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Johnson, Wang Pull Out of NY Fashion Week

by Terri Potratz | December 18, 2008 at 09:51 am

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Two longtime New York Fashion Week designers announced recently that they will not be showing at Bryant Park in February for the Fall/Winter 2009 presentations.

Both Vera Wang, who has participated the last 4 years, and Betsey Johnson, who has been a staple for the past 5, have pulled out of showing their collections amidst the glitz and glam within the tents, opting instead to host more intimate fashion shows in smaller venues.

Johnson and Wang have both cited the economy as a major reason for this shift away from traditional fashion week showings.

She [Wang] commented to WWD, 'It seems relevant today. I don’t want to seem irrelevant or unaware of what’s going on in the rest of the world — not just the fashion world… The intimacy of a smaller show feels much more appropriate for these times. I say that as a business owner, as a designer and as a person.'

By staging her show in-store, the designer will be able to cut the amount of models she uses by at least 10, and will limit her guest list to just 100-150. At the tents she would typically invite up to 900 buyers, press and celebrities to attend the show.

Designers Carmen Marc Valvo and Alice Temperly have also opted out of the NY Fashion Week proceedings in favour of a smaller venue presentation, and more are expected to follow suit - both in New York and in other major fashion week desitinations around the world.

See related NowPublic.com story: Tommy Hilfiger Returns to Bryant Park for Fashion Week

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Yuliya Talmazan

at 10:59 on December 18th, 2008

This is an interesting trend, although I thought that designers usually realize greater economies of scale by participating in big fashion shows, allowing them to spread the show's fixed costs over a greater number of participants.

Mick Tobyn (not verified)

at 08:34 on December 19th, 2008

I don`t quite follow the Designers` logic... You would think that if the economy is slowing down they would want to do even bigger shows than usual to get even more people interested in their wares, not go smaller... Unless they`re just inviting their Top Clients to their private shows - the ones they know are going to Buy, rather than have larger shows for the general public who will enjoy looking at the collections, but not buy anything...