New York Fashion Week Spring 2018
Well, here we are again: another August. And in the fashion continuum, that can mean only one thing: New York Fashion Week is right around the corner. And hot on its heels, the rest of fashion month.
Our NYFW schedule (which we’ve been compiling since 2011 or so), is full of the usual suspects: from salon-presentation favorites like Novis and Carmen Marc Valvo (who was also a reader favorite six seasons back), to big-name designers like Tom Ford and Oscar de la Renta.
As usual, we’re looking forward to previewing a bunch (to use the technical term) of designers’ new collections, from PH5 to Lela Rose to Sies Marjan to Taoray Wang: really just way too many to include here.
Although IMG hasn’t yet released their schedule, one of the more interesting offerings from them this season is NYFW: The Experience: an opportunity to attend a show, go behind-the-scenes, and learn about fashion week.
one of the more interesting offerings from them this season is NYFW: The Experience
When we started this whole Fashion Week Online thing (some of our die-hard readers may remember us as Live Runway, or Fashion Week Dates, or New York Fashion Week Live), it was because we saw something that probably only a fashion outsider could: namely, that fashion week was exciting. In the beginning, we’d never been to a fashion show, and we had a lot of questions about New York Fashion Week.
we saw that fashion week was exciting
Burning questions such as: “When is it?” “What is it?” “Why are shows in February called ‘Fall / Winter,’ and in September called ‘Spring / Summer?'” How did people even know when fashion week was happening to begin with, who was showing, and (of course) how did one get to attend?
There was no centralized place to find out exactly what this fashion week stuff was all about.
We thought it might be nifty to find the answers to these questions, and put them all in one place. And then there were the live streams: those fabled digital catwalks first begun by London Fashion Week, then New York Fashion Week, Milan Fashion Week, and some scattered Paris Fashion Week designers and houses. We thought it might be nice to track these down, make a list, and even host these for everyone (whenever we could actually find the embeds, that is). Back then the landscape included sites like CatwalkLive.tv, who had similar ideas, but gave up after becoming (understandably) disillusioned by the sheer exhaustion of tracking it all down.
We thought it might be nice to track the live streams down
Well, that was six years ago now. In that time, Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week has become NYFW: The Shows, the CFDA bought a business from Ruth Finley, and we’ve seen designers come, go, and remain. And we’ve continued to help regular, non-industry people (many of whom will become the industry of tomorrow) find out what fashion week is, let them watch it live, see replays, and generally feel like they’re a part of the excitement.
Fashion is always changing, and fashion week is always changing, too. Perhaps the only constant is the usual sensationalistic headlines saying that fashion week is dead, almost dead, dying, in trouble, will soon explode in a ball of fire, be eaten by piranhas, etc.
Some notables throughout the years have included:
• “Have catwalk shows reached the end of the runway?” (2010) (apparently they hadn’t)
• “Is New York Fashion Week Near the End of the Runway?” (2013) (we guess not)
• “IS THIS THE END OF FASHION WEEK AS WE KNOW IT?” (2016) (maybe)
• “Why Can’t New York Fashion Week Find Another Automotive Sponsor?” (2015) (IMG did)
• “Big-name designers are ditching New York Fashion Week” (2017) (they aren’t)
• “The Glamorous Past, Troubled Present, and Uncertain Future of NYFW” (2015) (if you say so)
… you get the idea.
Just as good news can’t be counted on for clicks, or good behavior for fame, fear is a powerful motivator for those willing to exploit it for gain. (For proof of that, look no further than the latest presidential election.)
fear is a powerful motivator for those willing to exploit it for attention
The funny thing is, in spite of all the headlines, from where we sit, interest in fashion week has never been greater. Anna Wintour once said — maybe it was in The Editor’s Eye (and here paraphrasing), if people aren’t canceling their subscriptions, you’re doing something wrong.
In every industry, it’s a bad time for snobs, autocrats, and control freaks, and a good one for anyone willing to include and empower others, or rethink the way things have been done. Especially given the realization that the more eyes there are on an industry (especially one like fashion), the better it is for that industry. Would we rather have 10,000 pairs of eyes on designers, or 1 million? It seems like simple math.
the more eyes are on fashion, the better it is for fashion
Fashion is built on change. It’s the “out with the old, in with the new.” And as we’ve seen in the Instagram generation’s veneration of ageless style icons such as Iris Apfel (or Diana Vreeland in her Studio 54 years), “out” is never about chronological age: it’s about stubborn resistance to new ideas.
As H.G. Wells said: “Adapt or perish is nature’s inexorable imperative.”
Or as another writer once said: “The times they are a-changin’.”
See you on September 6.
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With love,
FWO
