Fashion in the age of Twitter

By the time you read this, the Mercedes Benz New York Fashion Week Fall 2015 will be over. Highlights include Kanye West, Victoria Beckham, DVF, Oscar De La Renta, Michael Kors and North West.

Much has been said about NYFW: it makes more money for New York than any other event annually. As the first of the shows, it kicks off what is not so much a week as it is a season running from mid-February till end of October in rotation from NY, London, Milan then Paris.

NYFW alone is about 350 shows crammed into nine days. David Tlale from South Africa did showcase though. But, 74 years since the first NYFW, key industry players have started to ask if it is losing its relevance. 

Fashion has been rocked to the core by digital and social media. It is changing everything. Ideally, fashion shows were designed to tease, giving the audience a taste of what would be in stores.

But nowadays, by the time a model has sashayed the entire length of the runway, her image will have been tweeted and Instagrammed a million times. For an industry that thrived on exclusivity, fashion is now playing catch up.

Fashion media is bored and exhausted

Plus, fashion media is bored and exhausted, complaining there are far too many shows. 

With fashion week streamed, fashionistas have front-row view. And if you have always wondered why there are so many clothes that can’t be worn, here is the answer finally.

If you had to watch at least nine shows a day, wouldn’t you want to remember some of them for no other reason than the impracticality of it?

Fashion Week’s sheer entertainment value has led to features on street style, an increasingly spectacular side show that now earns its own special corner of fashion mention, model off-duty style, celebrity watching on the frow, backstage drama, relationships, power plays, comebacks to model diversity. Unique angles and insights make for better content.

Fashion Week relevance cuts even deeper when you think of fashion journalist Suzy Menkes stating “the clothes most worn by people are the clothes least commented on by the press.”

That is not even the heartbreaking part. By the time designers lay their heads to sleep, Zara, H&M and Topshop will have iterations of their collections at very affordable prices.

This, please note, happens against the backdrop of burnout. Designers are expected to top previous collections each season and set the fashion world on fire.

Four times a year, designers have to give of themselves, then be wide open to critique, and in this era everyone is a critic, and wait to see if their clothes will sell. Then they get to do it all over again. And again. And again.

Then there’s always next year. If you do haute couture, that makes five collections in a year. If you also do menswear, it can add up to a total of six collections.

The pressure is so intense it has been speculated to be the cause of rehabs and, most unfortunately, the kind of pressure that may have led Alexander McQueen to suicide. Designers have to keep living up to their own genius.

Between social media and digital, designers have to either go big to the tune of $100,000 for a 10 minute showcase that oftentimes requires corporate sponsorship, or find less ostentatious ways to be noticed if they are a smaller brand. It means reconsidering Fashion Week.

If you have ever attended a fashion show, you may have noticed, or quite possibly have been one of the many members of the audience who took pictures to post on social media rather than actually watching the darn shows.

Granted, modern-day fashion shows introduce us to the psyche of the designer and connects key players, these being media, fashion insiders and buyers. Still, the industry thrives on innovation and envelope-pushing.

Never was there a time when the market was as opinionated as it is now. And, therefore, Fashion Week should appeal to a vocal demographic of very demanding consumers.

To keep up, NYFW will in 2016  be under new management with the intent of keeping it fresher and younger.

With social media becoming the new street, no one is certain whatever will happen next.