As New York City continues to try to recover from the financial fallout and largely empty offices brought on by the pandemic, Mayor Eric Adams will turn the spotlight on fashion designers next month.
On September 8, the eve of New York Fashion Week, Adams will host a cocktail party at Gracie Mansion to celebrate the upcoming shows. The CEO of the Council of Fashion Designers of America, Steven Kolb, and the chief content officer of Condé Nast and the editor-in-chief and global director of Vogue, Anna Wintour, will co-host the event.
The mayor’s office said Tuesday there were no details to provide at this time, but additional information was expected to be provided closer to the date.
A CFDA spokesman declined to comment further and a Condé Nast spokeswoman was unavailable for comment Tuesday.
Adams has already shown her support for the city’s fashion scene, appearing at the Met Gala in May, the Ralph Lauren show at the Museum of Modern Art in March and the Michael Kors show in February. Six weeks into her administration, Adams unveiled a partnership with the New York City Economic Development Corporation to create new jobs for New Yorkers, expand Brooklyn’s fashion industry and strengthen the city’s economy. . Shortly after, in an interview with WWD earlier this year, Adams vowed, “We will make sure the fashion industry survives and give it the support it needs.” [it needs].”
Despite that positive attitude and self-described “arrogance,” Adams is grappling with issues like public safety, curbing homelessness, crime on the subway, open drug use on city streets, and problems with sanitation.
In an August 10 op-ed, Partnership for New York City President and CEO Kathryn Wylde highlighted how Adams was chosen to make the city safe and livable and is taking steps to do so with an increased police presence. in the subways, getting “gun numbers” off the streets, expanding psychiatric beds and services, and toughening policies on garbage storage and collection, among other things.
While some of Adams’s predecessors, including Bill de Blasio and Michael Bloomberg, welcomed crowds of designers to the historic Upper East Side mayor’s residence during previous fashion weeks, next month’s bash could be a much-needed reminder to constituents and tourists that not only is New York City a capital of fashion, but its ecosystem – designers, manufacturers, retailers, stylists, influencers, photographers and others – is important to the economy of the city.
While Adams has expressed in recent months that the city is open for business, tourism has yet to return to pre-pandemic levels. By the end of this year, 56.7 million visitors are expected to have visited, which is about 85 percent of the 66.6 million people who visited in 2019, according to NYC & Company. Meanwhile, some city businesses, developers and landlords are hoping for a post-Labor Day boost as some corporations and companies require employees to return to their offices at least a few days each week.
In mid-June, the city’s office occupancy rate topped 40 percent for the first time since the close of March 2020, according to Kastle Systems, which monitors occupancy rates in 10 cities. The nonprofit Association for the City of New York, which also tracks occupancy rates by surveying more than 160 major employers, has predicted that return-to-the-office rates will rise after Labor Day, with the 49 percent of workers will be in the office on an average weekday in the next month. An update will be released next month, according to a spokeswoman for the organization.
Before the pandemic, New York Fashion Week was known to contribute significantly to the city’s economy, drawing 150,000 attendees and generating nearly $600 million in 2019. Jack McCollough and Lázaro Hernández of Proenza Schouler will give I start next month’s edition on September 9th and Tom Ford will close it on the night of September 14th. The show’s preliminary schedule features over 109 confirmed designers.
Fashion’s ties to Gracie Mansion are well-knit. In 1927, WWD reported plans for a reception and display there featuring “old New York costumes and family heirlooms of well-known New York families.” The selection included a variety of ball gowns from the 1800s, to mark the date Gracie Mansion was built, and styles from every decade through the early 20th century.
In 2014, former Mayor de Blasio hosted a 2014 fashion week kickoff party with Michael Kors, Ralph Lauren and Tory Burch in attendance. De Blasio also used the occasion to reveal Made in NYC’s expansion into the apparel industry and to award the Fashion Production Fund’s first two awards.
His predecessor, Bloomberg, welcomed the fashion crowd to Gracie Mansion for a 7th on Sixth 10th anniversary celebration in 2003. Though big-name designers were in short supply at an afternoon NYFW wrap-up event, models like Alex Wek and Maggie Rizer did the rounds.
Other New York City mayors have used Gracie Mansion to house the fashion and beauty industries for other reasons. At a 1995 breakfast, then-New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and his wife at the time, Donna Hanover, hosted a breakfast for 80 retail and manufacturing executives to launch the annual scholarship fundraising campaign. from the Institute of Fashion Technology.
Back in 1977, Mayor Abraham Beame hosted a party for the New York Fashion Council and local and out-of-town retailers, when designers like Oscar de la Renta, Diane von Furstenberg and Giorgio Sant’Angelo gathered at a summer night to the sounds of Peter Durchin under a yellow and white tent at Gracie Mansion. Guests were reportedly more interested in Bloomingdale’s Kal Ruttenstein’s next career move than the next mayoral race, according to WWD.
Source: wwd.com