Does Fashion Week need to be revamped?

Your heart beats faster, you dress a little better and you have this excitement that won't go away. Sound familiar?! 

I know for me, that's what happens the week of MBFW... I can't imagine what would happen if I was actually attending one!

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The fashion, the fabrics, the details, the SHOES, the music (I blast the live stream at work), it all creates this excitement for the new season to come. Even though we are just going into the season before, you still have the chance to scope out new trends and figure out how to incorporate your style into the mix... but does that actually decrease our excitement once the pieces are released? 

I've seen many articles indicating Fashion Week is out of control or needs to reshape the way things are set up, but with the introduction of a plus-sized runway show, that tells me we're making some strides! 

The article, Is New York Fashion Week Near the End of the Runway? by Eric Wilson of The New York Times, sheds light on what goes through the heads of people involved in fashion "month."  With an ever expanding group of "the in crowd" needing to be at all shows, from NY to Paris, Fashion Week is getting overloaded with coverage/opinions/& people. Some designers are even pulling out of FW all together. Tamara Mellon is a perfect example. “I, for one, hate to buy a coat and not wear it for four or five months,” Mellon said. “And my customer doesn't care about Fashion Week.”

 With so many shows and people working the events, designers and models are being thrown to the curb faster than ever to get ready for the next show. If Fashion Week is seriously going to change, they first need to sit down and figure out what doesn't work. 

According to Fashionista's post Industry Insiders Agree: ‘Fashion Week Needs To Be Rethought’, the move from Bryant Park to Lincoln Center was an epic fail. Angry residents, lack of architectural appeal, the overpopulation of paparazzi, and the increased traffic from street style junkies has created a disconnect from what Fashion Week is all about: Allowing designers to promote collections to editors/buyers/industry professionals a few months before pieces are available to the public.

 

 

Oscar de la Renta has the right idea. He is scaling back his guest list to include only certain industry professionals who need to see the clothes before being released. 

"When you do megashows, it loses the reason of why we’re showing,” he said. “It’s important for [certain industry professionals] to look at the clothes and see them. They shouldn't have to go through 30,000 people, and 10,000 who are trying to take pictures of all of those people who are totally unrelated to the clothes." - Fashionista

More designers need to scale back on who is invited. The people who need to be there, should include: buyers, editors, and industry professionals who can display the pieces and interpret the trends. Live streaming should still continue so bloggers, interns, and society can have a view into the next season but the overexposure of Fashion Week has created a huge lack of excitement for trends when available in store. Without some major changes, I agree with these posts, Fashion Week might disappear sooner than we think. 

Personally, I love being able to watch the MBFW live stream. I like to watch shows and determine what the trends are before reading write-ups. It helps me understand what to look for and to see if collections accurately display the trends the designers are going for. 

I love fashion and always have. I don't want to model or design, I want to understand the big, crazy world of fashion. That's why I love Fashion Week. It shows all aspects of fashion. Here's hoping to see some solid changes so Fashion Week can stay amazing in an ever changing industry.

Who's to blame?

In a recent interview with the always bold, sometimes a little too honest, Kelly Cutrone, The Fashion Spot gathered some interesting answers from the brazen PR mogul.

photo cred: levoleague.com

Cutrone believes it's the consumers fault for the way the fashion industry is portraying thinness.... "Society has a hyper emphasis on thin and that trend comes from the consumers — it does not come from the fashion industry. The fashion industry needs to make money, that's what we do. If people said, 'we want a 300 pound purple person,' the first industry to do it would be fashion," Cutrone said. She goes on to give advice for modeling.

1. If you're 5'6", just stay home. Don't pretend you're 5'8" or 5'9". 
2. If you're over 29 — 26 even — I would suggest you work regionally and not try to work nationally.
   -Kelly Cutrone, The Fashion Spot interview

These are the things that no one ever wants to hear or even acknowledge, but her "I-don't-give-a-fuck-what-you-think" attitude {pardon my french} has increased the saucy PR exec's fame. 

But let's look at the finger pointing a little more closely. Yes, consumers want to look beautiful, be stylish, etc but, the fashion industry hasn't budged much on the idea of expanding the look for models or allowed for more diversity for sizing. 

As I always say, there are those brave souls out there that don't conform. They try to make a change for a better image but there needs to be more voices. The way magazines portray fashion is very different from the every day girl. The magazines and designers want to create a sense of high fashion, understandably so, because let's be honest, everyone wants to be high fashion , but most of society cannot afford to have a $1000+ bag or $150+ pair of jeans... So is it really the consumer that is creating this false sense of what is beautiful?

Personally, I think both are to blame. Consumers constantly try to look a certain way or have this perception, "if I'm thin, then I'm beautiful" but the fashion industry is JUST as guilty, maybe even a little more so. You don't see many size 4+ models strutting their stuff on the runways. People have got to understand looks are just a superficial thing... it goes much deeper than skin. Dustin Hoffman's interview about his character Dorothy Michaels is the perfect example of this blurred perception everyone has on beauty: 

Hoffman tears up as he realizes how many good people he might have passed up because they weren't "beautiful" enough.

"And I know that if I met myself at a party, I would never talk to that character because she doesn't fulfill physically the demands that we're brought up to think women have to have in order to ask them out.' She says, 'What are you saying?' And I said, 'There's too many interesting women I have...not had the experience to know in this life because I have been brainwashed."

While Cutrone could be right, maybe we as the consumer need to stop feeding into the "thin" trend, but the fashion industry needs to shrink the gap between thin and "plus-size" and treat all consumers more equally.

People continually strive to be something they're not. There's so many people out there that have body image issues and there's many culprits that increase the worry surrounding what you're supposed to look like... learn to be comfortable in your own skin. 

Everyone deserves to be heard, and everyone will have an opinion when it comes to the ongoing "who's to blame" issues in the fashion industry. 

What's your thoughts? Do you fall in the same category as Cutrone?