New York Fashion Week kicks off Thursday, that semiannual event in which designers from all over the world present their latest collections, in this case for Spring/Summer 2018.
And along with the editors, buyers, models, makeup artists and celebrities who descend upon the city comes the usual litany of gripes from jaded fashionistas: There are too many C-listers and Instagram stars; the schedule is too chaotic; Ralph Lauren is showing in Bedford, NY (gasp); Joseph Altuzarra and Thom Browne have left for Paris (double gasp); Narciso Rodriguez isn’t even bothering with a runway (We can’t even . . .).
New Yorkers have complained about fashion shows since time immemorial — or since 1903, when Sixth Avenue dry-goods emporium Ehrich Brothers hosted the first one in the US.
In the intervening years, police have tried to stop them; editors have tried to tame them; the industry, and the designers themselves, continue to try to improve or disrupt them. And New York’s relevance as a fashion capital has continued to shift in relation to the more exclusive chic of Paris.
“New York Fashion Week has always felt like it has needed to prove itself,” said historian Dana Goodin, who co-hosts the fashion podcast “Unravel.” But, she added, that’s part of the cyclical, mercurial, fickle nature of fashion. “Everything changes so rapidly.”
Twelve years after Ehrich Brothers brought the Paris-born “fashion parade” to the States, department stores across the country were holding their own shows or opening parties to showcase the latest trends and styles.
According to William Leach’s “Land of Desire: Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a New American Culture,” these presentations were at once democratic and, sometimes, almost stupidly extravagant. They often revolved around a theme, such as “Napoleon and Josephine” or “Monte Carlo,” for which the late Gimbels’ Herald Square location had casinos, roulette tables and fake Mediterranean gardens installed in the store.
These shows, wrote Leach, could draw crowds of thousands and were “so potentially disruptive to the ordinary conduct of city life” that police required merchants to take out licenses for them and even “threatened to terminate them altogether.”
Most of the American-made fashions at the time were just knockoffs of French couture, and the shows weren’t for the press, but for customers. The fancier, made-to-measure houses did host viewings of their latest collections for journalists. But those shows weren’t quite as fun.
The couturier Mainbocher, for instance, “only served ice water [at his presentations],” fashion historian Caroline Milbank told The Post. “The focus was solely on the clothes, not on socializing.”
Fashion shows became so commonplace that Vogue’s longtime editor Edna Woolman Chase complained in her 1953 memoir that a lady couldn’t “lunch or sip a cocktail . . . without having lissome young things in the most recent models swaying down a runway 6 inches above her nose.”
It wasn’t until World War II that the American fashion industry would come into its own — when rich, well-heeled Americans could no longer rely on Nazi-occupied Paris for their couture.
“It was the perfect storm to create a New York Fashion Week,” said Goodin. “Not only could Americans not access French designers, who had limited access to materials and little freedom anyway, but you had this culture of patriotism that gave rise to the idea that American designers were something to be promoted.”
Sensing an opportunity to promote homegrown talent, fashion publicist Eleanor Lambert launched the first “Press Week” in 1943. Held at The Plaza hotel, it featured collections from American designers such as Norman Norell, Claire McCardell and Valentina for journalists from all over the country.
It was a success. Glossies such as Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar, slavishly devoted to French fashion, started putting American designers in their pages — and actually crediting them. By its second year, designers and manufacturers working outside of Lambert’s rarefied cadre of artisans began holding their own presentations during the week, which created some confusion.
“Several editors, including some friends of mine at WWD and Eugenia Sheppard from the Tribune, were complaining about conflicts,” said Ruth Finley, who in 1945 launched the Fashion Calendar, a publication that still collects and lists all the events taking place during Fashion Week.
“I decided that we needed a clearinghouse.”
Press Week continued to swell, and its success spawned imitators in Paris, Rome (where the Italians held their Fashion Week before it moved to Milan) and London.
But American fashion still had a while before achieving international dominance. Once World Warr II ended, dressmaker Christian Dior debuted his wasp-waisted, full-skirted “New Look,” announcing the return of Paris couture and relegating New York back into its shadow.
Yet by the 1960s and ’70s, couture had lost its cachet. Brigitte Bardot, France’s hottest starlet, sniffed that Chanel was “for grannies.” Cool, stylish women wanted miniskirts straight off the rack from London, and swaggering separates, blue jeans and disco dresses from New York designers like Halston.
In 1973, Lambert worked her magic again, pitting American and French designers against one another for a benefit showcase called the Battle of Versailles. The US team featured the young African-American designer Stephen Burroughs, the out-and-proud Halston, Oscar de la Renta, a Dominican-American, and a woman, Anne Klein.
The traditional white men representing France could not compete.
“You’re talking about a time when the civil-rights movement, the women’s movement, the gay-liberation movement, are starting to solidify,” said Jasmine Helm, another host of “Unravel.” “[The American designers] were hip and interesting and had something to say.”
Fashion Week had grown considerably as ready-to-wear exerted dominance over couture, and the Plaza and Pierre hotels uptown could no longer contain all the shows on the official calendar.
Designers began to showcase their collections at their own studios or different venues.
“If there were 50 shows, there were 50 different locations,” said Fern Mallis, former head of the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA). “Nobody [in the industry] talked to each other.”
Worse, it was dangerous. In 1991, as a model strutted down the catwalk at Michael Kors’ show in a loft downtown, the ceiling began to crumble, with pieces falling onto journalists’ laps.
“Supermodels Cindy Crawford and Naomi Campbell brushed the plaster off their shoulders and kept walking,” said Mallis. The headlines the next day, she added, read: “We live for fashion; we don’t want to die for it.”
Mallis, who became executive director of the CFDA in 1992, decided the industry needed to consolidate the runways under one roof. In October 1993, the event— rebranded as 7th on Sixth — debuted at its new home in Bryant Park, under a series of white tents.
“That first season there, the atmosphere was very, very electric,” said Mallis, adding that the Big Apple’s most important designers, including Donna Karan and Calvin Klein, presented their shows at the tents. “It was exciting. You had [European designers] Gianni Versace and Prada wanting to show in New York. It brought a lot of business.”
As New York Fashion Week got bigger, more and more designers wanted to take part in it. The calendar swelled from 30 shows in 1944 to nearly 300 at its height in the 2000s, said Natalie Nudell, an instructor at the Fashion Institute of Technology who is producing a documentary about Fashion Calendar creator Finley.
Plus, with the advent of “Project Runway” and “America’s Next Top Model” by the early aughts, “pop culture was full of representations of the fashion industry,” Nudell said. “It wasn’t just about the fashion anymore, but also the people that make the fashion.”
Instead of industry insiders and journalists, said Finley, “The shows had become more oriented towards being a social affair attended by socialites and bloggers.”
The shows lost their lease at Bryant Park and moved to Lincoln Center in 2010. Designers, loathe to go so far uptown, sought out alternative stages for their collections.
“People still stop me all the time and say that Bryant Park felt so special, like you were seeing a collection,” said Mallis. “Now, it’s public entertainment.” At Lincoln Center, she added, “people were illegally selling tickets to shows. There were way too many corporate sponsors. You would look around and say, ‘Who are all these people?’ ”
Fashion Week was in crisis once again.
In 2015, Fashion Week moved out of Lincoln Center, and while it has two official venues, Skylight Clarkson Square in Tribeca and the Gallery at the Dream Downtown, most events are, like the old days, spread throughout the city.
Sports and fashion company IMG now oversees the largest group of shows, while the CFDA organizes the official schedule.
The industry is experimenting with ways to make consumers excited about their clothes. Designers Ralph Lauren and Rebecca Minkoff have embraced the see-now-buy-now model, offering their collections for purchase straight off the runway at their stores and Web sites. Recently, up-and-comer Misha Nonoo held a show only viewable on Snapchat, while industry stalwarts like Cynthia Rowley amd Norma Kamali have debuted collections through short fashion films.
But few designers — no matter how forward-thinking — are ready to abandon the fashion show, or New York Fashion Week, entirely. While certain big names are jumping ship, others are returning to New York this season after stints in LA or Paris, such as Tom Ford and Rihanna.
The Spanish label Delpozo, whose exquisite demi-couture is on the level of old-school Balenciaga, shows not in Paris, with peers like Alexander McQueen, but in the Big Apple, while the CFDA has also lured British visionary Vivienne Westwood, who will present a collection this season, and the exciting Dutch upstart Sies Marjan.
And New York’s more open, more democratic system, which has created an overstuffed schedule in the past, also allows younger designers to launch their own small presentations and get their names out there.
“Fashion Week is evolving like everything else,” Mallis said. “The industry needs to do some soul-searching. But American fashion is clearly up there on the map. New York is a place where new talent is encouraged and embraced. It deserves to have a week like Paris, Milan or London.”