New York. Paris. Milan. Birmingham?Birmingham joins the list of U.S. and international cities hosting “fashion weeks,” multi-day events created to celebrate the latest style trends. While Birmingham’s first foray into the fashion-show scene will focus on the retail (as opposed to the design) side of fashion, The Summit Presents Fashion Weekend is a chance for Birmingham to show its stylish side. Trunk shows, makeovers and creative activities form the event, the highlight of the weekend being the September 12 Saturday night party “under the tents” on the rooftop of the new parking deck, featuring decadent food, drinks and a professionally-produced runway show.
While New York still hosts the godfather of all fashion weeks, other cities are giving the Big Apple a run for her money. The second and third largest Fashion Weeks in the U.S. are Los Angeles and, oddly enough, Cleveland, Ohio. Cleveland’s success lies in part to their efforts to be “the educational fashion week,” not just a series of shows but an annual convention incorporating exhibits, films, lectures, and workshops at cultural and educational institutions that seek to inform consumers and industry leaders of the cultural importance and economic contributions of the fashion industry. Other cities that have developed niches with their shows include Portland, Oregon, which showcases eco-friendly designers and boasts an entirely green fashion week production including a bamboo runway, and Miami, which dedicates its week to swimwear. Charleston, Kansas City, Gainesville all host Fashion Weeks, and, like Birmingham, Philadelphia will be hosting its first Fashion Week this fall.
Politics and Fashion
So what inspired these style parades in the first place? Would you believe WWII was the catalyst for the
modern-day “Fashion Week?” American fashion designers and editors, seemingly co-dependent on French couture for inspiration, panicked when Germany’s occupation of France in 1940 prevented trips to Paris salons. New York fashion publicist Eleanor Lambert seized on this auspicious moment for emerging American designers and created something called “Press Week.” What later morphed into “Fashion Week,” began as a series of showings by American designers held alternately at the Pierre and Plaza hotels. Lambert’s plan worked, and the soon the editors of magazines like Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar, who had only had eyes for French fashion, began to focus their gaze closer to home. By the 70s and 80s, American designers were staging their own shows in lofts, clubs and other urban venues.The event as we know it today - under the tents in Bryant Park - did not come about
until the 90’s. Fern Mallis, then executive director of the Council of Fashion Designers of America (the group founded by Eleanor Lambert in 1962), answered the growing call from editors and buyers, who had grown weary of venturing to all corners of the city to attend cramped shows, where falling ceiling tiles and blown generators were all-too-common, to organize and consolidate these showings. While designers were reluctant at first, concerned that a group-setting would impede creativity, they quickly realized the opportunity for greater visibility and in 1993, Spring collections were sent down the runway. The semi-annual event that now hosts more than 100,000 attendees each season has outgrown Bryant Park and thus will move to Lincoln Center in 2010.
Just as fashions change from season to season, so do the venues in which consumers experience these fashions. But whether in a downtown department store, suburban mall, outdoor center or under a tent - the promise of style remains a powerful lure.
