Hasta La Ideas

Martha Stewart’s craftiness knows no bounds. News that her beleaguered business sputtered to a quarterly loss of a $50.7 million–on revenue of $43.5 million–provided a peg for much Martha-bashing, most notably by James B. Stewart (no relation!), who earlier this month delievered quite the smackdown via his New York Times business-section column. Clearly, Martha was not amused. But rather than waste time crying over spilled milk (award-winning, certified organic milk from family farmers, in a reusable glass bottle, we suspect), she rallied the forces of PR, and emerged with two major features in the Thanksgiving weekend papers.

On the front page of Sunday’s New York Times, sandwiched between news of shivering Syrian refugees and gridlock in the Senate, was “Martha Stewart Clicks with a Tattooed Crowd,” in which writer Christine Haughney dubs Martha a “patron saint for entrepreneurial hipsters” looking to carve out a living selling, say, t-shirts created from vintage children’s sheets. One devotee, whose “vintage-inspired spun cotton ornaments and figures” have been spotlighted in various MSLO media properties, likens Martha to “the Jesus of the craft world.” Some MarthaStewart.com web stats are proffered to offset the widely publicized disappointments on the print side, and Haughney even finds a way to put a positive spin on Martha’s five-month incarceration, which no one will ever stop talking about, ever. “She’s such a Suzy homemaker and also did some time in the joint,” says Luis Illades, an owner of Brooklyn food-craft purveyor Urban Rustic. “That has helped cement her iconic image. Before, she was someone your mother would follow.”
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