NPR host and writer Jacki Lyden found herself asking that one day after decades of covering Middle East crises or hosting NPR’s weekend magazine. Things for her at NPR are winding down.
“You have to cover fashion,” one of the producers said, eyeing Lyden, who is commonly seen as flamboyant in his vintage clothing – at least in the public radio world.
“But we can’t do it like the big magazines or newspapers,” he said. “We must do it as anthropology—and more like airspace. That’s where public radio’s audience will come in – in the fascinating context of fashion culture, and as a business, a history of variety, entertainment and social commentary.
He also learned that he had to do it as an independent producer when NPR could not keep him. So, he has his team.
“We just started sitting down with some of the smartest, most creative, interesting people I’ve ever interviewed,” says Lyden. “Historians, designers, professors – all of them make you think – and they’re witty and have interaction with a changing world. We have not heard enough of them on public radio – even although fashion is New York’s second largest industry after finance.
Lyden launched a bi-weekly podcast with senior producer Elaine Heinzman and Editor Marcus Rosenbaum, both NPR veterans, in late April. One initial inspiration? Valerie Steele, Chief Museum Curator at FIT. “Fashion is a lens of culture and society,” says Valerie Steele, Ph. D., executive director and chief curator of Museums at FIT. “I’m surprised no one has done a program like The Seams before.”
Adds Stephen CEO of the Council of Fashion Designers of America, “There is no area of popular culture that fashion doesn’t reach – music, art, literature and — in the US alone, it’s a 350 billion dollar industry. Worldwide, one trillion.”
And there are ethical and sustainable issues the industry has to deal with, says Lyden.
Lyden hosts a bi-weekly Seams podcast using the conversation like a runway. On the “catwalk” is the history of shapewear, or baseball uniforms, or jockey silks– or codpieces, enhanced menswear, or Men’s upcoming NY Fashion Week debut. It added in stories like the Seminole Indian patchwork artisans of Florida. It will feature a new collaboration on performance between the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Parsons School of Design and label threeASFOUR. Culture critic Cintra Wilson, previously of the New York Times, would appear regularly, and expected other public radio people to appear. The Seams is also an occasional series on NPR, and can be found on iTunes or on NPR One.
Check out The Seams Podcast website at www.theseams.org.
