A Fashion Week Makeover Wants Style to Become Entertainment
It’s ironic that New York Fashion Week, the ultimate trendsetting destination, is in the process of getting a makeover. After getting booted from Lincoln Center, losing its major sponsor Mercedes Benz, and all this coinciding with the fact that social media has completely changed the fashion game, it’s time for a change: and newly merged management company and owner WME/IMG has a vision.
Renamed New York Fashion Week: the Shows, the runways are moving downtown to three locations: Skylight at Moynihan Station (360 W. 33rd St.), Skylight Clarkson Sq. (550 Washington St.), and Milk Made Studios (451 W. 14th St.), where WME/IMG’s Made Fashion Week, which focuses on emerging designers, will takes place. And as with any relocation, WME/IMG’s stripping the walls, so to speak, as well. Typically excluded for elite fashion industry members only, just as Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat, opened it up, the new locations are expanding on this notion. Screens on 14th Street will stream shows to sidewalk dwellers and non ticket holders can even access the space.
For those outside of Manhattan or glued to a desk, a free New York Fashion Week app will livestream shows. Cameras will also be there filming behind-the-scenes for a two-hour event special documentary set to air on ABC Family called Baring It All: Inside New York Fashion Week. “We are thrilled to be producing our first event special,” Karey Burke, executive vice president of programming and development at the network, said. “No experience in the world is quite like New York Fashion Week, and this documentary will help viewers understand all that goes into making it such a unique moment,” IMG SVP of programming content strategy Will Staeger, added. Not only that, but an entire network exclusive to Apple TV and owned by WME/IMG named Made 2 Measure (M2M) will launch. With the press of a button, stream shows, play classic fashion movies and documentaries, and even watch a new documentary taking a look at current issues and trends within the industry.
All of these developments are happening based on the general understanding that fashion is becoming a form of entertainment, with IMG/WME steering the industry in that more democratic direction. “When we look at the world, we see fashion, sports, movies, TV, books: They are all just different aspects of global entertainment consumption,” Ariel Emanuel, a chief executive of WME/IMG, told The New York Times. In 2013, IMG, which has controlled NYFW for decades, merged with WME, forming a gargantuan sports and entertainment management company. With WME came Art & Commerce Agency, which has a roster of photographers, stylists, and art directors, as well as Hollywood styling agency The Wall Group, offering New York Fashion Week much easier access. A slew of A-list celebrities including Emma Stone and Tilda Swinton are also represented by WME.
It’s a prescient move on WME/IMG’s part to institute some major modifications. Models are no longer just lithe bodies that carry clothes down a catwalk; instead, they’re social media mavens bringing backstage access to millions of followers. Designers are no longer the people behind the clothing, they’re standing next to it (and, sometimes in the cases of Marc Jacobs, Zac Posen, and Jeremy Scott, they’re front and center).
Tune in Sept. 10 to 17 — and beyond — to watch it all.
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