Under the Fashionweek Tents

Posted by Lesley Scott Aug 25, 2007

For the 20 or so minutes that the average fashion show lasts, it’s pure glamour: thumping music drowns out the chatter of the excited fashion crowd as the house darkens and gorgeous creatures glide down the runway in quick succession, hair and makeup fixed just so, and the audience riveted by outfit after outfit striding by.

However, the months leading up to that half hour of theatre are stress-ridden and anything but glamourous. And Refinery29, an indie fashion-centric website, captures all the delicious mayhem on their newly-launched series The Countdown which runs through the start of New York Fashionweek (Wednesday, September 5th), with the final installment going live at the end of the week. "We wanted to work with designers who'd let us be a fly on the wall,” of Refinery29 creative director, Philippe von Borries, recently told WWD about following young, mostly underfunded designers including Alexander Wang, Jeremy Laing, Vena Cava, Rag & Bone, Karen Walker & Ruffian – following them on camera as they do everything from model castings to location scouting for the runway show. "Because they're independent, they don't have the same resources as more established designers. They're producing the best show they can on a shoestring."

Designed to provide an intimate, realistic perspective of what it takes to be a part of New York Fashionweek, participants were chosen for reasons other than having Project Runway-style larger-than-life personalities. "We wanted to capture different components of fashion week," explains Christine Barberich, Refinery29's editorial director. While capturing a meltdown on tape wasn’t ostensibly the purpose of the exercise, a little stress always makes for good marketing, in this case, the jittery tagline: "Six designers. Six studios. One feverish race to fashion week."

- via WWD