What is the Futurity of New York Style Week?

Tanya Taylor ss22.jpg

In 2018, I wrote a blog post called New York Fashion Week is Broken: How Tin can We Fix Information technology? It was a piece that mainly chosen out the decentralization and digitization of a days-long issue that had previously occurred entirely in one identify for a hyper-sectional oversupply of fashion industry leaders.

Today in 2021 it's no surprise that bloggers, Instagrammers and now even TikTokers are known to nourish mode week and sit down shoulder to shoulder (or socially distanced) with some of the elevation editors and fashion figures in the world. Attendees are not only willing but often happy to attend shows and events in Brooklyn (unheard of in previous years) or anywhere exterior of the usual Spring Studios bubble for that matter.

I've been attention New York Fashion Week for 9 seasons as an intern, editor, freelance writer, and mode content creator. After everything that's happened since I last attended an IRL show in Feb 2020, earlier the world changed forever, I'm asking the question: do nosotros still need manner week?

What is New York Fashion Week?

There are many dissimilar iterations of way week from men's mode week to haute couture week, only fashion week in New York most frequently refers to the calendar week in February and the week in September where designers present their women's prepare-to-wear collections. AKA, the stuff you're nearly probable to actually buy and wear.

How does manner calendar week work?

Each season designers will invite guests to nourish presentations of their upcoming collections. The guests could be editors, buyers, fans and friends of the brand, influencers, or anyone else who they'd like. Getting invited to a show is considered a privilege and on top of that getting a highly coveted front row seat at a runway evidence means y'all're someone who the designer considers important.

How exercise you lot get invited to fashion week?

Cheque out my other blog post with everything yous need to know about scoring an invite to fashion week.

What is the importance of fashion week?

Originally, manner week was only attended past editors and buyers and then they could run into the collections before they were ever bachelor in stores and brand decisions almost what would be included in impress issues of publications and what would be placed in different department stores. Slowly and so swiftly over the years, mode week has turned into the chance for a designer to brand a major splash on social media and gain notoriety, followers, and ideally also make sales.

Nowadays, way week is merely every bit big of a deal for the attendees as they document the shows across their social channels and hope to get their film taken running to and from presentations past street mode photographers.

Tanya Taylor SS22 presentation

Tanya Taylor SS22 presentation

What has inverse well-nigh NYFW over the years?

The meliorate question might be, what hasn't changed? New York Fashion Week used to accept place in Bryant Park and was called dissimilar things depending on which brand was sponsoring the event like Olympus (early 2000's) and Mercedes Benz, which was the title sponsor of NYFW for about a decade until 2015.

In 2007, nosotros were introduced to a piffling something chosen the iPhone and in 2010 a new app started appearing on the dwelling screens of fashion lovers everywhere: Instagram. 2010 also marked a physical change for fashion week when the event moved from Bryant Park 20 blocks north to Lincoln Middle.

I distinctly remember a New York Times commodity published by Eric Wilson in 2009 with the headline "Bloggers Crash Mode'south Front Row" with a photo of BryanBoy and Tommy Ton sitting with their laptops in the best seats in the house, merely a few anxiety away from Vogue'due south Anna Wintour.

Even now where it'southward common to come across bloggers and content creators sitting in prime number seats, it's also assumed that editors who are given front row seats will as well accept a video or two for Instagram stories, as many of them accept built upwardly their ain social media followings because of their affiliations with different magazines.

By 2011, some designers in New York were starting to incorporate alive streaming of their shows into their fashion week game plans. Live streaming runway shows made more people feel included.

Starting around 2012, some designers opted to ditch the traditional runway format and bear witness their collections as a presentation where viewers could walk through a space to view the apparel on models and get close up photos. Not to mention it was a chance to conversation with their friends and colleagues and possibly even have a glass of champagne.

Presentations meant no seating charts and more than chapters so it opened upward fashion week to be a bit more attainable to say an editorial assistant, micro-influencer or random fashion lover hoping to go a glimpse at what was inside.

In 2015 manner week moved from Lincoln Center to downtown Manhattan where Skylight Clarkson Square and Leap Studios served every bit the epicenters for a bulk of shows. Some were sprinkled throughout other locations in the metropolis and the decentralized nature of most shows and presentations has been the dominant format for the past few years.

Designers accept likewise made strides, albeit on a small scale, towards more inclusive runways in terms of ethnic diversity and body type when information technology comes to casting models.

How did Covid-nineteen change New York Fashion Week?

Mode week was the last big event I attended before New York City shut downwardly in March 2020. In September 2020 and February 2021 in that location were some attempts at digital and even very intimate in person showings of new collections, but without a Covid-19 vaccine it was difficult to justify the artistic energy, overall expense, and frankly the health risk of trying to present collections as normal. Fifty-fifty with a vaccine though, it's articulate nosotros're still far from normal.

Some designers chose to have a well-deserved break and opted out of showing a new drove entirely, while influencers constitute artistic ways to participate in the manner week discourse from the condolement of their own homes.

Come September 2021 and fashion week in some ways seemed to pick up where information technology left off, with some adjustments. All fashion week events required attendees to testify proof of vaccination to attend.

On tiptop of that, I still personally chose to wear a mask to all indoor presentations, even though I am fully vaccinated.

The Daily Beast reported that capacity for the bound/summer 2022 presentations at NYFW was highly reduced compared to what information technology unremarkably was—with most shows assuasive between 150-200 guests max, whereas in previous seasons a runway show would typically host 500+ guests.

Glossy also reported that 27% of designers chose to evidence near this fashion week, including Tadashi Shoji which was the merely digital presentation I tuned in for this season. Alive streaming is not new to mode week, simply information technology was previously used in addition to a live runway show instead of in lieu of i.

In terms of overall trends I saw at the jump/summertime 2022 presentations—beading, fringe, feathers, bright neon colors, and more than styles that celebrate a render to getting dressed after a year in loungewear were playing on echo across the dissimilar venues.

Leanne Marshall SS22 runway presentation

Leanne Marshall SS22 rails presentation

What does this mean for the future of style week?

Well before the Covid-19 pandemic there was churr among fashion insiders (myself included) indicating the current format for fashion calendar week needed to be updated. Whether information technology was to closer align with retail schedules, allow more than people to experience the presentations live, or to create a better environs for designers and the attendees of shows to anticipate, view, and feel each new season's collections in a more thoughtful way.

Judging by the widespread adoption of digital events during the pandemic information technology seems probable that digital events and events incorporating augmented or virtual reality will go more common during way weeks in the future.

Most of all, information technology showed that the fashion manufacture tin can't separate fully from the exterior world. While way is an escape for many, information technology is as well intrinsically connected to health, politics, and how we choose to live our lives each and every day.

After and then many months away, attending this past fashion week fabricated information technology clear we still need to improve the NYFW format. Merely most of all it gave me hope and happiness—attending events again, hugging so many friends I hadn't seen in over a year and most of all getting to witness so much creativity and artistry up shut.

While there is so much we can do virtually, there is something truly irreplaceable and dare I say *magical* about experiencing fashion week in real life that Nylon'south EIC Alyssa Vinngan summed upwards nicely in a tweet:

And because of that information technology's hard to picture a world without fashion week someday before long.

yours,

Austen

Other images from top to bottom: Collina Strada SS22 rail show, Leanne Marshall SS22 runway show, posing with Sarah of Curvily at the Tanya Taylor presentation, viewing the Tadashi Shoji SS22 presentation digitally from The Arlo Soho.