A fashion week is traditionally a clear indicator of where the fashion industry is headed. But with all the digital innovations of the past few years, fashion week as we know it is no longer what it used to be. And that raises questions, because what do all the changes over the last few years tell us about the future of fashion? The Fashion For Good Museum in Amsterdam answers these questions with its new exhibition “Fashion Week: A New Era”, in which it takes visitors through the past, present and future of fashion week.
FashionUnited stopped by for an exclusive tour and spoke to pioneers of the fashion week of the future: Evelyn Mora (Founder of Helsinki Fashion Week), Darshana Gajare (Head of Sustainability at FDCI x Lakmé Fashion Week) and Jaspreet Chandok (Head of Lifestyle Businesses at Rise Worldwide, the parent company of Lakmé Fashion Week). They shared their thoughts with FashionUnited on what to expect from the future of fashion week and the importance of physical fashion shows in the face of digitization.
Fashion week pioneers share their expectations for the future
Relative newcomers in recent years, Helsinki Fashion Week (HFW) and India’s FDCI x Lakmé Fashion Week (LFW) have received international recognition for their leading role in transforming fashion weeks as we know them. Helsinki Fashion Week made its debut in 2016 and (according to its own statements) soon followed with a series of previously unseen sustainability initiatives. In 2018, they announced a complete ban of leather from their program and hosted their fashion week in their self-proclaimed “Eco Village” where sustainability was indeed considered everywhere: from electric transport to solar energy and catering to leftovers and drinkable, purified sea water. 2019 was the year she developed the “urban curtain”, which covered a castle in Helsinki with a surface specially designed to capture CO2 particles and pollutants from the air and then transported them through algae as new oxygen into the castle to pump to supply it with fresh oxygen. In 2020, a fully digital 3D fashion week took place in a “Digital Village”. In addition, every year the organizers are extraordinarily selective about who they admit to their fashion week and who not.
India’s FDCI x Lakmé Fashion Week pioneered by dedicating an entire day specifically to sustainable fashion and doing away with the seasonal calendar. In addition, she created a digital space to present her fashion week during the Corona pandemic and collaborated with six Indian designers for her initiative NEXA Digital Couture to create 3D fashion and optimize a technology that allows consumers to: inside to try on a piece of clothing virtually before they actually buy it. The works of both fashion weeks therefore play an important role in the new exhibition of the Fashion For Good Museum.
The Past: Origins of Fashion Week and Activism as an Art Form
The exhibition begins chronologically with a timeline depicting the beginnings of fashion week: 1943 in New York to be precise. The interaction between the fashion week and social developments is immediately clear. This first edition was created by the American Eleanor Lambert, as the leading European designers at the time were forced to interrupt their activities due to the Second World War, resulting in a high demand for presentations by American designers . The fashion weeks in Florence and Milan soon followed, and finally in 1973 the first international fashion week in Paris.
In the museum’s “Past” exhibition area, you can admire the designs of great designers up close. Each of these designs conveys something about the traditional nature of fashion week and the fashion industry of the past. For example, there is a Balenciaga dress from 1966 that is made of ostrich feathers, which would be unthinkable today.
A Moschino dress on display shows that some leading designers were already concerned about the polluting impact of fashion shows in the 20th century. In the 1990s, Italian designer Franco Moschino refused to hold any more fashion shows because he felt they had a negative impact on the environment. That was a big step back then, especially considering that activism during this period often didn’t go beyond a message in the physical design itself, as with Vivienne Westwood’s work with slogans. This caused a great stir at the time. But while art has been seen as the enabler of change, it is now about action.
The present: critical consumers and a 3D approach
Today, a mere slogan would no longer suffice to represent an act of activism. The pressure of the climate crisis is growing and with it the criticism of stressful aspects of the fashion industry, such as working with seasons, the rapid succession of trends and overproduction. The travel associated with attending a fashion week also raises questions. All in all, consumers are looking to the future and have become even more critical. On the floor with the exhibition area for the present, a striking difference to the designs of the “past” can be seen: Innovations with activist ideals are implemented from design to production.
The HFW and LFW initiatives are also presented in this room. Visitors can view (and technically attend) digital fashion shows from Helsinki Fashion Week, Tommy Hilfiger, The Fabricant, Botter and Ronald van der Kemp, among others. You can also create your own avatar here.
Despite the fact that the focus in this part of the exhibition is on digital and sustainable fashion weeks, Mora would like to see clearer initiatives from the big players in fashion weeks: “I think it should be much more sustainable and innovative. The four major fashion weeks (Paris, Milan, London, New York, ed.) have taken some effort – most notably London Fashion Week and the British Fashion Council – but the entire month of fashion weeks is after all these years still the same. I think the current concept is simple and familiar to industry insiders, so there is no pressing need for any real change.”
Mora also sees the responsibility in the brands themselves: “The brands often make up for the lack of innovation in the fashion weeks with their innovative storytelling and their shows. So the question is where the responsibility lies. The brands themselves also have a role to play here”. The LFW supported this idea with its Circular Design Challenge and the Sustainable Fashion Day. The HFW has also managed to raise the bar for designers by setting strict eligibility requirements related to sustainability.
The Future of Fashion Week: Democracy, Inclusivity and Continued Importance of Physical Gatherings
Based on her own experiences with the Digital Village, Mora anticipates that mainstream fashion weeks will eventually grow into the digital environment. But it has to be done right, she says. For example, she is still critical of Decentraland’s first fashion week, which took place last March: “For me, this was not a fashion week, but a fashion-inspired event, where a large group of people got to know different companies in interaction. “
“While physical fashion weeks have their own charm when it comes to meeting people face-to-face, socializing and enjoying the tactile aspect of touching and feeling, they are also a huge drain on the environment. Of course, there are ways to turn them into green events, but digital activations are a promising area to gain wider reach,” adds Chandok.
Speaking about the role of the physical fashion show in the future, Mora says: “Social gatherings will be very important and always relevant. Whether we sit in a circle and watch the models walk back and forth is another story.” Chandok confirmed, “We believe physical fashion weeks will remain, but digital innovations can help reduce the carbon footprint of the events , as they become more exclusive personally and more inclusive thanks to the greater digital reach.”
For the future of fashion weeks, both Mora and Chandok foresee more transparency and authority for consumers, as well as more sustainability. For example, Chandok informed us that fashion week of the future will be “more inclusive and democratic.” “I think that in the future, instead of fashion shows, we will see social events where knowledge is more bottom-up, from the consumer or target audience to the brand. This isn’t necessarily about the designers’ next collection, it’s about what the audience will wear. It’s a bit like voting: brands will run campaigns throughout the year and people will choose who to support,” Mora added.
This prediction is reminiscent of the role played by street photography at fashion weeks around the world, the results of which are now seen as as inspirational as the runway shows themselves. Reports of the fashion seen on the streets can be found in many fashion media, and Scott Schuman’s street photographs are now on display at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London and in the Fashion For Good exhibition.
As for their own future plans, LFW’s Gajare shares that the focus is on running zero-waste, carbon-neutral events where they hope to inspire similar action across the industry at large. According to Mora, the future focus of HFW could be a whole new digital challenge: managing our own data. “We are concerned about how technology will be used in the future when it comes to our privacy. I believe that at some point we should all take responsibility for our personal data and that this will take shape through some kind of data concierges that we can use for their services. Similar to data brokers who give us access to our data to give us access to the information, products and services we are really interested in.”
So, all in all, the future of fashion week will be an interplay of physical and digital, with the physical aspect taking on new forms and giving both consumers and fashion week visitors a greater say. Developments to look forward to.
The Fashion Week: A New Era exhibition runs until October 2022. The Fashion for Good Museum (Rokin 102) in Amsterdam is open Wednesday to Monday from 10am to 6pm.
This article originally appeared on FashionUnited.nl. Translated and edited by Simone Preuss.