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Fashion shows are so last season Amy Zang

There’s nothing quite like being at a fashion show—the thunderous music, the flashing lights, the celebrities in the front row, the pain from standing in heels for too long—and that’s before the show even starts. Once the glamazons start marching down the catwalk, all else is lost to the beautiful bombardment of colors, cuts, prints, fabrics, and fashion.

For a long time, this was the norm at Bryant Park, but it looks like the times are changing.

This past September marked a decided shift in how designers presented their collections. MAC, once the official makeup partner of IMG’s twiceyearly fashion fetes, split off to team up with Milk Studios instead. The new venue, located in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District, offered over 80,000 square feet of studios [1] for designers to transform into their dream runway . This season, a number of prominent (and generally younger) designers, including Alexander Wang, Proenza Schouler, Erin Fetherston, and more, opted out of big shows in the tents and moved instead to show at Milk Studios.

Along with the move away from the tents came another change. An increasing number of designers chose to present rather than show their Spring 2010 collections. In many ways, presentations do not differ much from shows—the music, lights, icons, pain, and amazing clothes are all still present. Perhaps the most important of these difference lies in something that is not readily visible: cost. Runway shows require elaborate set-ups and stages, while presentations show “mannequin-like models” [2] (or even actual mannequins). The trade-off, of course, is that the clothing cannot be seen in motion, which is often the most breathtaking part of a show.

At the same time, a presentation allows the audience to move about the room and really take in and appreciate the clothes at their own pace.

Guests can munch on hors d’ouevres, mingle amongst themselves, and revel in the atmosphere. It is a much more relaxed environment than a timed and choreographed show, and it is also easier (and more affordable) for the designer to fill the presentation room with the personality of the collection. For example, the Alice + Olivia presentation placed models in simple-but-adorable cardboard images of Paris, while the Frenchgirl band the Plasticines performed for the party and caterers offered scrumptious mini-cupcakes to the crowd.

This past September seemed to serve as a trial run as designers experimented with locations and format. Many designers held presentations at Milk Studios, while some stayed with traditional runway shows at Bryant Park.

Other designers chose neither option, and instead showed or presented in other studio spaces (Donna Karan), or at hotels like the Plaza (Betsey Johnson) or the St. Regis (Jason Wu). It is difficult to say which format is most enjoyable— most likely because they all are—but in the end, it’s about the clothes and not the presentation.

If the MAC/Milk collaboration holds, the shift away from the tents may continue, particularly when the long-standing tradition of Fashion Week at Bryant Park itself moves to a new location next year. Is Lincoln Center big enough for opera and fashion divas?

[1] Milk Studios: http://www.milkstudios.com/index_mac.html [2] Cutting Costs: http://blogs.wsj.com/runway/2009/01/21/recessions-impact-on-new-york-fashion-week/