Overview of Fashion Week Events

So welcome back to the channel and recently someone asked me to make a video kind of explaining what Fashion Week is. So in this video I'm going to give my best attempt to explain what Fashion Week is, why it's held and... what exactly do brands achieve by showing at Fashion Week. So the official definition of Fashion Week is an industry event lasting approximately one week where fashion designers, brands or houses display their latest collections in runway fashion shows to buyers and the media. These events influence trends for the current and upcoming seasons. So yeah, that's basically what Fashion Week is. I read somewhere that there are more than a hundred 138 fashion weeks worldwide but I'm sure the ones that everyone knows and the ones you hear about are the main four on the calendar and that's New York Fashion Week, London Fashion Week, Paris Fashion Week and Milan Fashion Week. Those four cities are the fashion capitals. Now aesthetically they're all kind of different so Paris is where all the big brands go and most of the time when a brand has made it in the mainstream they moved to Paris. It's where the biggest brands like Dior, Louis Vuitton, Balenciaga all show their shows. Milan is more kind of interchangeable with Paris. A lot of brands want to get big. The other goes to Paris or Milan. Paris is just a bit bigger. Milan is also different in the fact that it's known for having more outlandish collections like Italian fashion and Italian style is very maximalist. So a lot of Italian brands like Dolce & Gabbana, Versace, Prada, Prada those type of brands are all kind of very maximalist apart from Prada of course but Gucci is also an Italian brand um so yeah it's I'll say Milan Fashion Week and Paris Fashion Week are like the two big ones London is more like emerging talent London is known as having the most experimental designs and the least commercial designs uh so when you go to London you can literally expect anything um that's why I love London from an artistic standpoint point London is almost always at the forefront. Paris and Milan are more at the forefront of craftsmanship but because the houses are so big they can only be so experimental unless we're talking about brands like Comme des Garcons and the likes. And then of course we have New York Fashion Week where the aesthetic is very eclectic. A lot of brands are deeply rooted in a lot of different cultures. So yeah, that's basically New York. So going further into kind of like how Fashion Week works, Fashion Week is normally like a four-week circuit. So most times, this doesn't happen every time, but it happens most of the time, Fashion Week starts in New York. So New York Fashion Week happens first, and then it's London Fashion Week, and then it's Milan Fashion Week, and Paris, because it's the most important, is always last. Sometimes London and New York might change. but Milan is always second to last and Paris is always last. Now like I said there are so many other fashion weeks. There's fashion week in Japan, Tokyo fashion week. There is Copenhagen fashion week is also like not one of the big four but it's still a well-known fashion week that a lot of people go to. Lagos fashion week in Nigeria is starting to become really big and there's also Miami fashion week. Miami fashion week is really important because it's the biggest fashion... week event for like swimwear and beachwear so Miami fashion week is definitely relevant and something I wanted to just mention in the video briefly now when people are learning about fashion week and like want to understand fashion week the question I'm always asked is like who goes to fashion shows how do you get into a fashion show so basically fashion week is kind of business so the type of people that go first of all you have the editors journalists from like GQ from W Magazine, ID, whatever, all of them get invited because brands need press. Press will give your brand publicity and it will introduce your brand and your collections to a wider audience. So you definitely want as much press as you could fit in your fashion show. The most important people though I think at Fashion Week are buyers because buyers are people that actually directly give you money. The press or kind of you know write about your show and give you publicity that might lead in to sales but in terms of direct money buyers bring their direct money now uh i know a lot of people that watch this channel you guys are fashion literate but there are a lot of people who watch my channel who want to learn about fashion so if you don't know what a buyer is um say a big store like selfridges um a buyer is someone that buys the clothes that you see stocked in selfridges so a buyer is the person that selects and dictates what a store um stocks essentially you And that's why people say, oh, the buy this season was bad in that store, the buy, because they don't like what the buyers decided to buy from a collection. Now, buyers, it's kind of a difficult job and there are actually degrees you can study for buying. It's quite, it's more complicated than it sounds because as a buyer, you have to really know your market and you have to look deeply and your market can be based on the area your store is located in, the aesthetic of the other brands that are stocked in. in different sections that are stocked in your store, the reason why people come to your store, what the demographic of the people that come to your store is, and you have to factor all of that in into when you buy clothes. But going back to Fashion Week, so what a buyer will do, a buyer will see a show on a runway, decide what looks they like, then go into a showroom where they can see these clothes and fill them up close, and then based on that, they'll decide, okay, our brand's going to stock this. We need a hundred units, we're gonna give you so and so amount of money for a hundred units. So first of all, buyers are the most important. I've said the journalists and press. So I have been invited to some fashion shows as press even though I'm not really big, like my YouTube channel is not really that big but just giving you an idea of like why people get invited to fashion shows. There are also other people like celebrities, that's more to do with kind of like press again. publicity if people see their favorite celebrity associating themselves with a certain brand then obviously their fans might buy it so that's also kind of like press you also just generally have a lot of like the designers friends and family and stuff like that that also attend the show so once again because i get this like ask this question so much if you want to be invited to a fashion show or you want to get into a fashion show without sneaking in, which is actually quite possible. You need to bring something to the table. You have to have a reason as to why a brand will invite you to their show. They're not just going to invite you for no reason, because most fashion shows have limited spaces. So you either have to cover their show, talk about their show. You have to be some form of press that they deem is important or can bring value to the brand or be a buyer, of course, because obviously, if you're a buyer, You're giving them direct money when you buy the collections or Stylists as well a big big celebrity stylists are always invited to shows because a lot of brands blow up just by being on a celebrity so say I invite said Stylist to my show this two years down the line because I have a good relationship with this stylist The stylist uses one of my garments and puts it on let's say Drake Now my brand is going to go from unknown to blowing up overnight just because I had a good relationship with a stylist So when the stylist was styling had a job to do with Drake my brand was in thoughts for the stylist So yeah, so something that is very confusing A lot of people are like why is there so many fashion weeks fashion week is all over the place First of all, like I said, there's so many fashion weeks over 180 worldwide so there's always going to be some form of fashion week, but Let's be fair, the ones that most people really care about is Milan, London, New York and Paris. Now in terms of those shows, historically they only really show two times a year. And I'm going to expand to this. So there are the Spring Summer Collections and the Autumn Winter Collections. Further on, so before there was only a Women's Wear Fashion Week. And if you're a menswear designer you would kind of just squeeze into... the womenswear schedule. Now however because there are so many menswear designers and there's a big rise in like menswear, there has now been like a separate menswear schedule created. So originally it was only womenswear and it's usually held in Feb. So February is normally the fall winter, the autumn winter collections and then September is when you have the spring summer collections. The reason why they're in that Those time frames is because it takes Kind of like nine months for a brand to fulfill an order So a brand has to show their full winter collection in February so that when the Before winter season actually comes the next year, the clothes are then in stores. So same thing with spring, summer, September. So by the time like six months to nine months, it's actually summer when they're actually selling the garments. So yeah, then going deeper though, some brands like bigger brands, brands that can afford it, then have collections in between the spring, summer and the autumn, winter. So you see brands like Dior, Louis Vuitton, they have... Pre-fall collection, so that's a collection before the fall collection, the fall winter collection. So there are loads of transitional collections, there's like resort collections that is normally in between spring, summer and the fall winter. You can have a pre-fall, you can have a pre-spring. There are literally some brands that have just like six, seven collections a year. The reason for those collections, like a resort, a pre-collection is actually... If you're a big brand and you want to keep your customers engaged and you want to create an experience, you have kind of like transitional pieces. So in some countries, and this is why global brands are really important, because in some countries they don't follow like the westernized seasons. So they don't have winter in December, January, February and I don't know, summer in, you know, June, July, August. So they have to cater for all the customers worldwide that don't follow the same season range as well as kind of having transitional pieces for the western customer so there'll be pieces that aren't too hot, aren't too warm most of the time. So that's just to clarify because I know a lot of people do get confused by like pre-fall, what's a resort collection and stuff like that. So going into menswear, menswear literally just finished now so I'm sure most of you will know that menswear is held in january and it's held in june uh so yeah you normally have the main like paris london new york milan menswear in january and it might dip into february some years and then you have um the shows in june so now you guys know the main shows spring summer full winter season menswear january and june womenswear february and september then of course in between we have pre-fall collections, we have resort collections. And of course, when talking about Fashion Week, you can't talk about Fashion Week without mentioning haute couture. And haute couture, without getting too deep into it, is basically a way of making clothing that has to be in Paris, has to follow a certain number of rules, and it's made by the best artisans in Paris and made with the best quality materials and the best craftsmanship. And haute couture is normally handmade. So, haute couture is always a big fixture in terms of fashion. So like I said, haute couture is only shown in Paris. It's a rule. It can only be shown in Paris. And it's shown in January and it's also shown in July. Now, another thing that people always wonder is why, if Fashion Week is all about runway shows, why are there people that put on presentations and stuff like that? Now, from a brand perspective, if your brand isn't too big or you don't have the financial means, It's actually cheaper to put on a presentation than it is to have a runway show. If you don't know what a presentation is, normally at any fashion week, fashion week is held at a certain place. So in London, menswear is held at the Truman Brewery in Shoreditch, Old Street-ish area, and womenswear is held at the Strand, sorry. Now the Strand, Truman Brewery is like a big space and then most of the fashion shows will take place within the Truman Brewery or some bigger brands will go and have just a show in a literally purpose-built place made just for their show that they've set up just for their show. So if you were to walk in let's say the Strand or the Truman Brewery there are different like rooms and spaces apart from the place that people use for runway shows and those are the spaces where Some designers might just pay to have a presentation and it'll just be literally the models standing still wearing the clothes and then throughout the day people can just come through and I don't know look at the clothes basically. Most designers that do presentations it's because they can't afford to have a runway show but sometimes it is just artistic expression and some brands actually just genuinely opt. To do a presentation instead of a runway show. So another big talking point and big part of fashion is street style. Now because people go to fashion week in their craziest outfits, their best outfits, it's a good chance for photographers to get street images of like really interesting people wearing really interesting outfits um and because of this it's kind of become a weird thing where not only the people that normally go to fashion week go to fashion week now there's people who like don't go for any shows they just go there to dress up stand outside and just get their pictures taken by all the photographers there who just want to take interesting photos and And hopefully they can get a high quality image that they can put on their Instagram. Which is a bit strange. Like, I don't know. I just can't do that. Like, before recently, I've only been to Fashion Week consistently for the past two years. Before then, I just never went to Fashion Week. Like, I'm just one of those people. I just don't want to embarrass myself. Like, if I don't have a reason to go, I'm not going to, like, show up at all. But yeah, those are not the only type of photographers there. You also have, like, Vogue photographers. photographers and GQ photographers who actually do street style for their website and stuff. So another thing is people want to get on Vogue or people want to get on GQ, like say, oh, I've been on Vogue or whatever. I've been on Vogue there. So yeah, that's kind of like what is a big talking point in terms of Fashion Week. So that's something that brings a lot of hype and is a big talking point in terms of fashion because a lot of people, when they think of Fashion Week, they don't really... even think of the runway shows and stuff they just think of street style what this influencer wore and stuff like that. So hopefully now you know the role of Fashion Week is basically just a whole marketing and promotion event for fashion brands for a way for them to gain exposure let more people know about their clothing items as well as sell the ultimate goal is to lead to sales so yeah that's literally the role of Fashion Week. A lot of people do question the relevance of Fashion Week now because before Fashion Week was only seen by just fashion people and you know just the higher class high quality. Okay something else I've got to mention is if you're a VIP customer of a brand then you get invited to the fashion shows so say you spend your like top 20 people that spend the most in Dior then yeah you all get invites like VIP customers always get invites to um fashion shows like runaway shows so let's say i don't know someone bought loads of balenciaga in a year like tens of thousands pounds worth or actually that wouldn't be enough for balenciaga probably be like maybe like if you spend a hundred thousand pounds on balenciaga in a year you'll probably get invited to um their next show but going back to what i was saying um a lot of people do uh question the relevance of fashion week now because it isn't so so elitist as it once was and that is mainly due to social media and a lot of people question that now if I have an audience of one million on Instagram do I really need to spend all that money on a fashion show because if people don't know it's really expensive to show at Fashion Week unless you have funding or you're backed by the BFC or someone it could cost something like 50,000 or more just to show like at London Fashion Week for example I'm talking about London because that's what I know about. I know there are many knowledgeable guys That follow this channel luckily So if you have any information be sure to comment down below and let other people know like how it is in Milan and Paris In New York and other places, but yeah I feel like over time we'll see less and less brands take the traditional approach to fashion week and following the fashion week schedules Because now the social media and people have really big followings I think more people just going to do shows in their own time when they have the clothes ready as opposed to having to churn out collections by the spring summer season the fall winter season and everyone's stressed out and everyone's trying to hit deadlines um and yeah but something that is still of relevance in terms of fashion week is how fashion week influences trends so everyone knows if you know anything about fashion everyone knows that whatever brand show on the runway is always like three three years ahead of the curve so whatever trend you see um on the runway we'll see zara h m and all those brands kind of copy um all the higher end brands maybe like two three years after um which is also a bit strange normally so how fashion week works once again i'm talking about london because london i've been to loads of times uh just like london fashion week so you have shows like let's say 10am to 10.30am Paria Farzaneh, 10.30am to 11am A Cold War. It just goes like that for three days. And then after like 6, 7, 8ish when most of the shows end, there's always like an after party. And after parties are really cool, you get to meet different people in the industry, you get to network which is really, really key in a creative industry like fashion. If you're anti-social, fashion is not the industry for you because... unless you're like the next galliano you're gonna need to network to make it anywhere um so yeah parties are really good for that one thing people love about fashion parties as well a lot of them especially if they are invite only have like free drinks and free food on the brand just like or on whoever's throwing it like a magazine or whatever um and fashion week is also known for like the parties because the parties are really good and fashion people already are kind of you Well, most of them anyway are already very unconventional people in the view of the masses, for example. So you get some very interesting characters at fashion parties. The last thing I want to address, and this is because so many people ask me that question, is can you sneak into a fashion show? Now, I wouldn't advise it because I'm not advising anyone to sneak in a show because, to be fair, in most fashion shows, most of the seats are accounted for. So if you sneak into a show and you sit somewhere, you might have taken some... so on important to see and i don't know it's because like i i see things in the lens of if i was a fashion designer i really want the people i want at my show because that's going to give my people at my show maximum exposure um so as a fashion designer i wouldn't like if someone took the space of a space I intended for an editor of let's say a magazine to have so if you sneak into a show just be mindful of taking seats some shows are like standing so they might not notice if there's a slight other people standing behind the people that are sitting down so that's fine in terms of sneaking into shows though I kind of went on a tangent there it can be hard it can be easy it just depends on the PR team that is running the show so most brands have PR teams public relations and those are mostly the people that run like security for the shows and stuff like that so in England in London at least one of One of the PR agencies that is known to be impossible to get into their shows is Carla Otto. Uh, Carla Otto, they have brands like Martine Rose, A Cold War, Kiko Kostadinov. Those brands, just forget about sneaking into those brands, like, forget it. Some other, some other things like NUGEN, um, their shows are a bit easier to sneak into. And some shows literally, like, you just walk in if no one's looking. just walk in act natural and you're what's the show uh but yeah that when people ask me that question it's a bit of it's a bit of a tough one because it's easy and hard like i said it just comes down to who is actually running the security and if it's your day if you're lucky um but yeah i hope in a nutshell i've been able to explain uh quite a few things about fashion week just because a lot of people do get confused about like when does it happen it's a bit chaotic what like what are the main fashion weeks people want to know like more information about fashion week so yeah I just wanted to talk about it briefly so I hope you guys enjoyed the video if you did like the video subscribe to my channel if you're new this is the fashion archive and I make videos about fashion as the name suggests I do have a patreon if you want to support the channel financially the link to that will be in the description below if you want to join a group chat where people talk about fashion the link to that is also in the description below and on that note I'll be back with another video shortly

So yeah, that's basically what Fashion Week is. I read somewhere that there are more than a hundred 138 fashion weeks worldwide but I'm sure the ones that everyone knows and the ones you hear about are the main four on the calendar and that's New York Fashion Week, London Fashion Week, Paris Fashion Week and Milan Fashion Week. Those four cities are the fashion capitals.

Now aesthetically they're all kind of different so Paris is where all the big brands go and most of the time when a brand has made it in the mainstream they moved to Paris. It's where the biggest brands like Dior, Louis Vuitton, Balenciaga all show their shows. Milan is more kind of interchangeable with Paris. A lot of brands want to get big.

The other goes to Paris or Milan. Paris is just a bit bigger. Milan is also different in the fact that it's known for having more outlandish collections like Italian fashion and Italian style is very maximalist. So a lot of Italian brands like Dolce & Gabbana, Versace, Prada, Prada those type of brands are all kind of very maximalist apart from Prada of course but Gucci is also an Italian brand um so yeah it's I'll say Milan Fashion Week and Paris Fashion Week are like the two big ones London is more like emerging talent London is known as having the most experimental designs and the least commercial designs uh so when you go to London you can literally expect anything um that's why I love London from an artistic standpoint point London is almost always at the forefront. Paris and Milan are more at the forefront of craftsmanship but because the houses are so big they can only be so experimental unless we're talking about brands like Comme des Garcons and the likes.

And then of course we have New York Fashion Week where the aesthetic is very eclectic. A lot of brands are deeply rooted in a lot of different cultures. So yeah, that's basically New York. So going further into kind of like how Fashion Week works, Fashion Week is normally like a four-week circuit.

So most times, this doesn't happen every time, but it happens most of the time, Fashion Week starts in New York. So New York Fashion Week happens first, and then it's London Fashion Week, and then it's Milan Fashion Week, and Paris, because it's the most important, is always last. Sometimes London and New York might change. but Milan is always second to last and Paris is always last. Now like I said there are so many other fashion weeks.

There's fashion week in Japan, Tokyo fashion week. There is Copenhagen fashion week is also like not one of the big four but it's still a well-known fashion week that a lot of people go to. Lagos fashion week in Nigeria is starting to become really big and there's also Miami fashion week.

Miami fashion week is really important because it's the biggest fashion... week event for like swimwear and beachwear so Miami fashion week is definitely relevant and something I wanted to just mention in the video briefly now when people are learning about fashion week and like want to understand fashion week the question I'm always asked is like who goes to fashion shows how do you get into a fashion show so basically fashion week is kind of business so the type of people that go first of all you have the editors journalists from like GQ from W Magazine, ID, whatever, all of them get invited because brands need press. Press will give your brand publicity and it will introduce your brand and your collections to a wider audience.

So you definitely want as much press as you could fit in your fashion show. The most important people though I think at Fashion Week are buyers because buyers are people that actually directly give you money. The press or kind of you know write about your show and give you publicity that might lead in to sales but in terms of direct money buyers bring their direct money now uh i know a lot of people that watch this channel you guys are fashion literate but there are a lot of people who watch my channel who want to learn about fashion so if you don't know what a buyer is um say a big store like selfridges um a buyer is someone that buys the clothes that you see stocked in selfridges so a buyer is the person that selects and dictates what a store um stocks essentially you And that's why people say, oh, the buy this season was bad in that store, the buy, because they don't like what the buyers decided to buy from a collection. Now, buyers, it's kind of a difficult job and there are actually degrees you can study for buying. It's quite, it's more complicated than it sounds because as a buyer, you have to really know your market and you have to look deeply and your market can be based on the area your store is located in, the aesthetic of the other brands that are stocked in.

in different sections that are stocked in your store, the reason why people come to your store, what the demographic of the people that come to your store is, and you have to factor all of that in into when you buy clothes. But going back to Fashion Week, so what a buyer will do, a buyer will see a show on a runway, decide what looks they like, then go into a showroom where they can see these clothes and fill them up close, and then based on that, they'll decide, okay, our brand's going to stock this. We need a hundred units, we're gonna give you so and so amount of money for a hundred units.

So first of all, buyers are the most important. I've said the journalists and press. So I have been invited to some fashion shows as press even though I'm not really big, like my YouTube channel is not really that big but just giving you an idea of like why people get invited to fashion shows. There are also other people like celebrities, that's more to do with kind of like press again. publicity if people see their favorite celebrity associating themselves with a certain brand then obviously their fans might buy it so that's also kind of like press you also just generally have a lot of like the designers friends and family and stuff like that that also attend the show so once again because i get this like ask this question so much if you want to be invited to a fashion show or you want to get into a fashion show without sneaking in, which is actually quite possible.

You need to bring something to the table. You have to have a reason as to why a brand will invite you to their show. They're not just going to invite you for no reason, because most fashion shows have limited spaces.

So you either have to cover their show, talk about their show. You have to be some form of press that they deem is important or can bring value to the brand or be a buyer, of course, because obviously, if you're a buyer, You're giving them direct money when you buy the collections or Stylists as well a big big celebrity stylists are always invited to shows because a lot of brands blow up just by being on a celebrity so say I invite said Stylist to my show this two years down the line because I have a good relationship with this stylist The stylist uses one of my garments and puts it on let's say Drake Now my brand is going to go from unknown to blowing up overnight just because I had a good relationship with a stylist So when the stylist was styling had a job to do with Drake my brand was in thoughts for the stylist So yeah, so something that is very confusing A lot of people are like why is there so many fashion weeks fashion week is all over the place First of all, like I said, there's so many fashion weeks over 180 worldwide so there's always going to be some form of fashion week, but Let's be fair, the ones that most people really care about is Milan, London, New York and Paris. Now in terms of those shows, historically they only really show two times a year. And I'm going to expand to this. So there are the Spring Summer Collections and the Autumn Winter Collections.

Further on, so before there was only a Women's Wear Fashion Week. And if you're a menswear designer you would kind of just squeeze into... the womenswear schedule. Now however because there are so many menswear designers and there's a big rise in like menswear, there has now been like a separate menswear schedule created. So originally it was only womenswear and it's usually held in Feb.

So February is normally the fall winter, the autumn winter collections and then September is when you have the spring summer collections. The reason why they're in that Those time frames is because it takes Kind of like nine months for a brand to fulfill an order So a brand has to show their full winter collection in February so that when the Before winter season actually comes the next year, the clothes are then in stores. So same thing with spring, summer, September.

So by the time like six months to nine months, it's actually summer when they're actually selling the garments. So yeah, then going deeper though, some brands like bigger brands, brands that can afford it, then have collections in between the spring, summer and the autumn, winter. So you see brands like Dior, Louis Vuitton, they have... Pre-fall collection, so that's a collection before the fall collection, the fall winter collection. So there are loads of transitional collections, there's like resort collections that is normally in between spring, summer and the fall winter.

You can have a pre-fall, you can have a pre-spring. There are literally some brands that have just like six, seven collections a year. The reason for those collections, like a resort, a pre-collection is actually... If you're a big brand and you want to keep your customers engaged and you want to create an experience, you have kind of like transitional pieces.

So in some countries, and this is why global brands are really important, because in some countries they don't follow like the westernized seasons. So they don't have winter in December, January, February and I don't know, summer in, you know, June, July, August. So they have to cater for all the customers worldwide that don't follow the same season range as well as kind of having transitional pieces for the western customer so there'll be pieces that aren't too hot, aren't too warm most of the time. So that's just to clarify because I know a lot of people do get confused by like pre-fall, what's a resort collection and stuff like that. So going into menswear, menswear literally just finished now so I'm sure most of you will know that menswear is held in january and it's held in june uh so yeah you normally have the main like paris london new york milan menswear in january and it might dip into february some years and then you have um the shows in june so now you guys know the main shows spring summer full winter season menswear january and june womenswear february and september then of course in between we have pre-fall collections, we have resort collections.

And of course, when talking about Fashion Week, you can't talk about Fashion Week without mentioning haute couture. And haute couture, without getting too deep into it, is basically a way of making clothing that has to be in Paris, has to follow a certain number of rules, and it's made by the best artisans in Paris and made with the best quality materials and the best craftsmanship. And haute couture is normally handmade. So, haute couture is always a big fixture in terms of fashion. So like I said, haute couture is only shown in Paris.

It's a rule. It can only be shown in Paris. And it's shown in January and it's also shown in July. Now, another thing that people always wonder is why, if Fashion Week is all about runway shows, why are there people that put on presentations and stuff like that?

Now, from a brand perspective, if your brand isn't too big or you don't have the financial means, It's actually cheaper to put on a presentation than it is to have a runway show. If you don't know what a presentation is, normally at any fashion week, fashion week is held at a certain place. So in London, menswear is held at the Truman Brewery in Shoreditch, Old Street-ish area, and womenswear is held at the Strand, sorry.

Now the Strand, Truman Brewery is like a big space and then most of the fashion shows will take place within the Truman Brewery or some bigger brands will go and have just a show in a literally purpose-built place made just for their show that they've set up just for their show. So if you were to walk in let's say the Strand or the Truman Brewery there are different like rooms and spaces apart from the place that people use for runway shows and those are the spaces where Some designers might just pay to have a presentation and it'll just be literally the models standing still wearing the clothes and then throughout the day people can just come through and I don't know look at the clothes basically. Most designers that do presentations it's because they can't afford to have a runway show but sometimes it is just artistic expression and some brands actually just genuinely opt. To do a presentation instead of a runway show. So another big talking point and big part of fashion is street style.

Now because people go to fashion week in their craziest outfits, their best outfits, it's a good chance for photographers to get street images of like really interesting people wearing really interesting outfits um and because of this it's kind of become a weird thing where not only the people that normally go to fashion week go to fashion week now there's people who like don't go for any shows they just go there to dress up stand outside and just get their pictures taken by all the photographers there who just want to take interesting photos and And hopefully they can get a high quality image that they can put on their Instagram. Which is a bit strange. Like, I don't know. I just can't do that.

Like, before recently, I've only been to Fashion Week consistently for the past two years. Before then, I just never went to Fashion Week. Like, I'm just one of those people.

I just don't want to embarrass myself. Like, if I don't have a reason to go, I'm not going to, like, show up at all. But yeah, those are not the only type of photographers there.

You also have, like, Vogue photographers. photographers and GQ photographers who actually do street style for their website and stuff. So another thing is people want to get on Vogue or people want to get on GQ, like say, oh, I've been on Vogue or whatever. I've been on Vogue there. So yeah, that's kind of like what is a big talking point in terms of Fashion Week.

So that's something that brings a lot of hype and is a big talking point in terms of fashion because a lot of people, when they think of Fashion Week, they don't really... even think of the runway shows and stuff they just think of street style what this influencer wore and stuff like that. So hopefully now you know the role of Fashion Week is basically just a whole marketing and promotion event for fashion brands for a way for them to gain exposure let more people know about their clothing items as well as sell the ultimate goal is to lead to sales so yeah that's literally the role of Fashion Week.

A lot of people do question the relevance of Fashion Week now because before Fashion Week was only seen by just fashion people and you know just the higher class high quality. Okay something else I've got to mention is if you're a VIP customer of a brand then you get invited to the fashion shows so say you spend your like top 20 people that spend the most in Dior then yeah you all get invites like VIP customers always get invites to um fashion shows like runaway shows so let's say i don't know someone bought loads of balenciaga in a year like tens of thousands pounds worth or actually that wouldn't be enough for balenciaga probably be like maybe like if you spend a hundred thousand pounds on balenciaga in a year you'll probably get invited to um their next show but going back to what i was saying um a lot of people do uh question the relevance of fashion week now because it isn't so so elitist as it once was and that is mainly due to social media and a lot of people question that now if I have an audience of one million on Instagram do I really need to spend all that money on a fashion show because if people don't know it's really expensive to show at Fashion Week unless you have funding or you're backed by the BFC or someone it could cost something like 50,000 or more just to show like at London Fashion Week for example I'm talking about London because that's what I know about. I know there are many knowledgeable guys That follow this channel luckily So if you have any information be sure to comment down below and let other people know like how it is in Milan and Paris In New York and other places, but yeah I feel like over time we'll see less and less brands take the traditional approach to fashion week and following the fashion week schedules Because now the social media and people have really big followings I think more people just going to do shows in their own time when they have the clothes ready as opposed to having to churn out collections by the spring summer season the fall winter season and everyone's stressed out and everyone's trying to hit deadlines um and yeah but something that is still of relevance in terms of fashion week is how fashion week influences trends so everyone knows if you know anything about fashion everyone knows that whatever brand show on the runway is always like three three years ahead of the curve so whatever trend you see um on the runway we'll see zara h m and all those brands kind of copy um all the higher end brands maybe like two three years after um which is also a bit strange normally so how fashion week works once again i'm talking about london because london i've been to loads of times uh just like london fashion week so you have shows like let's say 10am to 10.30am Paria Farzaneh, 10.30am to 11am A Cold War.

It just goes like that for three days. And then after like 6, 7, 8ish when most of the shows end, there's always like an after party. And after parties are really cool, you get to meet different people in the industry, you get to network which is really, really key in a creative industry like fashion. If you're anti-social, fashion is not the industry for you because... unless you're like the next galliano you're gonna need to network to make it anywhere um so yeah parties are really good for that one thing people love about fashion parties as well a lot of them especially if they are invite only have like free drinks and free food on the brand just like or on whoever's throwing it like a magazine or whatever um and fashion week is also known for like the parties because the parties are really good and fashion people already are kind of you Well, most of them anyway are already very unconventional people in the view of the masses, for example.

So you get some very interesting characters at fashion parties. The last thing I want to address, and this is because so many people ask me that question, is can you sneak into a fashion show? Now, I wouldn't advise it because I'm not advising anyone to sneak in a show because, to be fair, in most fashion shows, most of the seats are accounted for. So if you sneak into a show and you sit somewhere, you might have taken some... so on important to see and i don't know it's because like i i see things in the lens of if i was a fashion designer i really want the people i want at my show because that's going to give my people at my show maximum exposure um so as a fashion designer i wouldn't like if someone took the space of a space I intended for an editor of let's say a magazine to have so if you sneak into a show just be mindful of taking seats some shows are like standing so they might not notice if there's a slight other people standing behind the people that are sitting down so that's fine in terms of sneaking into shows though I kind of went on a tangent there it can be hard it can be easy it just depends on the PR team that is running the show so most brands have PR teams public relations and those are mostly the people that run like security for the shows and stuff like that so in England in London at least one of One of the PR agencies that is known to be impossible to get into their shows is Carla Otto.

Uh, Carla Otto, they have brands like Martine Rose, A Cold War, Kiko Kostadinov. Those brands, just forget about sneaking into those brands, like, forget it. Some other, some other things like NUGEN, um, their shows are a bit easier to sneak into.

And some shows literally, like, you just walk in if no one's looking. just walk in act natural and you're what's the show uh but yeah that when people ask me that question it's a bit of it's a bit of a tough one because it's easy and hard like i said it just comes down to who is actually running the security and if it's your day if you're lucky um but yeah i hope in a nutshell i've been able to explain uh quite a few things about fashion week just because a lot of people do get confused about like when does it happen it's a bit chaotic what like what are the main fashion weeks people want to know like more information about fashion week so yeah I just wanted to talk about it briefly so I hope you guys enjoyed the video if you did like the video subscribe to my channel if you're new this is the fashion archive and I make videos about fashion as the name suggests I do have a patreon if you want to support the channel financially the link to that will be in the description below if you want to join a group chat where people talk about fashion the link to that is also in the description below and on that note I'll be back with another video shortly

Transcript for:Overview of Fashion Week Events

Transcript for:
Overview of Fashion Week Events