When the weather starts to warm up in the Southern Hemisphere and cool down in the north, models, fashionistas and designers everywhere start to get excited; it's time for Spring/Summer Fashion Week, where designers give the world a sneak peek at what they'll be wearing next year.
While different areas of the world have their own fashion festivals (for example, the Byron Bay International Fashion Festival, which we participated in earlier this year), the whole world looks to the big four: New York, Paris, Milan and London.
New York Fashion Week, the first of the fashion weeks, was pioneered during World War II when American fashion workers were unable to get to Paris due to Nazi occupation of the city. With the fashion capital of the world out of reach, publicist Eleanor Lambert (press director for the New York Dress Institute) organised a "press week" to show off the very best of American fashion design; celebrating designers who had previously been shunned or ignored by writers blinded by the bright light of Parisian fashion. The event was a huge success; Vogue began to feature more and more American designers in the magazine from that point, and it's grown bigger and bigger ever since. The spring/summer 2016 shows will take place from September 10–17, 2015 at two new locations, Skylight at Moynihan Station in Midtown and Skylight Clarkson Square in SoHo.
