Stop Saying "New York Fashion Week Is Dead" And Start Paying Attention to More Independent Designers

Highlighting the importance of New York Fashion Week, including three shows from this season you should know about.

The cultural weight of New York Fashion Week has, within the fashion industry, felt like somewhat of a constant debate. As one of the four major fashion capitals—in addition to London, Milan, and Paris—New York’s designers have frequently been compared to their European peers, with the city’s impact on the international calendar often challenged.

This isn’t particularly helped by the fact that many prominent American designers and brands, including Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen’s The Row and luxury fashion house Tom Ford, have chosen to show their runways at Paris Fashion Week instead.

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However, with over sixty runway shows on the calendar this season, New York Fashion Week is still going strong. And, clearly, there is still a significant impact and cultural weight attached to putting on a New York runway. I mean, remember how Calvin Klein saw a nearly 190% spike in popularity when it returned to the NYFW calendar after six and a half years?

So, season after season, it is certainly frustrating to keep hearing claims that New York Fashion Week is “dead”. Different, sure. But dead?? And, actually, rather than competing with other international fashion houses, New York Fashion Week serves a different purpose altogether. Let’s get into it.

BUT FIRST, A BRIEF HISTORY LESSON

I recently started reading “Empresses of Seventh Avenue” by Nancy MacDonell, which chronicles the rise of the American fashion industry in the 1940s as access to European fashion, and specifically French fashion, was compromised during World War II. Up until then, American designers closely followed and even directly copied the fashion coming out of Parisian houses, which were seen as the gold standard of style. This idea, dating back to Louis XIV, was referred to as “the French legend.”

When speaking of American fashion designers in the late 1920s, MacDonell writes:

“The only thing stopping them from designing their own collections was the continued power of the French legend. What American women needed…were their own couturiers. They needed someone to create their own legend.”

So, the idea that New York—or American designers, for that matter—can’t compete with big, European luxury houses is not a new one. And, it seems the story is still being written today. But it’s important to notice that, especially given how the American fashion industry has evolved and become its own, independent force in the decades since MacDonell’s recounting, New York and Paris Fashion Weeks are celebrating very different things.

Here are three collections from this past New York Fashion Week that demonstrate the event’s importance and influence, and which you should definitely know about.

THE DESIGNERS KEEPING NEW YORK FASHION WEEK VERY MUCH ALIVE