Are influencers ruining fashion week? My opinion, yes.

Why the rise of fashion influencers IS the cause of the downfall of fashion and its elegance

by Evelyn Feldman

The very first New York Fashion Week took place in 1943 as a way for American journalists to spotlight and highlight American designers. Originally named “Press Week,” these runway events were extremely exclusive. Photography and advertising were strictly off limits, and talking about it outside of the show was taboo. Attendees were of the utmost high class, making these events incredibly exclusive and chic.

Fast forward to almost a century later, and there is much speculation on whether or not the event is even worth the trouble. When you look up the question, “Is New York Fashion Week dead,” articles from almost every year of the 2010s pop up. New York Fashion Week and its relevance has been a topic of discussion every year since the very closed doors of fashion week were pried open by the public with social media and camera phones. With this, a new audience has begun to attend the runway shows: influencers. Influencer culture and its people abuse the exclusivity and sophistication that fashion week has crafted over the years in exchange for an event to gain personal popularity and social media followers, ruining the elegance of it.

Many influencers in attendance don’t actually care about fashion— they care about their own brand and appearance. For them, NYFW is a PR event to gather more fans and admiration. Even as the seamstresses, designers, and other industry professionals work tirelessly to create this beautiful runway show, many influencers aren’t really interested in the fashion itself. Rather, their whole purpose of attending is to merely let everyone know that they attended, showing off what they wore, creating personal content, and mingling with other celebrities to feature on their socials. For instance, YouTube celebrity Tana Mongeau admits her uninterest in a TikTok posted last year about fashion week with the caption, “us pretending to be interested in fashion shows in new york for clout rn.”

In other shows, influencers and celebrities can be seen on their phone or filming the runways to post on their socials. In a 2015 Louis Vuitton Paris show, celebrities and other influencers were shamed for being on their phones for the majority of the show, and not giving the designers or models the respect they deserved. This lack of interest belittles the event and spoils the dreams of industry professionals who have worked relentlessly to cultivate the environment that NYFW once was.

On top of the lack of interest, many new influencers go even further, making fun of the event by intruding the runway or pretending to be a model. A member of a group known from the Nelk Boys crashed a runway show by walking and pretending to fall. Another influencer known as Fred Beyers played a similar prank in a poncho and shower curtain. These pranks are not only immensely disrespectful to all the industry professionals who worked on said show, but are the perfect example of how influencers tear down and diminish the sophisticated atmosphere that fashion week should embody. Their self-interest and lack of concern for the fashion or event itself ruins what NYFW is all about— celebrating fashion and its innovation.

The purpose of New York Fashion Week has largely shifted from what it was before. What used to be an exclusive, high-class event has turned into a publicity-centered joke. However, influencers are not entirely to blame. We must equally place responsibility on the brands whose new agenda is on PR. In the pursuit of making their efforts during fashion week more prominent, brands have placed their identity in the circle of influencers who couldn’t care less about runway fashion. Those representing the brand have an individual agenda to maintain and expand their own audience, as opposed to the reflection of standards and expectations established by the long history of NYFW.

A chicken-and-egg question arises about the downfall of fashion week: do we blame the brands or the attendees? I’m not saying that influencers should deny their invitations to such a prestigious event— I certainly wouldn’t. There is no denying, however, that the level of sophistication and decorum has decreased since this influx of influencer invitations. So, a message to all designer publicity professionals: either teach your attendees some manners, or stop inviting influencers to fashion week.