‘Fashionalisation’: Why So Many Cities Host Fashion Weeks

Abstract

The ‘fashion week’ is traditionally an industry-led event, exclusive to trade professionals and usually named after the host city. It is an avenue for fashion designers and couture houses to showcase their seasonal collections giving precedence to agents and buyers to determine appropriate purchases. The biannual schedule also allows time for retailers to arrange their order and incorporate the designers into their retail marketing. The most prominent biannual fashion weeks are held in Paris, Milan, New York and London. In the past decade, a handful of smaller fashion weeks have filled the international calendar. The Moscow Fashion Week is now the largest fashion event in Eastern Europe and the Imam Khomenini Mosque in Tehran staged Iran’s first Islamic Fashion Week in July 2006. Today, there are no less than 85 cities from around the world play host to at least one fashion week.1 The questions that arise are; why have so many cities decided to hold a fashion week? What is promoted in these new-rise fashion weeks and what is the relation to the local and traditional industries? This chapter focuses on the objectives of the ‘new-rise’ Fashion Weeks and their rationale behind hosting the event. It discusses how fashion is used to achieve varied objectives beyond serving the fashion industry and considers the many conflicting roles that it plays in a city – from endeavouring to brand a city as a ‘fashion city’ to merely using its associated events to generate tourism. It highlights the embedded tangible and intangible assets in fashion and how they have been employed to serve institutional objectives.

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