Juicy Couture Founders: 'It's Been Painful To Watch The Brand Fall'

Juicy Couture's rhinestone-encrusted clothes were once sold out of gleaming flagship stores on famed shopping streets like Manhattan's Fifth Avenue.

Now, they're peddled at Kohl's.

Pamela Skaist-Levy and Gela Nash-Taylor, the founders of Juicy Couture and co-authors of the new tell-all about the brand The Glitter Plan, weren't counting on Juicy's downfall when they stepped away from the business forever four years ago.

"It's been painful to watch the brand fall down after we left," Skaist-Levy told The Huffington Post in an interview on Wednesday. "We wanted Juicy to be the great American girly brand. It was our legacy."

The pair sold Juicy to Liz Claiborne for $53.1 million in 2003, but remained in charge of the brand. They watched as it shot to the forefront of pop culture. Celebrities from Paris Hilton to Jennifer Aniston trotted around in bedazzled velour tracksuits. The clothes spilled out into suburbia, where it-teens and affluent moms sported "Juicy" butts.

But over the years, Juicy faded. It didn't move to adopt new fashion trends, opting to stick with the same old styles that succeeded during its heyday a decade earlier. Sales of the tracksuits withered away, and Juicy never came up with another hit product to bring back shoppers.

Skaist-Levy and Nash-Taylor left Juicy and Liz Clairborne in 2010 after disagreements with chief executive Bill McComb. (Liz Claiborne then changed its name to Fifth & Pacific, then changed it again to Kate Spade & Co.)

Pamela Skaist-Levy (L) and Gela Nash-Taylor (R).

"We were just hanging on" in 2003, said Nash-Taylor, reflecting on the sale. "But you have to also know that when you have a company like Juicy, when you sell it, there's always a chance that someone will not see the vision the same way we did, and you have to live with that."

In September 2013, Juicy changed hands again: Authentic Brands Group, a licensing company that controls the rights to the brands of dead celebrities Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley, bought the company from then-Fifth & Pacific for $195 million.

Though Juicy's last U.S. stores will close this month, ABG plans to open new boutiques, tentatively named World of Juicy, in New York City next year. CEO Jamie Salter told HuffPost that he's trying to get the "coolness back."

“The beach, the whole relaxed lifestyle that Juicy Couture created -- as time went on, they sort of forgot about that,” said Salter.

The new Juicy will divide its products into two tiers. The regular wares will still be sold in places like Kohl's, while a new, premium "black label" line will be available online and in the forthcoming boutique shops.

Skaist-Levy and Nash-Taylor aren't done yet with sparkly California glam. They've started a brand called Pam & Gela, attempting to recreate the magic that helped make them millions a decade ago. The new label, which launched this spring and is available at swanky department stores like Bloomingdale's and Neiman Marcus, hones in on that L.A.-luxe vibe, the duo said.

"The Pam & Gela girl is hanging out at the corner of Melrose and La Brea, pretty much," wrote Style.com's Maya Singer. "She's got a couple of tattoos and a regular and expensive habit at M Cafe de Chaya."

As for Juicy, Skaist-Levy and Nash-Taylor wish the brand the best, but it's no longer part of their lives. They've turned off their Google Alerts for 'Juicy Couture' and watch from the sidelines, hoping ABG can do something to "resurrect" the name.

"Juicy is just not our baby any more," said Skaist-Levy. "It's like thinking about your high school boyfriend. He was cute then, and that was all good, but that was the past."

Obama To Spend Day With Working Mother In Minneapolis

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — With 2 1/2 years remaining in his term, President Barack Obama has been blocked by Congress and is running out of steps he can take on his own to achieve his goals. So the White House is trying to maximize Obama's exposure to "real Americans," hoping that more intimate and less scripted interactions will remind struggling citizens why they voted for him in the first place.

A poignant letter from one of those Americans prompted Obama to fly to Minnesota to spend time Thursday with Rebekah Erler, an accountant and mother of two whose tale of financial struggle made its way to Obama's desk, one of the 10 letters from Americans that Obama reads each night.

As he joined Erler, 36, for burgers under dim neon lights advertising beer at Matt's Bar, her quest to do right by her family despite economic headwinds animated the president's rallying cry for Washington to pay attention to the plight of the American middle class. It's a popular theme for Democrats in a midterm election year.

Answering questions from the community later at a Minneapolis park, Obama said it was discouraging that Americans watching the news see Washington debating issues that have little to do with their lives. It must feel like being forgotten, he said.

"It's not like I forget," Obama added. "You're who I'm thinking about every single day. Just because it's not reported in the news, I don't want you to think that I'm not fighting for you."

In her letter to Obama, Erler wrote about her husband's struggles to find a reliable job, the high costs of groceries and childcare, and the burden of paying off student loans. Obama said those challenges, while pervasive, are ones the government can help address.

Obama's aides said the visit marks the start of a "Day in the Life" tour in which Obama will visit communities across the country, putting human faces on economic policies that he and Democrats are championing. Obama spent just a short stretch of time with Erler over lunch, not unlike similar stops he's made on many previous trips outside Washington.

Still, the tour comes as Obama is increasingly stepping "outside the bubble" of the White House, mingling with people during surprise visits to hamburger shops, coffee joints and even a Little League game. Obama's aides say the shift is not coincidental.

"We've been here a long time now," Dan Pfeiffer, Obama's senior adviser, said in an interview. "You can't do the same things over and over again. In this cluttered media environment, it's harder to break through."

Aiming to cut through the clutter, Obama ditched his motorcade at dinnertime in nearby St. Paul, where he ducked in and out of boutique shops and chatted up pedestrians in the type of impromptu excursion that gives the Secret Service nightmares. He spent nearly $90 on apple chips, jam and other edibles at a fine foods shop, then treated his staff to ice cream down the street.

Yet Obama's efforts to show he still relates to everyday American life also put a fine point on the harsh political realities confronting the president.

Nearly two years into his last term, Obama's approval ratings are sagging. His ability to set the agenda is quickly fading as Washington becomes consumed by the midterm elections and then, in 2016, the race to replace Obama. And despite a booming Wall Street, the recovery has yet to filter down to many of the middle-class families hit hardest by the recession.

At the same time, the speeches, news conferences and White House appearances that used to command primetime coverage are no longer attracting attention as interest in Obama wanes.

"The president can do all the policy he wants," said Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian at Rice University. "If he doesn't feed the beast with a heart-rending story showing his policies in action, it doesn't work very well anymore."

Obama's strategy also dovetails with advice Democrats are hearing from pollsters as they gird for a tough midterm election. In a strategy memo this week, veteran pollster Stan Greenberg urged Democrats to spend more time on an "in your shoes" economic message, focusing on workplace issues that resonate well with unmarried women — a coveted group of voters.

Obama isn't the first president to try to boil down his agenda into humanizing, individual stories.

Lyndon Johnson had his famous "Poverty Tour," with the iconic images of the president surrounded by rundown shacks and barefoot boys. And Ronald Reagan sought person-to-person interaction through letters, phone calls and personal visits, having learned from his movie career that "you have to stay in touch with the box office," Brinkley said.

As evening arrived in Minneapolis, Obama's tone turned sharply partisan as he recounted Erler's story at a fundraiser for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. When Democrats promote equal pay, higher wages or early childhood education, they're doing it for people like Erler, he said.

"The other side has nothing to offer except cynicism and fear and frustration," Obama said. "Sometimes we just take that for granted. And we shouldn't."

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Associated Press writers Brian Bakst in Minneapolis and Nedra Pickler and Jim Kuhnhenn in Washington contributed to this report.

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Reach Josh Lederman at http://twitter.com/joshledermanAP

If Women Want Better Pay, They Should Support Unions

The decline of unions has been bad for all workers hoping to join the middle class, but it has been especially terrible for women trying to keep up with men in any class.

Unions can be a useful tool for narrowing the gap between women and men at work, according to a recent paper by the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a left-leaning think tank that studies economic and social issues.

Women in unions make 12.9 percent more, on average, than their non-union counterparts, according to the study. For women with just a high school diploma, that difference is 15 percent. Women in unions with a college degree make 13.4 percent more than their non-union colleagues, the study found.

While being in a union also boosts pay for men, the effect of unionization is about 1.4 times larger for women, on average, according to an analysis earlier this year by the National Women’s Law Center.

Why do women benefit so much more from union membership? The CEPR paper has theories:

For one, unions tend to do the most for workers at the lower ends of the spectrum, and women are much more likely to be low-wage workers. Women make up about two-thirds of minimum-wage earners in the U.S., for example. They also entered low-wage jobs at a faster clip than their male counterparts between 2009 and 2013.

And collective-bargaining agreements typically make pay policies more transparent and less dependent on the whims of managers. Women often get paid more when their compensation system is more standardized, which keeps unconscious bias from seeping in. They also benefit from transparency because it’s easier to spot an obvious inequity when co-workers know how much their colleagues are getting paid.

In 2013, women working full-time earned about 82 percent of what their male colleagues made, according to a March study from the Institute for Women’s Policy Research. Unions could help close that gap; unfortunately, unionization rates for both women and men have plunged since the 1980s, as the CEPR notes.

Among the other possible consequences of the decline of unions are a shrinking middle class and companies that have boosted profits at the expense of workers.

There's Never Been A Trademark As Offensive As Redskins

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is clearly not a big fan of the Washington Redskins.

The normally sleepy U.S. Trademark Trial And Appeal Board, an arm of the PTO, made headlines on Wednesday when it canceled six trademarks registered by the team. Only twice on record has the office tried to use its power to strip away a trademark for being offensive to an ethnic group, and both cases involved the Redskins.

The office's first attempt to stop the team from using the term, which many consider outdated and offensive, was in 1999. That decision was later reversed, and the office's new one might be also. But the PTO seems to think it's worth another try anyway.

“It’s almost like they’re saying, ‘As a matter of conscience, we are going to give our view on this, even if we recognize that it might be overturned,’” said Barton Beebe, a professor of intellectual property law at New York University.

The board's decision was such a statement that the notoriously conservative Wall Street Journal accused the body of taking a political stance, writing, "even the lowly patent clerks are following liberal orders and deputizing themselves as George Custers to drive the Washington Redskins out of America."

The latest effort could be more damaging to the Redskins, at least in terms of publicity, because it happened in the age of social media -- which has amplified the decision and turned it into huge news.

“The decision does not legally force the team to change its name, but I think it adds to the pressure,” said Rebecca Tushnet, a professor focusing on intellectual property at Georgetown University’s Law Center. Neither she nor Beebe could think of another case, aside from those involving the Redskins, in which a trademark was canceled for being disparaging.

But even if the PTO lets some offensive trademarks stand, it doesn't allow for new ones to be created. The 1946 Lanham Act bars the registration of trademarks that are deemed disparaging. There aren't too many common ethnic slurs trademarked these days, based on a quick search of the USPTO database. Still, there are a few live marks that use the word “cracka” and many using the word “slut.”

Disparaging trademarks are denied registration pretty regularly, according to Beebe. For example, the office recently denied a push to register the phrase “Stop the Islamization of America," USA Today reported.

When the rare cancellation does happen, it’s typically for things like lapse of use or deception, said Tushnet. In fact, according to USPTO's online records, which only go back to 1999, the only other time the PTO has wielded its power to cancel a trademark for being offensive was in April 1999, in another case against the Redskins. In that case, called Harjo v. Pro Football, Inc., an appeals court threw out the ruling mostly on the basis that the petitioners had waited too long to assert their rights.

This new case uses much of the same evidence as the Harjo case, and it’s likely lawyers will argue in appeal that so much time has passed that it's hard to prove that the word "Redskins" was disparaging to Native Americans at the time the trademarks were registered. Courts consider how a word was used during the time it was trademarked when reviewing these cases.

“I’ve never seen a case of this nature that has had to go back in time to cancel a mark that was registered 40 years ago,” Beebe said. “We’re talking about the meaning of the term in the mid-1960s.”

Andrew Baum, a partner at the law firm Foley & Lardner who focuses on intellectual property, said the case's notoriety may have influenced the PTO's decision to take a stand against the trademarks.

“I suspect that they were trying to decide the case in terms of contemporary sensibilities, and as the defense points out that’s not the standard,” Baum said. “It’s unusual for the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board to deal with an issue that is so fraught with racial and ethnic sensitivity that is under such a big spotlight. These are trademark professionals, they are administrative-law judges that normally work in obscurity, and here they are in a case that gets decided and immediately The Huffington Post is calling for comments on it.”

Beats Headphones Banned From World Cup Sidelines

SAO PAULO, June 17 (Reuters) - Neymar likes them Brazil-green. England's Wayne Rooney, white. Luis Suarez, blue.

Banned from the pitch by FIFA for licensing reasons, the bulky Beats headphones are a favorite for many of the world's top players, making the World Cup a huge unofficial ad for the company acquired by Apple Inc last month.

The colorful high-end headphones created by rapper Dr Dre have become a ubiquitous soccer accessory.

Neymar wore them as he stepped off the bus at the Castelao stadium of Fortaleza for Brazil's last training season on the eve of their match with Mexico on Tuesday.

Suarez had them wrapped around his neck as he joked with his Uruguay team mates during a break at a recent practice.

But soccer world governing body FIFA's licensing agreement with rival electronics maker Sony Corp means players have to take them off when they are in World Cup stadiums for official matches and media events.

Marketing experts say that probably only amplifies their appeal.

"When fans see World Cup athletes wearing Beats in their downtime, by choice, it has as much impact as seeing them lace their Adidas (boots) or sip a sponsored beverage," said strategist Ellen Petry Leanse, a former Apple and Google executive.

"Maybe more, actually - Beats isn't a sponsor, so the message is more authentic and credible."

Acquired by Apple for $3 bln, Beats Electronics is known for "guerrilla marketing" tactics to bypass licensing barriers.

During the 2012 Olympics in London, for instance, the company sent thousands of free headphones to high profile athletes including the U.S. basketball team and the entire British delegation, outsmarting official sponsor Panasonic.

Officials at Beats were not available for comment on their strategy at the Olympics and this World Cup.

A five-minute film featuring Neymar, Suarez, Germany's Mario Goetze, Netherlands' Robin van Persie, Mexico's Javier "Chicharito" Hernandez and other players wearing Beats headphones released days before the World Cup has been seen by 10.6 million people on YouTube.

Its name? "The Game Before the Game".

Sony this month issued all players participating in the World Cup with a free set of its own headphones they can take to the games.

But so far few players have been spotted with them wrapped around their necks. (Editing by Kieran Murray)

Koch Brothers Plan $300 Million Spending Spree In 2014

The billionaire Koch brothers and their political network are planning to spend almost $300 million during the 2014 election cycle, some of which will go toward a renewed effort to combat unprecedented carbon regulations unveiled by the Obama administration last month.

According to The Daily Beast, industrialists Charles and David Koch will advance a new energy initiative this weekend at a California resort featuring Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and libertarian political scientist Charles Murray. While its scope isn't clear yet, the group will be spearheaded by the Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce, a 200-member organization that has funneled millions of dollars to various nonprofits in the Koch network.

The new push comes in the wake of proposed EPA regulations that would cut carbon dioxide emissions from power plants by 30 percent. It also follows a February announcement from billionaire liberal investor Tom Steyer, a major advocate against the Keystone XL pipeline, that he will be undertaking his own $100 million initiative to make climate change a key issue in 2014.

Americans for Prosperity, the main political arm of the Kochs, is already planning a $125 million spending spree on other political projects across the country, according to Politico.

Politically oriented nonprofits aren't the only beneficiaries of Koch money. The United Negro College Fund, which supports historically black colleges and universities, announced a $25 million grant last month from Koch Industries, Inc.

The billionaire brothers are also a frequent topic of conversation in the Senate, where Democrats are calling for a constitutional amendment to restore Congress' power to regulate campaign finance after the Supreme Court struck down several fundraising restrictions. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) clashed on the matter during a recent Senate Judiciary Committee hearing.