There is a palpable sense of Fashion Week fatigue in recent coverage of the spring/summer shows. The problem seems to be just the sheer amount of events: a fashion editor or buyer could almost spend the entire year attending fashion weeks as almost every city from Lagos to Singapore now has one. Even major events seem to be under pressure with the recent LA Fashion Week attracting some criticism for a lack of the usual glitterati and industry heavy weights at shows.
A number of major buyers were reported in WWD as opting out of the recent L.A. event:
“I couldn’t sit through another show if you paid me,” said John Eshaya, vice president of women’s wear at Ron Herman, which is renowned for fostering local talent. “My team just got back from Europe and we’ve been seeing shows since the second week in September,” said Ron Frasch, president and chief merchandising officer of Saks Fifth Avenue. “It’s now the end of October. To pick up and go to L.A…it’s not going to happen. We have a business to run.”
It seems that fashion media and buyers are choosing to attend only one or two key events a season and spending more time on personal visits to designers (or just checking out the shows online). Designers may also be placing less value on fashion weeks by simply not showing at all or showing independently outside of the major events - Hugo Boss being a recent example according to Fashion Wire Daily.
WWD: Stars Don’t Come Out: Fashion Week in L.A. Badly In Need of Buzz
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We are seeing this all over. I know of several very important buyers who had to skip London this season beucase it clashed the Cotterie in NY.
We are also seeing more of the fashion week organisers around the world paying for buyers and press flights/hotels and expences in order to get the focus onto their shows.
With more and more fashion weeks launching, Germany last year, LA, Miami the is the term “Fashion Week” being devalued?
October 27th, 2007 at 7:35 am
Yes i think it is devalued in terms of the old conventions of fashion weeks. But I think the growth of fashion weeks can be considered positive as well as more designers get the opportunity to show - they just can’t expect everyone to drop everything to attend or for the industry to work in the same way as it did when only a few major events were held. The result of this might also be to see more multimedia/web showcases of collections and other presentation tactics as designers know they’re not going to get everyone in the actual audience at a fashion week. Another interesting thought is that consumers, bloggers and more junior journalists seem to be filling the gaps in the audiences at these events.
October 29th, 2007 at 4:21 am
According to me “I feel making beautiful clothes is an art and it requires creativity and time, to make somebody look beautiful”.
Roli Singh
info@rolisingh.com
http://www.rolisingh.com
October 30th, 2007 at 3:29 am