(Continued...)
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,
22