At New York Fashion Week, tech innovation shines.
Runway shows are out; big concepts are in.
New York — As attendees approached the first Veronica Beard boutique on Manhattan’s Upper East Side for a spring 2017 New York Fashion Week presentation last month, the scene was set before one even stepped inside. Models in red bathing suits glided up and down the Madison Avenue sidewalk on roller skates greeting guests, who, upon entering, were guided through the main retail space and down a set of red, white and blue stairs into the basement. Instead of models perched on white boxes in a white box space, they were placed throughout a series of rooms, created as an homage to the classic New York single-girl basement apartment. The space’s faux leopard-fur lined walls, eclectic furnishings and discreetly glam touches — a refrigerator filled with Champagne and high heels — fell somewhere between Holly Golightly’s brownstone pad and the kind of swinging career-girl apartment of “That Girl” or Mary Richards.
The Veronica Beard collection, which the designers called Stars and Stripes, was a salute to American womanhood, specifically the bicentennial chic of the 1970s. Designers Veronica Miele Beard and Bay Area-born Veronica Swanson Beard (the designers are sisters-in-law) turned to San Francisco interior designer Ken Fulk to make the fantasy come to life in the space.
The installation was perfectly designed for the social media age, and as such, is part of the changing face of New York fashion weeks, the twiceannual set of shows originally conceived to sell clothes to retailers and clients.
“Experience is the greatest luxury today,” Veronica Swanson Beard said. “We talked about how we could give our customers, friends, editors and buyers the ultimate experience where they could understand the brand and feel like they walked into this world. We asked: ‘Is every moment of this Instagramable?’ Ken was our only call.” (Fulk will also being creating a Veronica Beard pop-up experience in San Francisco in November.)
Whereas runway shows were the standard just a few years ago, more labels are now choosing spins on presentations (where the models remain mostly static instead of walking the catwalk), social media-only shows or the kind of highly produced spectacles mostly seen in Europe in years past. (Think Kanye West’s Yeezy mega-show fiasco on Roosevelt Island earlier in the week.)
“Fashion Week was all over the place this season,” said H by Halston fashion director and industry expert Cameron Silver. “It’s a confusing time for designers trying to figure out how to get their clothes into stores. The change is akin to what it must have been like for silent-film actors to see talkies.”
Much of the ongoing evolution of NYFW can be laid at the feet of Bay Area tech innovation. Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook and Twitter are among the platforms that have helped democratize access to these once-exclusive industry events, allowing users to follow the shows in real time from the comfort of their mobile devices. With the cost of even barebones fashion presentations continuing to climb, it makes sense for labels that want to get the most exposure out of their shows to utilize mobile platforms as they look at alternative ways to present themselves. Some designers are even forgoing physical shows altogether in favor of social media-only debuts of their collections, like Misha Nonoo, who did the first Snapchat-only presentation at this NYFW and Wes Gordon, who for the past two seasons has used a direct-to-Instagram presentation format.
Among the grandest events at this year’s fashion week was Humberto Leon and Carol Lim’s show for Opening Ceremony, a brand known for its unusual take on runway shows. Lim and Leon have previously used falling ballet dancers as models and staged a play by director Spike Jonze at the Metropolitan Opera House. This season, the brand created an event called Pageant of the People at the Javits Center, a tribute to the spirit of a united global community with a hint of the Miss World competition.
Celebrities including Jessica Williams, Aidy Bryant, Natasha Lyonne and Whoopi Goldberg mingled on the runway with models wearing pieces from part two of the OC fall collection that was shown in February. In keeping with the theme of addressingglobal issues, the celebrities answered questions, posed by hosts Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein of “Portlandia” fame, on topics like climate change, gender discrimination and the upcoming election. At the conclusion of the show, Leon and Lim announced that volunteers would be registering attendees to vote, and that the collection was available for pre-order that evening.
OC’s in-season showing also addressed the question of whether the existing seasonahead show cycle would translate into actual sales. To combat overexposure of the collections before the pieces arrive in stores months later, several brands chose in-season or buy-it-now formats, including Bay the Area’s Banana Republic, which debuted several pieces immediately available for purchase. American designer Tom Ford (who showed prior to NYFW), London’s Burberry and Tommy Hilfiger went a step further, debuting fully in-season collections.
Ralph Lauren, one of the most traditionally minded American designers, also took a leap into the future and upped the spectacle quotient: He shut down a block of Madison Avenue in front of his flagship boutique to tent the building for a runway show that literally brought the looks to the sidewalk. Like Opening Ceremony, the collection was part two of the fall looks he showed in February, but was available that night at the boutique for purchase.
Even designers who as recently as February affirmed their commitment to traditional runway formats made drastic changes this season, including Giles Mendel of J. Mendel, who abandoned the runway format in favor of a by-appointment penthouse presentation that also included a specially created video installation of the collection.
“I wanted to do a presentation this season because J. Mendel is about artistry,” Mendel said. “The craftsmanship doesn’t always read on the runway; I find you need an intimate experience. I think I’ve been able to reach out to more people, especially younger people who are watching the video on their phone. Social media is really helping us bring awareness of the brand with a front-row seat.”
Ultimately, what does all of this mean for the future of New York Fashion Week?
“At the end of the day, designers need to think less about likes and more about sales and how retail can survive,” H by Halston’s Silver points out. “Brick-and-mortar is still the majority of transactions, and it shouldn’t be dismissed.”
But with social media not going away and the kind of buy-it-now urgency it creates only likely continuing to drive commerce, one can imagine this being the beginning of a kind of disruption whose ripples create waves and, eventually, a tsunami. “Social media is the way we live now,” Fulk said about the Veronica Beard installation, which will stay up until Nov. 1, based on customers’ enthusiastic response. For the moment, at least, it’s also how we do fashion week.