South: A red-hot brand

Men: Randy Olson/National Geographic Stock; Shirt Plaid, Banjo: Alamy. Sonic: Newscom

By Eric Spitznagel

When the members of the Confederate Army declared "South rise again", they were not talking about New York Fashion Week. However, in February, celebrities and icons of fashion direction filled Lincoln Center to view Chris Benz new Savannah (GA) - inspired collection. The show, which Benz referred to as "Spooky Savannah", in floppy hats and hierarchical models featured wheels walking trail as if they were in a reconstruction of midnight in the garden of good and evil directed by John Waters. Salama Alabbar fashion boutique owner already has high hopes for "spooky savannah" in his store, Symphony. Benz "Conservative cuts consistently very well, performing" said. "Beadwork and beautification will also be very attractive in this part of the world"-by which she means Dubai.

While the wired in Brooklyn have long dressed up as sharecroppers, lower and middle-brow culture South is now rising around the world. Duo the Bellamy Brothers music, slightly famous for their hit Let Your Love Flow country, are evolving the crowds to sold-out in South Africa and Sri Lanka, where, according to their booking agent Judy Seale, they are "treated as Elvis." In the United Kingdom, Kentucky bourbon sales increased 25% since 2005, according to a study by London market of farm International wine and spirits research. (IWSR also predicts sales will increase an additional 22 percent here 2014) Bone winter independent film, which tells the labours of a teenage girl cut wood and squirrels of murder, is the rhythm to overshadow its U.S. domestic gross foreign income. Chris Benz is not the only guru of fashion South. According to agrarian-chic designer Billy Reid, global clients is now attracted to products that have "Southern roots."

The rise of the South mark, however, seems related to the decline of many other things. "Consumers have been more interested in the South following several trends," says Savannah Haspel market IBIS world society studies. (Yes, it is his real name). Among them, she said, is - this "post-Katrina funding and aid turned the attention of consumers toward the region." Harvey Jackson, a Professor of history at the University of Alabama Jacksonville State and editor of the new encyclopedia of southern Culture, believed in time of uncertainty, "South is a quieter and quieter place, and many people want right now is." Kim Holloway, creator of the popular blog Stuff South People Like, is in agreement. "If you work, depressed and stressed, caviar and sushi will not exactly to stanch the flow of tears", she said. "But perhaps of fried chicken! The export of the culture of the South, Holloway stressed, is directly related to its financial capacity and accessibility. If a region is faced with austerity measures or decreased from available income, less expensive diversions South redevelopment the sheen, they had, said Holloway, "since the end of the civil war and Confederate money was suddenly as useless as tits on a bull".

The southern diaspora has created a new generation of profiteers unlikely. At the top of the list is Paula Deen, the dealer-turned-small-town-cook-turned-celebrity-chef-turned-lifestyle-eminence. The popularity of her show Paula cooking home and party benefits Paula and best dishes - and lines marks the cookware and appliances - Paula Deen has become a name of household in South AfricaTurkey and other places where pot pineapple has not yet hang.

Deen is the beneficiary of the manifest destiny of Southern comfort food own. Restaurant blue smoke chic of New York, an order of shrimp and grits fresh $26.95. In tout the Lebanon, the chain diners Roadster brought of cheese and sprayed with people barbecue sauce burgers fries bored by healthier eating in the Mediterranean. Late last year, 3,200 KFC restaurants operating in all of China. Say Yum! Public relations manager Virginia Ferguson brands: "we expect the Yum! Division of China to become our first profit of $ 1 billion business in the near future. "According to the son of the Deen, Bobby, himself the star of many Deen spin-offs,"[now] you realize how pervasive South became". ?

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