New York celebrates the return to physical parades in style

This year and a half of forced pause has served the North American fashion industry to retreat and fight back. The restrictions that the country maintains may prevent the entry of a good part of the international publishers, but the

(in physical form) must continue. Although many of the traditional guests have to continue watching it on screen this season, the organizers know that broadcasting a live show is not the same as releasing a pre-recorded video. And if the United States wants to show something with this fashion week that has just begun, it is that they are the kings of entertainment.

In fact, the festivities program opens and closes with two of those events designed to colonize Instagram: the first, at dawn this Wednesday, an MTV gala from the Webster Hall theater that will remember the

most emblematic that have passed through the chain's awards in these 35 years (Lady Gaga's meat dress, Lil Kim's purple nipple shields, Madonna and her punk wedding dress ...) along with recent proposals from a handful of young creators like Vaquera, Barragán or Collina Strada. The annual awards will be presented on Sunday at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn. The last one, on Monday the 13th, will be the well-known Met Gala, which this year moves from May to September exceptionally, and which, as usual, will give way to the new fashion exhibition of the Metropolitan Museum the day after the inauguration ,

, a retrospective that will explore and analyze the keys that make up the identity of its industry and its aesthetics.

It is no coincidence that this is the chosen theme. After several years going through an international image crisis, American fashion is obsessed with recovering the appeal of other times. Hence, for the first time, the two traditional organizers, the IMG production company and the Council of American Fashion Designers (CFDA) have joined forces to make a joint calendar: “We wanted to reflect the diversity and future of our fashion, and if anything we This crisis has taught this crisis is the need for a collaborative spirit, ”stated CFDA CEO Steven Kolb in a recent statement. The efforts of both entities translate into a calendar of five days and 91 events between physical catwalks, presentations, and a few parades in digital format.

Presentation of Carolina Herrera's autumn-winter 2021 collection in New York.

This edition marks the return of almost all of the brands that were leaving the New York program to parade in other cities (mostly Paris): Thom Browne, Rodarte, Proenza Schouler and Altuzarra return to the Big Apple. Some, after several years of absence. It is also a perfect excuse for Carolina Herrera and Michael Kors, the two great heavyweights of the North American industry, with the permission of Ralph Lauren, to celebrate their respective anniversaries in style and without screens (both have turned 40 years in the sector), but above all it serves to review the

and finally include in the official celebrations all the designers who have had to live on the fringes of the officialdom.

The situation of the last year and a half and the social agenda have forced the bodies responsible for fashion week to examine their conscience. The result is a calendar that finally reflects racial diversity, one of the foundations on which the discourse of American fashion is built: Vietnamese designer Peter Do makes his runway debut and creator of Liberian descent Telfar Clemens returns to the official program on its own merits (after all, its brand has been one of the most viral and lucrative in these months of the pandemic). Along with them, the African-American Laquan Smith, who will do it in the Empire State Building itself, or the creators who took center stage in Biden's inauguration: Sergio Hudson and Christopher John Rogers. In this new improved image of the New York landscape there is even room for the

, the event that for almost a decade celebrates the African-American creative identity and that until today had no place in the traditional program.

The reduced capacity, the borders and the requirement of a vaccination letter at the door of the events do not stop the expectations of the New York week, which opens this month of physical catwalks after many months of digital parades.

London, Milan and Paris are also preparing to return to a kind of normalcy with reservations.

Not all the big brands will parade and some will change the

for presentations to small groups for an entire day, but New York, somehow, is at stake to regain its status as a great fashion capital.

And he knows, in short, that this can only be achieved through celebration.