<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"I was sitting at the U.S. Open with a bunch of boys last night, and they all started talking about how cool it is that Bear Grylls, AKA the Man vs. Wild adventurer, has his own clothing line. &amp;quot;Bear Grylls?&amp;quot; I wondered. &amp;quot;As in, BEAR GRYLLS?!&amp;quot; I was flabbergasted. Could there be a dude less likely to inspire me to buy pants? And then I woke up this morning and read WWD and decided ah, yes, there was. And that man, ladies, is Al Roker. Yes, according to today&amp;#x27;s Fashion Scoops, the nationally loved weatherman is in talks with the coat company Weatherproof to &amp;quot;design&amp;quot; a line tentatively called Weatherman, the Al Roker Collection. &amp;quot;The line, slated to launch fall 2010, would include rain jackets, coats, footwear and cold weather accessories. The collaboration, which would target mass market stores or national chains, marks the renewed partnership between Weatherproof and Roker, who has served as the company&amp;amp;#8217;s spokesperson in past ad campaigns.&amp;quot; Sign up for Glamour.com&amp;amp;#8217;s Style Tips of the Week and Beauty Tip of the Day newsletters! AL ROKER. &amp;quot;Designing&amp;quot; a line of jackets. Sure, he&amp;#x27;s a weatherman, and the line is called Weatherproof, and there are all sorts of connections that make sense in this partnership, if &amp;quot;sense&amp;quot; is something completely screwed up that I&amp;#x27;ve come to believe over the last five years because Lindsay Lohan has been trying to sell me self tanner and suddenly Tori Spelling is an expert on what children should wear because, you know, she has at least once dressed her own children. If you&amp;#x27;ve got a boldfaced name and at least two pairs of jeans, congratulations! You&amp;#x27;re a designer. Here&amp;#x27;s my real beef with celebrity clothing lines: They tend to trivialize all of the blood, sweat, and tears (not to mention years of passionate ambition) that really go into being a designer. While Al Roker is busy exchanging bad jokes on air with Willard Scott, some poor schlep with an F.I.T. degree is spending weeks and weeks in a studio making sure the vents in the back of a jacket flap just the right way. I know so many talented people who are toiling away in obscurity, designing socks for a chain store while they wait for their big break, and along comes Paula Abdul and POOF! she&amp;#x27;s got her own line of jewelry (cleverly called, might I add, &amp;quot;Forever Your Girl&amp;quot;). So unfair. What if the world decided that writers should fly planes? Would you get on a Jet Blue flight with yours truly at the helm? Because I&amp;#x27;m about as qualified to get you safely to LAX as Courtney Love is to dictate what good taste is. For real. So thank you Young Jeezy, and Beverly Mitchell (yes, really, the former 7th Heaven star has a line of flats!), and David Hasselhoff and Debbie Phelps and Raven Symone and Donald Trump, but...no thank you. I&amp;#x27;ll stick to what I do best, and maybe, just maybe, you can too? Oh and P.S....in case you missed this INCREDIBLE video of Julia Stiles spoofing celeb clothing lines, you&amp;#x27;ve gotta check it out now! More Ways to Get Glamour You could win $50,000 just for registering or logging in to Glamour.com! Add Glamour to your iGoogle homepage Follow Slaves to Fashion on Twitter! Photo: Jason LaVeris/Film Magic"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.glamour.com/fashion/blogs/dressed/2009/09/al-roker-fashion-designer-why>