After four exciting years of shopping til you drop and fashion hangovers, Anna Wintour has officially pulled the plug on fashion’s biggest party – Fashions Night Out. Fashion’s Biggest Party – Fashion’s Night Out Is Now Over.
According to the official website “Fashion’s Night Out will go on hiatus in the United States in 2013, in order to enable retailers to channel their resources towards strategies more in keeping with their current priorities.”… WAIT, what about those who priorities include fashionable partying? :/
According to organizers the problem wasn’t unruly shoppers turning quiet neighborhoods into “zoos” so much as it was about money. “The sponsors of the event—Vogue, the Council of Fashion Designers of America, and NYC & Co.—made the joint decision to go on hiatus so retailers and designers can focus their budgets on projects that are more in line with their specific objectives, rather than a big event on one night in September.”
Lisa Lockwood at Women’s Wear Daily reported that the event became a burden for designers and retailers given that “they have had to invest more and more of their resources to maintain a high level of quality, and there unquestionably was some backlash, especially from designers who were staging fashion shows at the same time.” But as the event grew every year there were also logistical problems. After this year’s FNO Hillary Reisenberg wrote a piece at BuzzFeed titled “How A Worldwide Shopping Party Became A Dangerous Liability,” a problem that was particularly evident in New York. She pointed out that in the city the crowds damaged cars and patrons were served drinks with little oversight as to whether or not they were underaged.
While I’ll admit, there were issues of extreme partying that took place during Fashion’s Night Out, the retail event really kicked off New York Fashion Week in a way unlike anything before. It was a chance for those who are unable to experience life underneath the NYFW tents to become apart of Fashion Week in some way. (Granted, those same individuals could quite possibly be the same ones featured in the unruly video above, but I digress.)
Will you miss the Fashion’s Night Out experience this year or are you over the pressures of retail therapy hype?
