Is there fashion outside the big four?

When we think about fashion week, the first names that come to mind are usually big brands or legacy maisons. We also think about where they are showing, which is usually associated with the big four, namely New York, London, Milan and Paris. Every season, most editors, stylists, buyers and all other kinds of fashion professionals pack their suitcases to do the circuit. But in the last 10 years, fashion weeks outside the traditional calendar are starting to put themselves on the map. Copenhagen Fashion Week has become a new household name, Barcelona is getting more popular, Berlin is an interesting breeding ground, and Shanghai, LA and even Seoul are becoming more significant. The rising popularity of non-conventional fashion cities might look like a temporary trend, but it's actually rocking the hierarchical structure of the industry calendar. 

Fashion weeks aren’t that old yet, and even though the currently biggest fashion week is held in Paris, the first-ever event of this sort was held in New York in July of 1943, as during the Second World War fashion buyers couldn't fly to Paris. Even System Magazine dedicated its 10-year anniversary issue to it, asking numerous insiders what Paris Fashion Week meant to them, and how it has changed over the years. During COVID-19, there were a lot of conversations about a potential decentralisation of the fashion system. Do fashion professionals really need to be living in Milan, Paris, New York or London, when all  these cities are known to be unaccessible to many? The rise of off-schedule fashion weeks explores this in a new way, demonstrating that other locations around the world deserve the same media attention, having a deep cultural heritage and a booming design community waiting to be discovered. What might be overshadowed in London or Paris can be the superstar talent of Shanghai or Berlin. 

Shanghai Fashion Week has been on the rise for a long time, and just ahead of its 20-year-anniversary, even the British designer Stella McCartney will be showing her creations there this season. The fashion industry trade publication WWD even reported that «the spring 2024 edition of Shanghai Fashion Week is slated to be even busier than the event was before the pandemic.» The event welcomed buyers hailing from all over the world to look at the work of over 100 designers, including emerging brands like Shushu/Thong. In an article for WWD, Xiaolei Lv, secretary general of the Shanghai Fashion Week committee said: «We are looking forward to the start of a new 20 years of Shanghai Fashion Week, and we are even more motivated to think about what will be more important in the future of the fashion industry, and what will be the unique characteristics of young Chinese designers.»

These off-schedule fashion weeks are almost like an insider tip these days, a gold mine where buyers can spotlight the unknown talent of tomorrow. But can they realistically compete with the big four and the hierarchical structure within fashion? Berlin Fashion Week, for example, is organised by the German Fashion Council, but this winter it made the event dates coincide with those of the Paris and Milan Fashion Week. This is extremely impractical, especially for the young designers who then miss out on crucial buyer appointments. This shows one big part of the issue, as no matter how great these smaller fashion weeks are, buyers and the press will never ditch one of the big fours to go to one of them. The distance is another potential factor influencing the positioning of up and coming fashion weeks in the industry, because if on the one hand travelling from New York to London, Milan and Paris is a hassle for everybody, adding a flight to China in the middle of the calendar would end up being a lot more expensive and time-consuming. 

As it seems, off-schedule fashion weeks are on the rise, but competing with the big fours might be too hard of a task. Although they are yet to live up to Milan, Paris, New York and London, they provide a platform for young, independent designers that a major fashion week might not be able to provide. More importantly, they also cause visibility for communities that the traditional fashion system does not showcase. All over, we should see them as an entity of their own, and not a replacement for the traditional in-calendar events.