It is nothing short of a fashion earthquake.
It is nothing short of a fashion earthquake. The organisers of New York Fashion Week are considering doing away with a century of tradition and showing designers’ catwalk collections only when they go on sale in the shops.
Until now, the public has had to wait between four and six months before they could buy the clothes featured in each season’s shows. But the Council of Fashion Designers of Am-erica, which runs New York’s twice-yearly catwalk shows, claims the “system is broken” and no longer works in a world obsessed with “fast fashion”.
Its director, the designer and former princess Diane von Furstenberg, claims the system frustrates the public and gives counterfeiters time to rip off the latest trends.
“The only people who benefit are the people who copy,” she told Women’s Wear Daily. Von Fursten-berg and the CFDA — who have commissioned a consultants’ report into how the fashion calendar might be shaken up — said the press and retailers should still be given sneak previews of each new season’s creations behind closed doors so orders could be placed. But the razmataz of the big runway shows should be opened up to the public, she argued, and turned into major entertainment events. Now only fashion buyers, journalists and celebrities are allowed to attend the catwalk shows, with seats highly sought after. But the Americans may not have it their way, with Paris and Milan, roundly rejecting the idea.
With their fashion industries more geared towards craft and artistry than the mass-market US trade, the fashion world appears to be heading for a stand-off. “Our industry is experiencing exceptional growth,” said Ralph Toledano, head of Fran-ce’s Couture Federation, saying it was wrong to think the status quo no longer works and warning that such radical change might create more problems that it solves. And Toledano dismissed as unrealistic Von Fursten-berg’s idea that new collections could be shown secretly to the press and buyers without details leaking. His opposite number in Milan, Carlo Capasa, was equally sceptical. “There will be a black market in photos of designs,” he claimed, wa-rning that turning fashion shows into a “phenomenon of pure marketing risked killing the way catwalk shows promote innovation.”
