Welcome to The American Thread, a recurring column on the fate and future of fashion in the US, written by Vogue Business editor-at-large Christina Binkley. To receive the Vogue Business newsletter, sign up here.
Few people are ferried around New York Fashion Week by helicopter. Most of us use a mix of subways, shoe leather and the itinerant Uber.
As a result, when Helmut Lang, Willy Chavarria and Prada’s beauty launch party were each scheduled hours apart in Williamsburg and Greenpoint, Brooklyn on Friday, invitees made difficult choices. Some, like Steven Kolb, executive director of the Council of Fashion Designers of America, missed seeing Prabal Gurung, a CFDA board member whose show was scheduled the hour prior to Chavarria, 40 minutes away at the hard-to-reach Starrett-Lehigh building in Manhattan.
“So, did you enjoy your three trips to Brooklyn yesterday?” asked Stefano Tonchi, the former editor-in-chief of W Magazine and T Magazine, after we took our seats at Eckhaus Latta on Saturday.
Gripes about schedules sound trivial coming from a highly privileged crowd. But the underlying issue is critical to the success of American designers, most of whom are struggling independents, who show on New York’s runways or in its showrooms.
Each season, New York designers have one costly shot at getting as many eyeballs as possible on their hard work. Myriad forces are working against them, from supply chains that originate in Europe and Asia, to the dearth of traditional small-business financing. The last thing that should limit their visibility is a mile-long hike from the C train, or a $70 round-trip Uber to Brooklyn.
But that is exactly what has been happening each day in New York this season. “I’ve been hearing that a lot,” said CFDA chairman Thom Browne when I mentioned it on Tuesday after making it back to Manhattan from deep in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, where Gabriela Hearst has been showing for several seasons. The morning snow storm only snarled traffic more.
This diaspora of fashion week comes just as New York is gathering itself with a slate of emerging and established designers who are bringing renewed energy to collections. Things are getting exciting again, in fits and starts. Anna Sui showed one of her best collections in years on Saturday night — more grown up in silhouette but with spicy hues and textures that are key to the label, not to mention the knee-high spats that caused my seatmate Debbie Harry to whisper, “I love a spat!”
Willy Chavarria fully arrived with a collection that had the footings of a real brand business strategy along with the designer’s emotive, sexy cultural message that has already made him a multiple award winner.
Joseph Altuzarra produced a delightful luxurious collection that looked as though he still has the backing of Kering, despite their quiet and amicable separation several years ago. Both the collection and his guest list were pared down from his usual shows because he said he wants to step away from the chaos. Wise move. Tory Burch, who showed on Monday night, has done a similar paring down in recent seasons, and her focus on creativity over quantity – and this season with experimental silhouettes that are new for her – has raised the profile of her clothing designs.
Parisian Ludovic de Saint Sernin brought his eponymous brand to New York for a guest appearance following his short-lived stint at Ann Demeulemeester.
Sadly, one of New York’s promising labels, Puppets and Puppets, showed its final New York runway on Monday before designer Carly Mark moves the business to London, hoping to find more support on the other side of the Atlantic. The collection shown will never go into production, and the show had a funereal feel that re-emphasised the week’s anxieties
New York Fashion Week’s several organisers should be making it easier, not more difficult, to see as many of its labels as possible.
While the CFDA has gone to lengths to declutter the hour-by-hour schedule, Kolb argues that the CFDA is powerless when it comes to labels’ show venues, and is often as in the dark about venues as guests are until the invitations go out.
Designers rarely know each others’ plans. They’re operating in a vacuum looking for the best place to showcase their collections. This explains the regular treks to the Navy Yard, where both Hearst as well as Brandon Maxwell showed this season. The dramatic venue requires a substantial hike from public transportation, or an expensive (and carbon-wise unsustainable) Uber ride, as well as the near necessity of keeping the hours prior and after open for travel time.
The CFDA has little recourse when a designer opts to show 40 minutes away from the prior show, Kolb says. “We can’t put them in jail,” he said.
One organisation that does control the venues for much of the calendar is IMG, which moved its venue for its “NYFW: The Shows” from one of the city’s most central subway intersections on Spring Street to the Starrett-Lehigh building. It’s a fabulous historic building with spectacular views, but it’s unfortunately located on 11th Avenue, nearly a mile from the nearest subway. It may be one of NYFW’s most complained-about venues ever.
I asked an IMG executive about the choice. Revealing an astounding lack of familiarity with actual fashion-week workings, they replied that they believe few fashion showgoers take subways. Tell that to the New York Times team, the Financial Times, or any of the other fashion attendees who crowd subway platforms near every show.
“Someone should be in charge here,” a senior department store executive told me midway through the week.
New York Fashion Week needs a mom — someone willing to make hard choices, field flak and find workarounds or strategies to benefit the entire fashion family. At one time, it had two: Ruth Finley and Fern Mallis. Finley, who founded the Fashion Calendar in 1945, ruled it imperiously, handing out time slots and ultimatums, nearly until her death in 2018. Mallis, meanwhile, created New York’s modern fashion week, once centred at the famous Bryant Park tents, and ran IMG Fashion for a decade until 2010. I reached her on Tuesday to ask what she made of New York’s Fall 2024 week.
“I think the situation is in desperate need of resuscitation,” Mallis replied. “No one is looking at it from the clients’ shoes…And they aren’t mitigating for young designers. People look at the Bryant Park tents like it was Studio 54 days.”
Mallis described the “war room” that she once used to organise the week, with a board full of sticky notes that were moved around as negotiations took place. Designers filled out request forms with their first, second and third choices for time slots and venues. When big names like Calvin Klein and Michael Kors began to seek out their own off-site venues, they were supported with the same sponsors, and buses ferried guests to the new venues.
“There were times when people thought I was too tough, but we were doing what was best for the entire industry,” Mallis says.
This week, one editor suggested that some shows should be scheduled 90 minutes apart to allow for more travel time — a strategy used in Milan when a venue is an outlier.
Milan Fashion Week is coordinated by the Camera Nazionale della Moda, with reportedly heated meetings among its members. At Paris Fashion Week, tightly controlled by the nation’s fashion federation — a unit of government — buses ferry buyers and press between shows, with a minder on each bus to keep track.
A minority of guests use those buses, but they serve a higher purpose: no Paris runway is permitted to commence before the official buses arrive. That forces brands to contend with how their venue of choice is connected to the shows prior and after.
Kolb is not the king of fashion week, but he is a central figure and he could be a mitigator. I ran the bus idea past him while we were seated at Gabriela Hearst on Tuesday. Though he had just insisted that missed shows due to schedules are inevitable during fashion weeks, he mentioned that the CFDA is forming a working group of brands, publicists, producers, editors and other stakeholders to work on industry issues like, perhaps, organising fashion week. They have yet to meet.
Kolb later returned to those Paris buses. Someone would have to pay for them. “Feel free to say that we would organise buses,” he said, “if there were a sponsor.”
Speak up, fashion people, or forever hold your peace.
Correction: Altuzarra was previously backed by Kering, not LVMH as previously reported. (14 February 2024)
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