What is a Fashion Week?

New York Fashion Week starts on September 7-13, but what exactly is fashion week? Here’s a sparknotes from this explainer video by Fashion Roadman:

• In summary, fashion week is where fashion designers, brands, and houses showcase their collections to buyers and the media. It’s basically a marketing event that’s meant to lead to sales.
  
• There are four main fashion weeks: New York, London, Milan, and Paris. These are the four fashion capitals.
• Paris Fashion Week is the biggest of the four and it’s where the big brands display their collections. When a brand “makes it”, they usually move to Paris.
• Milan Fashion Week is known for more a outlandish style. In general, Italian fashion leans maximalist.
• London is most experimental and avant garde.
• New York tends to be contemporary, diverse, and eclectic.
• Who gets invited to Fashion week?
  • Buyers. Buyers are the most important because they actually order the clothes. They’re responsible for choosing what is sold in stores to generate the largest possible profit. As such, they travel around the world to different fashion shows and order clothes to be sold in stores based on their research, trend forecasting, and knowledge of the market.
  • Press. Journalists, magazine editors, and photographers, help generate publicity for your brand and collection.
  • Celebrities. This is also a form of press.
• In order to get invited to a show, you’ll need to bring value either as a fashion buyer or through publicity.
• In the big four fashion capitals, there are typically 2 fashion weeks a year. The first is to show the Fall/Winter collections, the second is to show the Spring/Summer collections.
• Haute Couture is a way of making clothing with the best craftspeople and materials and follows many rules. Additionally, it has to be made in Paris. This is only shown in Paris.