At New York City fashion week, there are three different ways for a fashion designer to present their new collection to the public – either via a runway show, a fashion presentation or some crazy stunt designed to grab people’s attention.
Most designers opt for one of the first two, but not many people outside of the industry know the difference between a presentation and a runway show. Basically, a runway show is your traditional fashion show where everyone arrives at the venue, sits down, some hip music plays and the models walk down the runway in the outfits, pose a bit and then head back. It’s normally over fairly quickly.
On the other hand, a presentation is the exact opposite. It’s designed for the convenience of the customer, so often goes on for a couple of hours so that people can come in whenever they want to check out the clothes. However, this often means that the models have to stand there for two hours as people breeze in and out, staying only for a few minutes and obviously this would be quite awkward for the models and also fairly boring for them.
The main differences between the two are the cost – a fashion presentation would only (only) cost around $30,000, whereas a runway show would cost around $500,000 (oof) so it’s kind of a no brainer why a designer would choose a presentation over a runway show, even if it is much less high impact. On the side of the audience the main difference is that you watch a fashion show, whereas you merely co-exist in the same space as a fashion presentation.
Gawker writer Caity Weaver was fascinated by the idea of the fashion presentation and the fact that very few people would actually experience the entirety of it – save the models themselves and perhaps people in charge of the event – enticed her to go down to Erin Fetherston’s Autumn/Winter 2014 collection fashion presentation and live blog it.
What follows is her account of the event which is equal parts both hilarious and grim:
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