Fashion week for Fall has officially started in New York as of yesterday! YAY! But wait – what is fashion week, anyways?
In its essence, it’s a trade show.
Yup. A trade show. Underwhelming, right? If you take away all the smoke and mirrors, all the glamor, all the media tittering away about who-went-to-what-show, that’s what it is. It’s a time where designers can hawk their wares present their upcoming collections to buyers, media, and collectors.
Who is it for?
Big department stores, like Neiman Marcus, Bloomingdale’s, Saks, etc, want to know what to order for next season, and their buyers are the ones calling the shots. So although we don’t see photos of buyers doing their thing, it’s their relationship with brands that make fashion week utilitarian and keep the thing running. So while the pageantry around runway shows is hard to rip your eyes away from, it’s not really the point – the point is to make buyers, especially from the big luxury department stores – want to put in orders for next season.
The media coverage, too, is a big deal. Free advertising, right? “Free” is kind of a loose term, since runway shows can easily cost a few hundred thousand dollars to produce. The old quote “half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is, I don’t know which half” comes to mind here. It is incredibly difficult to know what kind of return on investment these shows provide, but many brands would argue that you can’t put a price tag on buzz.
Fashion collectors – the high-rolling clients – are icing on the cake. They represent a small portion of a brand’s revenue, although since some are celebrities, these individuals garner a lot of press attention. For larger shows, Vogue often includes a “front row” section in their runway commentaries, I imagine because it adds to a show’s appeal in the public imagination.
Most shows are ”invite only” (eye roll), so you need to be either a buyer, a client, press, or on the PR agency’s invite list (a lot of fashion bloggers fall in the latter). However, some shows are open to the public – it pays to do a wee Google search and see what’s what. I recommend scoping out Fashion Week Dates for schedules if you’re interested in attending a show.
Who Organizes Fashion Week?
I always imagined that there was a central Fashion Authority that scheduled these things. That used to be the case – sort of- for New York Fashion Week (see this adorable Teen Vogue article from back in 2015). But in general, there’s been a consensus among brands and PR agencies that “this is the week we do fashion in such-and-such-city in such-and-such-month.”
It’s governed more by a set of norms than anything else, and these norms were supported by the general pipeline of design to production to market. So if you’re a buyer and you want to have new stock in for Spring of next year, it would behoove you to attend fashion week in fall of this year. You’d have time to plan your orders, and the brand has time to manufacture and ship.
PR agencies are largely responsible for scheduling and hosting shows, and in every city there’s a handful of them that take the wheel, knowing that tradition dictates shows every September and February. I imagine there must be a lot of internal back-and-forth on logistics between and among these agencies, but haven’t seen any hard evidence on that.
So What is Fashion Month?
It really should read, “So what are Fashion Months?” because there are two per year, as I mentioned above, in September and February.
There are many fashion weeks all around the world, but historically speaking, there are four cities that serve as anchors each season: New York, London, Milan, and Paris (can you tell how euro-centric our fashion industry is?). These four fashion weeks, back to back, are collectively called “fashion month”. Because that’s how months work … you add four weeks together. Ta-dah! Haha.
Cha-Cha-Cha-Changes
Remember that design-to-consumer pipeline I mentioned that dictates the semi-annual fashion week schedule? For a few years now, there’s been grumbling about the relevance of fashion week in a world where consumers expect instant gratification. There are increasing numbers of brands adopting a “see now, buy now” strategy, where you could see a piece on the runway and have it in your closet in a matter of weeks, as opposed to six months.
There’s a lot of talk that these changes are, in part, slowly killing fashion week. That doesn’t mean that designers aren’t showing their collections, although it has meant that some are becoming more creative with how they do so. They may show at various times throughout the year on their own schedules, not those dictated by the traditional model, and/or adopt the see now, buy now strategy.
But for now, fashion week remains. And while we say that it’s for buyers, the media, or fancypants customers, remember too that ANYONE can enjoy it. It’s art, people!
For me, it’s about seeing art and where we’re going as a society. For others, it may be a good opportunity for some fun escapism, or even – bless them – an opportunity to go shopping.
What does it mean to you?
love,
Stig
P.S. Interested in more fashion week coverage? Stay tuned OR check out this post, this post, or this post for past coverage.
