Fashion Week Rebalance
New York Fashion Week has ended, and the baton has been passed to Milan, London and Paris.
With a shortened schedule, and a move largely to digital platforms, New York Fashion Week hardly resembles fashion weeks of the past. And like everything else in the industry, change already happening around fashion show presentations was precipitated by the pandemic.
Ever since the birth of haute couture, developed and codified by Charles Frederick Worth in the late 1800s, VIP customers would be invited to see next season’s collection and place their orders. Select press attaches were also invited, as a way to garner interest in the collection once it became more widely available to the public.
This worked well in a small centralized country like France but became unwieldy for couturiers in the United States. Thus, Fashion Week was devised by Eleanor Lambert as a weeklong event in New York City, that customers and press could all participate in twice a year. This concentrated event was such a success that it was soon copied in France, as the perfect way to extend their reach to customers and press in other countries. Soon, the tradition spread to Italy, England and beyond.
Fashion weeks also correlated with buying seasons, providing the perfect opportunity for store buyers to choose the looks that would end up in their stores six months later. This also provided a safeguard to designers, as it gave them a chance to test their styles in the market before going into full production.
Fast forward to today, and fashion week is now primarily a consumer-focused event, largely due to social media and the ability to share information instantaneously, direct to the general public, an audience that is not even invited to attend the physical shows! This means that the press can no longer time their coverage to the season, which essentially puts the system completely out of balance. What’s more, buyers are much more likely to be working one-on-one with brands to develop exclusive styles for their stores, long before fashion week, which means that buyers are primarily showing up to support what they’ve already bought. On top of this, as customers become more value-based in how they shop, brands have to contend with issues of sustainability and transparency. Holding big expensive shows with celebrities feels out of touch.
Many brands have been toying with solutions to these problems in an effort to rebalance the system, including “see now, buy now” collections to combat fast fashion copies, livestream shows on Pinterest and Twitch to alleviate travel, and augmented reality shows with avatar models to alleviate costs. But these solutions have never really fully taken root or upended the system. But now that has all changed, in a time where physical gatherings are difficult at best, and digital is leading the way.
And so, the Spring 2021 shows held this September have largely been used as tests by brands searching for the best way to engage buyers, press and customers. It’s forcing them to think much more individually, while still considering the benefit of scale that a bi-annual fashion event provides.
When the fall shows come around in February, we’re likely to see a much more hybrid approach to fashion week with brands approaching their presentations more personally and confidently...no matter if the pandemic persists.