Some WVFC readers might remember a Nanette Lepore fashion catwalk we embedded last year, for one of our Pat Allen's posts; the very last dress in it, after all the signature Lepore pieces, was a T-shirt saying simply: SAVE THE GARMENT CENTER. It passed by so quickly, you might not have had time to ask: Save what? That Lepore T-shirt was in support of a grassroots campaign by entrepeneurs in New York City's Garment District, a half-mile-square stretch of Lower Midtown that once held garment factories as well as Seventh Avenue design showrooms.And today,Lepore and the Council of Fashion Designers brought that campaign a step forward, with a rally that also featured Fern Mallis (left), executive director of 7 on Sixth, which produces Fashion Week. As city planners tout a new proposal to consolidate the Garment District zoning rules, they're now getting pushback from Lepore's CFDA and Save The Garment Center, founded two years ago by local apparel-industry business owners such as Samanta Cortes (right), of Fashion Design Concepts, Inc. Cortes and 20-30 other providers founded Save the Garment Center because booming real estate values had already shrunk the size of the District, which protects the area from encroachment by retail and residential development.

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