Defining Fashion: Fashion Week

Fashion week is coming. It seems like a never ending news cycle, each February we kick off with New York Fashion Week, closely flowed by London Fashion Week, Milan Fashion Week then Paris Fashion Week (known as the big 4 because they are the historic fashion capitals of the world).

With fashion houses from each city showing their ready to wear collections for the upcoming spring/summer season.

We repeat the cycle again in September, showcasing ready to wear collections in the big 4 fashion capitals.

But it doesn’t end there, because twice a year (in January and June) we also see a separate ‘Mens Fashion Week’ schedule take over Milan and Paris.

Then we see Haute Couture week pop up in Paris twice a year too, bringing hand crafted haute couture garments into the runway instead of ready to wear. (This is arguably the most exciting week - click the linked articles to read our definitions of couture and ready to wear.)

Because the pace of our consumption is now so fast, and amazing designers outside of the big 4 can’t afford to show at the established fashion weeks (or can’t geographically reach them) we also have more and more fashion weeks popping up: Berlin Fashion Week is always great, Tokyo Fashion Week, Copenhagen Fashion Week, Lagos Fashion Week - to name a few…

Once upon a time, if you wanted to learn about fashion attending fashion week was a dream, and showing at it could kick start a fruitful career. Now, the world is changing whilst the industry stand still. If you want to get into a show - good luck, if you want to show your collection you’ll need at least 1k just to be listed on the LFW website, and if you want to see a life-changing creative show you might be better off returning to the archives than expecting anything groundbreaking at the big 4.