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.” (Continued...)
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