-class Americans willing to travel to secure affordable health care.

Roughly half a million Americans sought medical care abroad in 2006, of which 40 percent were dental tourists, according to the National Coalition on Health Care, an alliance of more than 70 organizations. That’s up from an estimated 150,000 in 2004, said Renee-Marie Stephano, the chief operating officer for the Medical Tourism Association, a nonprofit organization that researches global health care.

Dental bridges and bonding ranked No. 1 and 2 on a list of most sought-after procedures for Americans traveling abroad for medical care, according to a report just published by HealthCare Tourism International, a nonprofit group that tracks health care.

In the latest twist on this trend, families are traveling abroad together, turning an annual vacation into a cost-effective checkup for the brood. Two reasons are at play, according to industry experts: a higher demand for elective dental care like bonding and veneers, and second, the growing number of medical travel agents who vouch for the foreign doctors they recommend. Agents help patients choose between sightseeing-cum-dental packages from Hungary to Mexico and can even arrange a foreign baby sitter for parents in need of fillings.

“You can see where this could be a perfect opportunity to incorporate dental care — not typically treatment that will leave you bed-bound — and a family tour of a new country,” Ms. Stephano said.

There are 75 medical travel agents based in the United States, she estimated, a number she suggested will double by the end of this year.

To allay new customers’ fears, many dentists abroad, some of whom have trained in the United States and use the same equipment as American dentists, rely heavily on word of mouth from satisfied customers. Their Web sites include testimonials, and stateside references are provided.

Although the American Dental Association has no official warning against foreign travel for dental care, a spokesman, Dr. Edmond Hewlett, said, “Dentists abroad are not held to the same standards as in the U.S.”

“Teeth are not just appliances,” added Dr. Hewlett, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Dentistry. “They’re not like a car you take in for an annual tune-up. Your oral health affects your general health and vice versa.”

There are two main groups of family-oriented dental travelers, said Neil Patel, the founder of HealthCare Tourism International. Immigrants have long returned to their countries of origin for dental and medical care and to spend time with relatives. But now there’s a more recent wave of patients, interested in taking their families to a far-flung location to make the best out of what is essentially a rather unpleasant chore.

“Call it multitasking, if you will,” said Mr. Patel, who added that he was also seeing improvements in risk management, the transfer of medical records and translator services.
Sometimes patients take relatives along to nurse them (if they need it) and to city-hop with them (if they don’t). That was the case when Robert Mucci, 55, a utilities manager from Valley Stream, N.Y., contacted Dental-Offer, a dental tourism agency, to book a trip to Mosonmagyarovar, Hungary, a hot spot for tooth travel.


“I had no idea how I was going to feel, and I wanted to have my family with me as a support system,” said Mr. Mucci, who had several teeth extracted, bone grafting and implants. “It turned out the pain was totally manageable,” said Mr. Mucci, who went with his wife, 24-year-old daughter and 8-year-old son. He still paid a third of what he was told he would have to pay at home, and that included flights. And, since the work was done in less time than he was told it would take at home, he had plenty of time to sight-see in Vienna, Bratislava and Prague.

Most medical tourism agencies do not specialize in tooth travel for families, but it is fast becoming a staple of their business. Just a year ago, Steve Gallegos, a retired Army lieutenant colonel who used to coordinate health care for military families abroad, opened Medcentrek, a medical tourism agency in San Antonio. He has already had dozens of requests for family dental travel.

“We make recommendations not only on the health care end, but also where to stay, what to do, parasailing, deep-sea fishing, you name it,” Mr. Gallegos said. “As people get comfortable with the idea, this kind of family dental vacation could become an annual thing.”

In years past, the farthest that Leona Denison, 30, a cosmetologist from Albuquerque, usually went for a getaway was Arizona. This year, her family of four went to Costa Rica, where she got nine dental implants and three crowns.

“It took a lot of coaxing on my part to get my husband to agree, but Medcentrek helped with all the arrangements,” Ms. Denison said. “We saw waterfalls and volcanoes. My husband went rafting. Being from New Mexico, my girls really loved the ocean.”

Even with travel expenses, she paid $6,000 less than the $21,000 price a local dentist had quoted for the work.

Remarkably, some patients argue that a flight and a few hours in the dental chair is less hassle than having to rush back to the office half-sedated. For others, turning a trip to the dentist into a family vacation takes their mind off pending procedures. Lori Sullivan, 43, an administrative assistant in a home health care agency in Port Angeles, Wash., admits that she fears dentists.

Last spring, when she found out she would need an expensive root canal, she decided to book a diverting trip with her 8-year-old daughter to Tijuana, Mexico, through PlanetHospital, a medical tourism agency based in Los Angeles.

“I had heard of this, but had never considered it an option,” Ms. Sullivan said. “Then, I did my research. The procedure went fine and the price was right.”

Her agency hired a baby sitter for her daughter during her root canal, and, she said, they “even arranged to have us driven down to Baja one day where we had lobster and walked along the beach. It was a long weekend we’ll never forget.” She added: “Now, I’m saving up to go back for veneers. My daughter can’t wait.”

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