FASHION CAPITALS

London Fashion Week

The idea appeared in 1984 in a West London car park, with catwalk shows, exhibitions combining the strong industry focus that it has maintained to this day. The show was successful until the nineties, when decline meant that only a few of designers could show their collections in a several rooms at the Ritz, in 1992. But in 1993, LFW recoveried its trade name vitality when Naomi Campbell appeared topless on the catwalk for the Philip Treacy show. It continued to prosper with Stella McCartney's successful collection 1995 Spring/Summer.
The fashion industry and anorexia were the main points of the late nineties, when a size 14 Sophie Dahl proudly walked down the catwalk and caused debate. Later, in 2009, the British Fashion Council moved a resuscitited London Fashion Week to its current venue in Somerset House. By 2010, London Fashion Week had almost £ 100 million in orders (shoes,handbags,accessories and garments).
Nowadays, London Fashion Week includes 68 “official” shows and huge number of unofficial offsite events.Over 5,000 industry visitors attend London Fashion Week every year, including students, designers, buyers and press. In 2010, London Fashion Week became one the сentral fashion event in the Internet; now we can see the entire fashion weeks’ worth over the web. 

Image above: Shows The Designer of the Year award, which was created in 1984 – the first recipient of it was Katharine Hamnett, who is best known for her famous protest T-shirts.

Here, Hamnett wore a “58% Don’t Want Pershing” T-shirt (in reference to America’s controversial Pershing II guided missile being deployed in West Germany), to meet Margaret Thatcher in 1984 at a 10 Downing Street reception for Fashion Week Designers.

Hussein Chalayan’s table dress from his autumn/winter 2001-2 show – during which models took off chair covers to dress themselves before using the furniture itself – was the epitome of conceptual fashion.

Paris Fashion Week

Before Fashion Weeks became the displays they are today, fashion ruled, doubtless, in the French salons. The fashion presentation idea dates back to 1858, when Charles Fredrick Worth first improved the concept of presentation his clientele a pre-prepared assortment of original designs (a collection). Moreover, his designs on real,live women were earth-shattering and shoked the audience. Both were extremely new ideas at the time.
In 1868, Worth promoted the creation of the Chambre Syndicale de la Confection et de la Couture pour Dames et Fillettes, a commercial association whose purpose was to improve the French fashion industry. One of the most remarkable
 roles of the association was to legally adjust the term “haute couture” – registered members of the Chambre Syndicale could only use this meaning. Minimum number of looks was set by organization for granted membership designers.

Into the 20th century Paris maintained the status of world fashion capital, securing the tradition of fashion presentations in salons or in private residences. The presentations became more and more popular and improved, including music, photography,sets and sophisticated staging and setsi. Innovative designers such as Paul Poiret called them fashion “fêtes” and thus the foundation of the modern fashion show. As the world looked almost exclusively to Paris for fashion inspiration, International fashion magazines from all over the world put chic styles being shown at these fêtes on their pages. Fashion and innovations (and photography) showed their amaizing union from that period until the dawn of World War II.

Paul Poiret and his models, 1925

Шт 1943 the course of fashion history changed. During the World War II , fashion journalists couldnt travel to Paris for fashion presentations.Due to the Nazi occupation the shows being cancelled in France. Later, a fashion publicist Eleanor Lambert used this opportunity to "transfer" the attention of the fashion industry from Paris to America, in order to rehabilitate prestige and the reputation of local American designers on the world fashion scene.

New York Fashion Week

Using her knowledge and experience in New York, Lambert could combine together a showcase of  designers from America for the national and international media.Time magazine published the information about the payment of expenses of any out-of-town journalist who went to New York to attend Press Week. There were 53 designer presentations held at the Plaza Hotel, and parallel to today’s shows, every editor got press information and catwalk photos as part of the package.
Lambert’s purpose to change the reputation of American fashion industry was achieved successfully. The paged of premier fashion magazines were full of collections of designers from America.
She invited a lot of paparazzi to New York shows, and advertised that “Press Week” was coming to the city.

Press Week New York, 1943.

The first Fashion Calendar was launched by Ruth Finely in 1944. She was tasked with composition of all of the week’s shows into one complete guide. This final guide was basic for combining together the fashion and beauty industries, including manufactures, buyers, editors and designers around a single route. 

Dior Show, 1955

For the next thirty years, designers continued to represent their collections two times a year (February and September) in a show that would eventually become famous as New York Fashion Week.
Fashion Week continued permanent through the years, and in the ’70s and ’80s, shows condacted in unusual spaces around New York like galleries, lofts, restaurants and nightclub. Howaver, in 1990 after an incident during a Michael Kors fashion show in a loft, the tide shifted again. When bits of the plaster ceiling crumbled onto the  heads of public, Fern Mallis, then executive director of the Council of Fashion Designers of America (the organizing body of Fashion Week), decided it was a right time for a change. She sad  “The general sentiment was, ‘We love fashion but we don’t want to die for it.’

Milan Fashion Week

As Lambert’s success in New York was so impressive, Italian aristocrat Giovanni Battista Giorgini took the possibility to turn to advantage and invite national paparazzi for a preview of the season’s collections. In 1952, in a pivotal time for Italian fashion, he created a series of shows in the famous Palazzo Pitti of Florence. Italian fashion was a capital of the fashion world, with Emilio Pucci and Missoni innovations and experience an amazing new base for their designs. Soon, the stunning success of the collections more surpassing the capacity of any place for fashion shows in Florence, and the city’s small airport could not arrange the influx of fashion royalty coming from many countries around the world. Finally, it was decided to move the event to Milan. In 1975, Milan presented its first “Settimana Della Moda” (Fashion Week) calendar of fashion shows.

Milan Fashion Week Spring 2012