The Pillars of FW
For many they are an unparalleled economic opportunity, for others just a cliché replaceable with different marketing and communications tools. During those days the drivers whizzing running through the streets in search of the client’s most generous tip. Bars, restaurants and bistros flock to the same rate as the prices for their à la carte menus soar. On the scene, fashion weeks, the most discussed: Paris, Milan, London, New York and the newcomer Berlin.
Every nation is rooting for its own. Because, apart from the fun theater which is celebrated every hour in front of the entrance of the shows, this mechanism called Fashion Industry translates on paper in billions of dollars, thousands of jobs and a good amount of social implications.
This anxiety often ends up devaluing the real pregnant strength of each. It would be more conscious to take note of what every Fashion Week has good in its DNA. In London we celebrate the feast of Underground. The youth subcultures, the fresher, lively and less affected by the global logics, go up on the catwalk. In Milan it comes to expertise, craftsmanship, excellence of the hand-made, that hallmark all people show reverence; Made in Italy. In Paris slips off creativity. Everything you claim to be above, much closer to dreams and desire. In New York you decide the season’s trends, what you sell, what consumers want and what the market will give them. Cultural inspirations coming from North and miscellaneous agitations that include the british, street, punk and gothic style join together in Berlin, the fashion week that we have just learned to follow, that we foresee to be the next big thing. The deutsche city of contradictions has a little more than for a couple of years stood in front of World Fashion System face.
It’s almost impossible for one of the five face the game for all, because the beauty and the interest of press and buyers from all over the world lies in the diversity that characterizes each fashion week.
By the way, being sharp, you could do just a note to London and Milan Fashion Weeks, which often become a shapeless conglomeration of shows and presentations concentrated in a few days, to meet the wishes of foreign operators, who do not like being out of the country for too long. Well done instead for Paris and New York that, through a clever interplay of corporation, always manage to put big names at the beginning and in the end of the event, “compelling” gracefully professionals to stay in town for every day of the shows. This mechanism allows the city to take a breath, operators to see with no hurry everything that is proposed to them, and tourism organizators and servicers to have a large catchment area delayed with several days.
Strengths and weaknesses aside, we like to think that the reason that still drives hundreds and hundreds of people to move from one end of the planet to see “only” clothes, is not the mere and coveted money, but also other factors. Creativity, expression of oneself, research, delight for the eyes? Who knows. Perhaps, in times like these, people have a desperate desire to dream. Or rather, what they want is “the illusion of dream you can dream again”. So that’s okay.
