On the eve of New York Fashion Week, go behind the scenes of the “most fabulous party on earth”
FROM one fashion event to the next! Are you keeping up?
As the international fashion media pack descends on New York for the spring 2014 season’s official start – followed by weeks in London, Milan, Paris – this short film is particularly relevant and timely.
New York Fashion Week is the city’s single largest media event and takes place twice a year – February and September. The event provides top designers an international platform to showcase their collections to more than 100,000 industry insiders from around the world, including buyers, editors, retailers, VIPs and more. With more that 80 designer shows across eight days, it is the premier event worldwide where style and beauty, supermodels and celebrities, come together to celebrate the best in fashion.
To the outside world, the fashion week circus may look like the most fabulous party on earth, but insiders are getting a little tired of all the fuss.
The combined fashion weeks are more like a fashion month. Then add to the calendar, pre-fall, couture and resort collections. As Eric Wilson wrote in yesterday’s New York Times: “In it’s present form, it is more like fashion month, beginning Thursday (today) with the over-scheduled spring collections in New York and ending with those in Paris on October 3 with no breaks in between for the now thousands of writers, retailers, photographers, videographers, bloggers and hordes of indeterminate somebodies who for various reasons Really Must Be There”. (To read the rest of the article, click here.)
This also begs the question: Is this relentless scheduling manageable and sustainable? Financially? Mentally? Physically? For the designers? For the press? And ultimately for the consumer. Can we keep up?
Even illustrious fashion journalist Suzy Menkes, in T: The Times Style Magazine last month, wondered “who needs more fashion and is gagging for yet another show?”
This film is a brief behind-the-scenes look at the changing landscape of what is the fashion week “roadshow”. Filmed during Paris Fashion Week last year (2012) and made for Garage Magazine, Take My Picture was to observe the phenomenon of fashion bloggers and street style stars. As the directors started to edit the footage, two trends became apparent: fashion editors frustrated by the ensuing commotion outside the shows and the rise of “peacocking” or the “look at me, look at me” street style stars as a result of the proliferation of blogs. This film examines these themes from both perspectives.
Oscar de la Renta weighed into the debate last month when he told Women’s Wear Daily that he was cutting his invitation list from 632 to 350 this season in an attempt to avoid “huge crowds of people with no direct connection to the clothes”.
Interestingly, The Guardian reported that ahead of London Fashion Week, which begins next Friday, the British Fashion Council this week announced more stringent guidelines on the accreditation of bloggers.
However, Coco Chanel famously once said that “fashion is not something that only exists in clothes … it has something to do with ideas, the way we live, what is happening around us”. And it is well known that many designers are influenced by what is happening on the street. So maybe the street style star is making a creative protest – a style statement – on several levels? Don’t laugh too loud, as what they are wearing just might be the next big thing.
I’ll leave you to make your own judgment.
Are you a follower of fashion or are you influenced by what is happening on the street? Would love to hear from you.
Labels: New York Fashion Week