Since the first fashion week organized in New York by fashion critic Elenor Lamber in 1943, the meaning of fashion week and fashion has been constantly perceived from artistic attributes, cultural attributes, political attributes, and even entertainment and commercial attributes.
Among them, especially entertainment and commercial attributes, it is easiest to make the media influence and revenue level of fashion week quickly improve in a short period of time. As a result, the fashion week model gradually brought together a large number of fashion shows, including experience exhibitions and pop up, music performances and cocktail parties and other noisy scenes with more traffic advantages and commercial value.
It is understandable that creativity in the 21st century cannot be elevated and underrepresented without sufficient commercial trade and capital injection; Business also needs good ideas to drive the prosperity of the region's culture and overall economic strength. But it is worth discussing whether creativity is still at the heart of fashion week in the world as fashion week continues to expand its business territory and capture most of the market attention through entertainment activities? How can the balance between creativity and business be tilted to accelerate growth rather than diluting each other?
It's not just Fall/Winter 2023 fashion week that is currently underway. Over the past few years, the multiple dimensions and additional business of fashion week have been a large proportion of the official calendars of various places.
Just like New York, which sounded the horn for this year's fashion fair, luxury e-commerce company Mytheresa brought together industry insiders to spend a good time, including Altuzarra designer Joseph Altuzarra, Oscar de la Renta co-creative director Laura Kim, Wes Gordon founder of the eponymous brand and other industry insiders, as well as actors Fernando Garcia and Nadine Leopold, Fernando Garcia, and social celebrities Leonie Hanne and Stephanie Shepherd.
To celebrate the brand's 10th anniversary, American fashion house Frame hosted a cocktail party during New York Fashion Week. Brand friends from the industry and entertainment gathered here, including models who have been featured in Frame blockbusters for years, fashionable young actors and more.
Even those who are not in the fashion industry have countless opportunities to participate. As a partner for New York Fashion Week's official events, OnLocation, an event services company, offers a full range of New York Fashion Week experiences, from accommodation and dining arrangements to VIP access to backstage meetings with designers, post-show parties, and more. This business at On Location is like creating a high-end trip specially for fashion week.
Afterpay, a sponsor of New York Fashion Week this season, presented an experience called "Afterpay Xperience" at Spring Studios. Fashion house Bibhu Mohapatra has once again teamed up with LilaNur for a perfume experience; and Azealia Banks at Dion Lee's post-show party, and New York celebrity Kevin Aviance at a party hosted by fashion designer Jérôme Lamaar.
And this is just a zero-light feather to boost the momentum of fashion week. A year ago during New York Fall/Winter Fashion Week, IMG's official technology innovation partner, Yahoo, also brought Rodarte and Maisie Wilen a new show-watching experience through a series of projection technologies, with design sketches animated to bring movement to the art and immerse guests in the digital experience.
Not only New York, but also based on the new business structure of the new consumer group, on the other hand, mass pop culture and social media have brought about the huge changes in the fashion industry, and fashion weeks around the world have been trying to find new competitive advantages and growth opportunities beyond fashion creativity for a long time.
Remember the Milan Spring/Summer Fashion Week 2021, although the two luxury brands of Gucci and Rome-based Valentino left the official Milan Fashion Week schedule, the "dual-entity" fashion show presented by Prada in real time in Milan and Shanghai, a series of social experiences such as food trucks, popcorn, cheerleaders brought by Boss, and Russell Athletic also launched five unique pieces on TikTok #BossxRussellAthletic Preppy NFT coat... And during the Paris Fashion Week that just kicked off this year, Jaden Smith fashion brand MSFTSrep also chose to open a month-long Pop Up in Paris, and other rich fashion week business models.
Through a series of data, it has also been verified that this series of measures to boost momentum has indeed brought considerable returns to the brand and fashion week officials. According to online data tracked by marketing platform Lefty, South Korean singer Hwang Min-hyun created $3.2 million worth of media value for Moncler and JW Anderson on the Fall/Winter 2023 London Fashion Sunday schedule. According to ListenFirst data, during the fall/winter 2023 New York Fashion Week, Michael Kors achieved more than 4 million social media interactions thanks to the participation of more than a dozen public figures such as Dayhun, Kate Hudson, Katie Holmes, Lily Aldridge, and a single post in collaboration with Korean musician Dayhun received more than 1 million hits, more than any other brand during the period.
Behind the increasingly complex business model innovation and entertainment attributes, on the one hand, as pointed out above, it is inevitable to face the objective trends of the times such as mass popular culture, digital media, and even fashion capitalization, so the business model of Fashion Week will inevitably usher in a large degree of innovation; But more importantly, through further observation, we can find that the competition between fashion weeks in recent years has also become more intense.
Change means hope; Unchanged means an existential crisis.
Different from the traditional advantages of fashion powerhouses such as Paris and Milan, and different from the objective strength of the Chinese market in terms of scale and comprehensive diversification of industrial structure, fashion weeks such as Berlin and Australia that do not take fashion as the core economic pillar, or New York as an example, the scale and weight have been declining in recent years, and have been facing dangerous business pressure, especially in the past three years, which has brought great tests to their living space.
In 2019, the Swedish Fashion Council announced the cancellation of Stockholm Fashion Week; Trapped by the epidemic, Sydney Fashion Week, originally scheduled for May 2020, was also announced to be suspended; Mercedes-Benz, with which the new season of Berlin Fashion Week officially kicked off on January 16 this year, stopped sponsoring Berlin Fashion Week this season.
Jens Kunath, member of the board of directors of Mercedes-Benz, explained in a statement: "The demands of the fashion industry, the demands of the public, and the format of Berlin Fashion Week are constantly changing. In addition, she said that in order to reach customers in the best possible way, Mercedes-Benz is constantly evaluating communication platforms in various industries, from cars to lifestyle and fashion.
Mercedes-Benz has sponsored fashion weeks around the world for 28 years, and the company has not shared information about the return on investment of fashion weeks with WWD. But a Mercedes-Benz spokesman in Germany said that this does not mean that Mercedes-Benz will stay away from the fashion industry, and the company will continue to cooperate with the fashion or design industry in other regions in the future.
Therefore, from the perspective of sponsors or investors, the expectation of return is also driving the fashion week hosting platform to make a greater degree of commercialization shift.
As for the dilemma that New York Fashion Week once faced, as early as before the epidemic, a series of organizational problems such as "big names leaving", and endless cultural public opinion storms, have always made it face long-term doubts.
At Paris Men's Fashion Week last July, Thom Browne, Amiri, Reese Cooper, John Elliott, KidSuper, Greg Lauren and Rhude... American designers who were supposed to support New York Fashion Week chose Paris Men's Fashion Week as the main stage to showcase the new season. Earlier, with each season of New York Fashion Week, participating brands had been decreasing. Until February 2018, New York Men's Fashion Week was no longer held separately, and the scale of the combined New York Fashion Week was shrinking day by day. In 2019, Tom Ford shortened the New York fashion week schedule to 5 days; In September 2020, New York Fashion Week shortened its schedule to 3 days due to the pandemic.
For New York, one of the four major international fashion weeks, it has become a way to ensure its own existence and commercial value by making up for its shortcomings through the traffic that comes from entertainment and social activities such as music performances and cocktail parties, and the market vitality that comes with marketing activities such as trade shows and Pop Up.
But how long will it be viable in the short term through rapid commercialization and entertainment? In the face of the industry's lament about the scarcity of fashion week creativity, can this idea be used as a long-term business guide?
In fact, extending the timeline and broadening the scope of observation, whether for fashion week, brands, or the fashion industry, the relationship between creativity and business is by no means a trade-off, but an inevitable trend to constantly find a balance between creativity and business.
As Bruno Pavlovsky, who was appointed president of the French Haute Couture and Fashion Federation last July, said the federation's members and sponsors will need more money if they want to maintain their position in the French fashion industry. The Federation's official partners, in addition to DEFI, L'Oréal Paris and DS Automobiles, also have many communication and professional event partners, Bruno Pavlovsky once said: "The overall environment is changing, and this evolution is essential if Paris Fashion Week is to remain ahead of the curve." ”
In the short term, according to their respective cultural characteristics and industrial structure, under the premise of not diluting creativity or even contributing to the sustainable prosperity of creativity, we have gradually seen that the global fashion industry regards culture, technology and sustainability as a track of the times and certainty, so that the value chain of Fashion Week is continuously extended and the growth potential is consolidated at a deeper level.
This season, the organizer has partnered with e-commerce platform Shopify to present a special section called "Black in Fashion Council", which focuses on black creators in the fashion industry in the form of interviews, lectures, and show albums, and is committed to exploring diversified creativity; The Black Carpet Awards and themed events at Milan Fashion Week celebrate diversity and inclusion in communities around the world.
If today's international luxury giants lay the current authority for Fashion Week, then continuing to explore the perspective of avant-garde culture and supporting and paying attention to the next generation of young design talents is the prediction and accumulation of the future weight of Fashion Week, and it is also a large-scale inheritance of cultural characteristics of different regions.
During Milan Fashion Week, the Fashion Hub space will become the main working area of the Italian National Chamber of Fashion, where different projects, ideas and young talents will be presented, creating more opportunities for new brands and young designers to showcase, network and negotiate business. As well as Paris, New York and other fashion fairs to pay attention to and support emerging design talents.
And Copenhagen Fashion Week CEO Cecilie Thorsmark pointed out back in 2020 that Fashion Week is a platform dedicated to change. From measuring and offsetting carbon emissions to banning single-use plastic hangers and packaging, Copenhagen Fashion Week has been using a set of sustainability goals to differentiate the week and increase its global interest. According to the report, Copenhagen Fashion Week decided to set 18 minimum standards as a standard, which all brands must fully comply with in order to be part of the official show schedule.
To some extent, for "small but fine" fashion weeks such as the Copenhagen Fashion Fair, the interest correlation behind the focus of sustainability means the realization of longer-cycle value and stronger influence, which not only meets the development consensus of the global fashion industry, but also brings a greater industrial return.
Also included is the more interactive workshop event "NYFW Afterclass" during this year's New York Fashion Week; the Oxfam Fashion Fighting Poverty fashion show, organised by the international non-profit organisation Oxfam during London Fashion Week; As the main working area of the Italian National Chamber of Fashion in Italy; For example, during Shanghai Fashion Week, the organizing committee and strategic partner canU jointly launched the "Material" program since 2019, and held an annual "Material" exhibition focusing on sustainable fashion during the Fashion Week, as well as a series of popular themes such as sustainability, feminism, and oriental aesthetics.
As for the technology that has solved countless problems for the global fashion industry in the past three years, and at the same time presented a new value system and production method for the future fashion industry, it is naturally slowly going through the single viewing and application stage. As in the NFT launch during London Fashion Week; Or the next Decentraland Metaverse Fashion Week, which will be held on March 28-31, will expand the aesthetic possibilities of brands, cross-platform agendas with other metaverse platforms and physical products, links with external NFTs, and other technological advancements.
In addition, Fashion Week is not only based on culture, technology, sustainability and other trends of the times to continue to discuss itself, the role and function of Fashion Week, in fact, is not limited to the fashion industry, or a certain country, but also becomes a city or even a local business card, carrying a more important role in the renewal of the urban business environment and international economic exchanges.
In China, Beijing Fashion Week, Shanghai Fashion Week, Shenzhen Fashion Week, and the periodic cultural activities carried out in conjunction with offline shopping malls and characteristic shopping districts not only showcase local creativity and promote the local designer brand market, but also make fashion week part of retail innovation, urban landmarks, and the differentiated characteristics of local tourism.
For Shanghai, the main runway of Shanghai Fashion Week has been rooted in Xintiandi Taiping Lake since 2012. In the past two years, Xintiandi has been transformed and upgraded again, and two fashion commercial bodies have been established, "Xintiandi Fashion I" and "Xintiandi Fashion II", opening up a new display space for domestic outstanding designers and buyers.
In addition to being a display platform for gathering major fashion consumer goods from around the world, the significance of the Consumer Fashion Week is naturally different from that of traditional fashion weeks, but through the help of policies, the endorsement of the Expo platform and the advantages of the free trade port, it has opened another international door for local designers, Chinese culture, and the Chinese market.
Seen, known, and needed, the meaning of fashion will continue to evolve, and the AB sides of Fashion Week will be discussed and tried more.
In the future, the fashion week model will show more faces, but when we realize the inevitability of the times, the essence and inevitable trend of the fashion industry, even if the balance of creativity and business may still be unbalanced in the future, the certainty has been firmly grasped in our hands. WWD
Written by Jesse and Du Mingwei
Edited by Gibberish
Image source: Brand official and online