A brief history of the fashion show

1、a brief history of the fashion showfashion scholars have penned histories of the high heel, the corset, and the little black dress, but no one has yet written a definitive history of the fashion show. the omission is curious: the fashion show is not only the promotional linchpin of a multibillion-do

2、llar industry, it was also central to the development of the american department storeand thus to the rise of american consumer culture. the problem may be that the fashion show, like any performative enterprise, is by nature ephemeral. or perhaps its that the fashion crowd, always in pursuit of the

3、 next thing, lacks the archival impulse: why hash over yesterdays clothes? whatever the reason, as valerie steele, chief curator and director of the museum at the fashion institute of technology, told me: the topic of fashion shows remains to find its historian. it is, however, possible to stitch to

4、gether the tale of new yorks semiannual fashion week, which commenced once again last friday in the tents at manhattans bryant park. fashion week in its earliest incarnation was, in some sense, a bid to overthrow the sartorial tyranny of the french. according to steele, the event got its start in 19

5、43, when a well-known fashion publicist named eleanor lambert organized something called press week. lambert was a canny pr maven who recognized that it was a propitious moment for american fashion. before world war ii, american designers were thought to be reliant on french couture for inspiration.

6、 when the germans occupied france in 1940, one of the ensuing calamities was that buyers, editors, and designers were unable to travel to paris to see the few remaining shows, and the fashion world frettedwould american fashion founder without the influence of french couture? with press week, lamber

7、t hoped to give editors a chance to seeand more important, write aboutthe work of american designers, who, freed up to create without the anxiety of french influence, were quietly making innovative strides with indigenous materials and techniques, writes caroline rennolds milbank in . ruth finley, p

8、ublisher of the (a pink-and-red schedule that the industry finds indispensable) was present at those early shows. as she tells it, press week was held alternately at the pierre and plaza hotels. journalists and editors stayed on-site, which meant there was none of the modern . (buyers, a key constit

9、uent at todays shows, were in those days forced to visit the designers showrooms for a look, finley says.) lamberts plan worked. as milbank writes, magazines like vogue and harpers bazaar, whose editors were besotted with french fashion, began to feature more work by american designers and, most cru

10、cially, to credit them by name. (many supposedly unknown american designers had been working for years, but their clothing usually bore the label of the retailer for which they created.) american styles were praised as modern, streamlined, and flattering, and american ready-to-wear designers were fi

11、nally garnering the respect previously reserved for european couturiers. press week, which continued through the late 50s, eventually featured work by designers like bill blass, oscar de la renta, , and . long before lambert entered the picture, however, there were fashion shows in america. william

12、leach writes in , his excellent study of the rise of capitalism, that in 1903, a new york city specialty store called ehrich brothers put on what was likely this countrys first fashion show, in an effort to lure middle-class female customers into the store. by 1910, many big department stores, inclu

13、ding wanamakers in philadelphia and new york, were holding shows of their own. (american retailers had likely witnessed what were called fashion parades in paris couture salons and decided to import the idea.) the events were an effective way to promote merchandise, and they improved a stores status

14、 in the eyes of its clientele: showing couture gowns bought in paris, or, more frequently, the stores own copies or adaptations of these garments was evidence of connoisseurship and good taste. the irony, of course, was that the stores emphasized the exclusivity of french couture, even as they made

15、itor some approximation thereofavailable to a mass-market audience. by the 1920s, the fashion show had gone mainstream. retailers throughout the country staged shows, often in a stores restaurant during lunch or teatime. these early shows were often more theatrical than those of today. they were fre

16、quently organized around themesthere were parisian, persian, chinese, russian, and mexican shows, leach notesand often presented with narrative commentary. wanamakers 1908 show, leach writes, was a tableau vivant styled to resemble the court of napoleon and josephine, and the models were escorted by

17、 a child done up as one of napoleons pages. the department-store shows were wildly popular, drawing crowds in the thousands. according to leach, the throngs were so disruptive to city life that merchants in new york city and elsewhere were eventually required to obtain a license for shows using live

18、 models. in new york, police threatened to put an end to the shows altogether. indeed, the phenomenon became so widespread that in 1950 fairchild published a book titled how to give a fashion show, which begins with an appeal to the executive assistant: have you ever been called into the bosss offic

19、e at the end of a hectic day to be greeted with, miss gordon, ive been going over the figures of the ready-to-wear division today, and ive decided that what we need to pep them up is a fashion show. id like you to go to work on one immediately? and in 1954, edna woodman chaseformer editor of vogue a

20、nd organizer of the 1914 fashion fete, an event to benefit the war-relief effort that is often (apocryphally) called the first fashion showcomplained in her memoir about the ubiquity of the phenomenon: now that fashion shows have become a way of life a lady is hard put to it to lunch, or sip a cockt

21、ail, in any smart hotel or store front from new york to dallas to san francisco without having lissome young things swaying down a runway six inches above her nose. when, then, did the shows make their way to bryant park? during the 70s and 80s, american designers began to stage their own shows in l

22、ofts, clubs, and restaurants. according to fern mallis, vice president of img, the company that houses the organization that produces new yorks , as well as several other showsthe impetus for the event we are familiar with today was literally an accident. it was 1990 and mallis, then executive direc

23、tor of the , was attending a michael kors show in a loft space in downtown manhattan. when the bass started thumping, a piece of plaster came loose from the ceiling and fell onto the models as they went down the runway. as mallis remembers it, the girls strutted on, but plaster also landed in the la

24、ps of writers suzy menkes and carrie donovan, while the rest of the crowd nervously searched for fire escapes. during another show in the early 90s, this one in a soho loft space that was packed to the rafters, a generator blew, leaving the crowd of editors and buyers in the dark. the audience waite

25、d for 30 minutes, holding cigarette lighters aloft as though swaying through a power ballad, until the generators were restored. it was then, mallis says, that the fashion set said enough with small, unsafe spaces. the general sentiment was, we love fashion but we dont want to die for it. as head of

26、 the cfda, mallis took up the cause and sought out a venue where all the shows could be held in a single space. designers, she says, were reluctant to sign on; they worried that showing in a group setting would hamper their creativity. but they also realized it would allow their work greater visibil

27、ity. after an experimental first run at the macklow (now the millennium) hotel on 44th street, the concept took off. mallis then worked out a plan with bryant park to put up tents in the east and west plazas. a year later, the spring 1994 collections were sent down the runway, and fashion week as we know it began. the cfda also created 7th on sixth, a separate company with its own board, and this organization formalized a schedule, drew up a press list (which is harder to infiltrate than the vanity fair