The History of Fashion Show

fashion-show-history

So far we know, in the eighteenth century there were periodical fashion parades in Paris, France couture salons.

U.S. retailers took the concept of the fashion show from europe in the early nineteenth century.
The first U.S. fashion show was in 1903 in the New York City U.S. store Ehrlich Brothers.
By the year 1910 large department stores in U.S. like Wanamaker’s in New York City and Philadelphia were also arranging fashion shows.
Those fashion shows showed couture gowns from Paris or the store’s copies of them; they aimed to demonstrate the owners’ good taste and capture the attention of female shoppers.

By the year of 1920s retailers across the U.S. arranged fashion shows regularly. Sometimes those shows were theatrical, presented with narratives and organized around a theme for example Parisian, Chinese or Russian. Those fashion shows gained huge popularity through mid nineteenth century. Sometimes those fashon shows were attracting thousands of customers and gawkers.

In the 1970 and 1980 U.S. designers began to arrange their own fashion shows in private spaces apart from such retailers. In the early 1990 many in the fashion world began to rethink this strategy. After several mishaps during shows in small, unsafe locations, the general sentiment was everybody love fashion show but nobody want to die for it, recalls Fern Mallis, then executive director of the Council of Fashion Designers of America. In response to these shows the New York shows were centralized in Bryant Park during fashion week in late 1993.