Today IMG announced its plans to revamp the frenetic circus that is New York fashion week via redesigned Lincoln Center venues with smaller audience capacities and bigger backstage spaces.Change is a comin' for Fall '14. Today IMG announced its plans to revamp the frenetic circus that is New York fashion week via redesigned Lincoln Center venues with smaller audience capacities and bigger backstage spaces. The hope? That the update will reduce the presence of crowds, celebrity stalkers, miscellaneous non-fashion-related showgoers, aspiring street-style stars hoping to get papped, and general riffraff that often turns the delight that is NYFW into a bit of a hassle (to put it lightly) for buyers, journalists, stylists, and other industry professionals. Yesterday The Wall Street Journal reported that it's going to be decidedly harder to get tickets this season. An IMG representative told the paper that media guests will be cut by 20 percent in an effort to focus on attendees who are "of value to the designer." (Oscar de la Renta deserves a shout-out here—the designer lead the way by significantly reducing the number of guests at his Spring '14 outing.) Less "valuable" fashion fans will be able to watch shows online, as IMG plans to live-stream as many runways as possible.

Also part of the revamp is the Hudson Hub—a space geared toward emerging designers. In comparison to the bigger Lincoln Center venues, which will cost about $45,000 a pop, the Hub will be priced at $15,000 per show. That's a $3K price decrease from The Box, Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week's previous new-talent-focused venue, for which the fee was $18,000. The price dip is hardly competition for Made at Milk Studios, where the show space for lucky rising stars is free, but we guess it's a start.
POST: 2024-05-20