In honor of New York Fashion Week's bi-annual kickoff tomorrow, we're taking a look back at the event's surprising history. Can't remember a time before front-row reality stars and official beverage sponsors? Read up on the facts right here.
New York Fashion Week started in 1943 and was originally called Press Week. Fifty-three designers showed on location at the Plaza Hotel. No buyers were invited; instead they had to schlep to designers’ individual showrooms.
Fashion publicist Eleanor Lambert, who conceived of and organized the first Press Week, offered to pay for the travel expenses for out-of-town journalists. Still, only about half of the 100 invited reporters showed up.
In the 1920s, department stores frequently held fashion shows in their on-site restaurants, and based the looks around theatrical themes like China or Napoleon’s salon. The shows were often called “mannequin parades.”
Designers staged their own shows all over New York City until Fashion Week moved to Bryant Park in 1994. What prompted the move to an official venue? At a 1990 Michael Kors show held in a downtown loft space, the plaster ceiling collapsed on models’ heads mid-show.
New York designers used to show after London, Paris and Milan. Wendy Rodewald-Sulz
In 1999, powerful American designers like Calvin Klein and Helmut Lang successfully switched up the schedule so that New York Fashion Week would show first.
Makeup and nail brands develop their seasonal colors weeks before debuting them on the runways these days, but that wasn’t always the case. The shade that would become Chanel’s iconic Vamp nail polish was improvised by a makeup artist for a 1994 runway show. The artist colored models’ bare nails with a black marker for pre-show publicity photos, and the rest is history.
Beauty brand sponsors and hair and makeup teams weren’t always a backstage fixture. “Once upon a time, you would work on the show and the models would do their makeup — there was no continuity,” MAC Senior Vice President of Makeup Artistry Gordon Espinet told the New York Times, speaking about shows in the ‘70s and ‘80s. “Whatever Pat Cleveland [pictured, dancing down the runway in 1977] thought was her best look, that’s what you got. Models were your assistants basically, and I would run around fixing any mistakes.”
