Qdoba (chip pants, with edible accessories)<\/a> and even\u00a0\u201cThe White Lotus\u201d\u00a0(take your pick of brands glomming onto the third season of the HBO megahit).<\/p>\nAnd coming up later this week, cannabis \u201cconcept store\u201d Gotham will pair up with a string of designers including Collina Strada \u2014\u00a0which will send models down the runway in limited-edition button-downs featuring \u201ca discreet vape pocket.\u201d Veuve Clicquot will partner with French designer Simon Porte Jacquemus to celebrate the Champagne icon\u2019s bottle design, while eBay will link up with Erdem to promote the commerce site\u2019s secondhand fashions.<\/p>\n
Kate Barton\u2019s designer handbag featuring Goldfish crackers is just one of many head-scratching matchups contributing to NYFW losing its luster. @katebarton\/instagram<\/p>\n
Clothes are increasingly an afterthought \u2014\u00a0now it\u2019s all about cold, hard cash, and the vibe shift is unmistakable to the city\u2019s snobbiest label hounds.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I was growing up, all I wanted to do was go to fashion shows, be a model or sit there. I was sneaking into every frigging show,\u201d Hayley Corwick, a k a Lila Delilah, of fashion and shopping blog Madison Avenue Spy, told The Post.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow, when I get invitations, I don\u2019t feel like taking an Uber there. Even the people in fashion aren\u2019t going to the fashion shows anymore,\u201d she sniffed.<\/p>\n
Actor Patrick Schwarzenegger models a yellow patterned polo shirt from the \u201cWhite Lotus\u201d collab with Banana Republic. The hit HBO show seemed to be everywhere at NYFW this spring. Courtesy of Banana Republic\/GAP Inc.<\/p>\n
What went wrong? <\/p>\n
It\u2019s a problem that\u2019s been brewing since the start of the century, insiders say.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s when mega-agency IMG took the reins from OG organizers the Council of Fashion Designers of America \u2014\u00a0quickly showing their aim was to milk as much money as it could from the then-star-studded event.\u00a0(At least Mercedes-Benz, which famously first took title-naming rights back in 2007, was classy.)<\/p>\n
Seats in the Bryant Park tents used to be a hot commodity \u2014\u00a0with boldfacers crowding into shows like VPL by Victoria Bartlett during the spring 2013 showcase. WireImage<\/p>\n
Erin Hawker, Agentry PR founder and another show fixture, didn\u2019t mince words: \u201cThey sold the s\u2013t out of it, a $45,000 show package to every international designer who wanted to show in New York. And [that] diluted it.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
The calendar ballooned unmanageably, made worse by spats between IMG and CDFA, making coordination near-impossible and show clashes commonplace. <\/p>\n
IMG\u2019s attempts to reclaim cachet \u2014\u00a0underwriting shows for hot designers like Joseph Altuzarra \u2014\u00a0came too late. <\/p>\n
Anna Wintour takes in the fall 2004 Narciso Rodriguez show, back during NYFW\u2019s heyday. Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images<\/p>\n
\u201cThe damage had been done,\u201d Hawker shrugged.<\/p>\n
Then came the Great Recession. Up until then, NYFW was at least centralized \u2014\u00a0its red velvet-roped pop-up Midtown clubhouse becoming the most in-demand spot in the city. <\/p>\n
\u201cI remember walking in there and there was a Mo\u00ebt & Chandon bar with a million champagne glasses,\u201d swooned Hawker. \u201cIt was so sexy and so great.\u201d<\/p>\n
After 2008, IMG got itchy feet, hopscotching the event around town \u2014\u00a0and never really finding their way back.<\/p>\n
The tents in Bryant Park that housed New York Fashion Week would instantly become the hottest ticket in town during those few days twice each year. Getty Images<\/p>\n
The agency\u2019s urge to diverge also drove up costs. Bryant Park\u2019s venues were tried, true and essentially turnkey. Starting from scratch in a stand-alone space was much harder \u2014 and more expensive.<\/p>\n
Cutrone told The Post that baseline budgets per show today can easily top six figures: $38,000 to $58,000 for a venue, $20,000 for lighting, $15,000 for sound and $40,000 for a model roster \u2014\u00a0prices that many are hesitant to pay when they can easily slap up an influencer-led social media campaign for far less.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe sponsors went to digital marketing campaigns, something with immediate eyeballs,\u201d insider Chris Constable, founder of fashion marketing agency CCPR, told The Post. <\/p>\n
After the recession, NYFW began to stray from its Bryant Park hub, with shows scattered all over the city, like 2013\u2019s Tibi event at Pier 59. Anne Wermiel<\/p>\n
\u201cThe fashion community were the arbiters of style \u2014 think\u00a0\u201cDevil Wears\u00a0Prada\u201d \u201ccerulean blue\u201d [monologue] \u2014 but now everyone wasn\u2019t looking to fashion magazines, but to influencers,\u201d Constable said.<\/p>\n
It was both cheaper and more effective to splash out on funding some cute content, dressing a few street-style types, rather than pay for a big event in the tents.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Then, there were other affronts \u2014\u00a0the ill-advised Fashion\u2019s Night Out event, for example, which launched in 2009 with a mission of making fashion accessible to the public. (Remember the near-riot situation in Soho in 2012?)<\/p>\n
Model Karlie Kloss hawked cookies outside Soho\u2019s DKNY boutique during the notorious Fashion\u2019s Night Out event in 2012. AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n
Magazine editors, their salaries under threat, even started selling their hard-to-score event tickets to unknowns \u2014\u00a0diluting the star power of the once-obsessed-over seating charts.<\/p>\n
And those publicity-driving celebrities, who used to occupy the front rows? Most are now bought up by brands, CCPR\u2019s Constable noted \u2014\u00a0pointing out that someone like Louis Vuitton ambassador Emma Stone would be contractually barred from attending rival brands\u2019 runway shows, assuming she even wanted to.<\/p>\n
Even City Hall has apparently lost what little passion it may have once had for the event \u2014\u00a0and appears disinterested in helping restore it to any kind of former glory. <\/p>\n
More than 1 in every 20 New Yorkers is employed by the fashion sector, but according to statistics, Fashion Week receives almost no official support \u2014\u00a0unlike rivals in Paris or Milan, where local authorities have been known to fork over cash to help with event development.<\/p>\n
Crowds fill NYFW\u2019s Bryant Park venue during a 2008 event \u2014\u00a0the year of the Great Recession, which experts say contributed greatly to the event\u2019s decline. Marion Curtis\/Startraksphoto.com<\/p>\n
In the cash-is-king Big Apple, designers must grab whatever funding source is on offer \u2014\u00a0and that funding is increasingly off-brand. Cutrone herself has been partnering with Pornhub<\/a> as a backer for runway shows, and will do so once more this season.<\/p>\n\u201cSex and fashion have gone hand in hand since the beginning of time,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
\u201cAnd where else is a young designer going to get money to pay for the show?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"That\u2019s one pricey salad dressing. In February at New York Fashion Week, Melke designer Emma Gage debuted a…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":213525,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,6335,29764,1165,5248,405,403,50918,5226,5225,5228,5227,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,5925],"class_list":{"0":"post-213524","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-exclusive","10":"tag-fashion-beauty","11":"tag-lifestyle","12":"tag-metro","13":"tag-new-york","14":"tag-new-york-city","15":"tag-new-york-fashion-week","16":"tag-newyork","17":"tag-newyorkcity","18":"tag-ny","19":"tag-nyc","20":"tag-united-states","21":"tag-united-states-of-america","22":"tag-unitedstates","23":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","24":"tag-us","25":"tag-usa","26":"tag-womens-fashion"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115175845128262833","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213524","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=213524"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213524\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/213525"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=213524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=213524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=213524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}