NEW YORK - For students in the fashion program at Parsons The New School of Design, beauty is more than skin deep: They recently staged a full-on runway show, complete with celebrity models, to draw attention to deep-vein thrombosis.
They weren't working on coming up with the sexiest, most fashion-forward items. They weren't even really going for fashion.
Instead their show was a competition to see who could create the funkiest, eye-catching sock.
Yes, a sock.
With dozens of ribbon colours and rubber wrist-band styles already taken in the name of dozens of worthy causes, those looking to garner support and publicity for their issues now find they need to look to novel concepts.
And just finding a cool symbol isn't good enough. It also needs to be easily transferrable to a wide range of products and different kinds of marketing media, making it truly identifiable in a single glance.
Working with the Coalition to Prevent DVT, Parsons students tackled socks because wearing compression socks can prevent deadly blood clots from forming in the legs, says Melanie Bloom, coalition spokeswoman, and wife of NBC newsman David Bloom, who died of a DVT-induced pulmonary embolism while covering the Iraq War in 2003.
In its favour, a sock is cute -- one could easily create a sock lapel pin or apply the image to stationery or bumper stickers. It could even be made as an actual medical compression sock.
"We wanted to take a creative and lighthearted approach to a serious thing because lighthearted is the best the way to touch people," says Bloom.
On the other hand, Bloom has already tried to promote socks as a DVT symbol, but nothing has yet really caught on.
She has visited hospitals with a not-so-fashionable sock-making kit, encouraging doctors and nurses to decorate red socks and either display them or, better yet, wear them as a conversation starter about the risks of DVT, which affects up to two million Americans each year. On occasion, she says, she'll even take out her glue gun and make socks side-by-side with patients.
Last year Parsons asked Bloom to present an award named for a popular young teacher, Stacy Nipps, who also had died suddenly of a blood clot, and a partnership was born.
Pamela Klein, chair of Parsons' applied-science degree programs, got students involved in the legwear project, getting to them think of how medicine, fashion and marketing could intersect to create a winner.
"For DVT, there probably should be a foot involved. You don't want it to be so abstract that it doesn't make sense or so generic that it's just another cause," Klein says. "But it also can't be too scientific or graphic. You wouldn't want something with all the veins popping out."
Student Katharine Howard created a dancer-inspired look with black legwarmer-style socks decorated with fabric rose petals and tiny pink rosettes.
Howard says she has worn generic compression socks for years for her own vascular problems and took a lot of grief for it.
"I always felt that because I had to wear the stocking, I couldn't be fashionable, that I'd never be attractive," Howard says. "It would have made a difference if either legwear were cooler or if more people knew about vascular disease."
Other contenders for the winning design include a denim sock with black leather cuff and a purple sock with gold beaded butterflies.
But could DVT's compression sock become the next pink ribbon, which has become synonymous with breast cancer, or yellow bracelet, the sign of Lance Armstrong's Livestrong organization that stirred a fashion trend a few years ago?
"You need a colour, item and disease that people can understand, touch and not be overwhelmed by," says Tom Julian, a trend analyst and president of Tom Julian Group, a marketing firm. "Look at the Red Dress campaign (highlighting women's heart disease). Johnson & Johnson integrated it into a product, does it's outreach in February, which is perfect for red because it's Valentine's Day."
"The symbol has to be able to live on a product, be used in an awareness program and fit into the organization's literature," he adds.
He suggests the DVT Coalition find a commercial partner, perhaps a mall-based accessories store like Claire's or Hot Sox, a household-name designer or an airline that could give out socks to first-class passengers.
"Sitting on an airplane, if someone gave me a pair of compression socks, I'd probably wonder, 'Should I be wearing special socks to help with my circulation?' That's the kind of awareness you want," Julian said. "And, if they were cool socks -- if Miuccia Prada designed them -- then I probably wouldn't think twice about wearing them."
It wasn't easy in the early years to get the pink ribbon noticed, recalls Evelyn Lauder, who launched the breast-cancer awareness campaign in 1992. Now the pink ribbon is patented and recognized all over the world.
Even better, each October, during breast cancer awareness month, dozens of consumer goods from lunch totes to kitchen mixers come to market in the signature pale pink colour as part of the campaign.
Lauder said the inspiration for the ribbon came from similar ribbon loops that were used to call attention to soldiers missing during the Vietnam War and the Gulf War, as well as the red ribbon that emerged in the 1980s to increase AIDS awareness.
"It was always the repeat of the same loop. ... It was very ubiquitous and identifiable and already associated with being for a 'cause.' Pink was the obvious colour for women," Lauder says.
Still, it took a personal investment by Lauder's husband, Leonard, to buy thousands of hand-looped pink ribbons and distribute them at Estee Lauder beauty counters before anyone started to make the connection, she says.
"In the beginning, you feel a bit discouraged because people would say, "'It's an AIDS ribbon,' and then we'd say, 'No, it's pink.' They'd say, 'Oh, yeah -- why?' And that was our chance to say it's to remind you about good breast health."
Now, even if it's hard to come up with new ways to use and display the ribbon, breast-cancer groups are locked into it.
"It's like advertising, by the time the company is tired of the ad, the consumers have just begun to recognize it," Lauder says. "Lauder to change the ribbon into a bow, but I said 'absolutely not.' The shape is an alarm. People know what it means."
That's all Bloom wants for DVT. "It would be very gratifying to transform a tragedy into something positive," she says.
