Mobile Fashion Week designer Ashley Gunkel has the Midas Touch

Ashley Gunkel of A. Gunk Designs can't be at this year's Mobile Fashion Week in the flesh.
But Gunkel, who made her MFW debut last year, will be there in fabric.
"I was previously committed to doing Montana Fashion Week in Billings," said Gunkel, via phone from Hattiesburg, Miss. "(Mobile Fashion Week founder) Richard McGill Hamilton was kind of bummed out, and he asked me if I still had pieces to show at Mobile Fashion Week. I'm going to show my spring collection in Montana and I'm going to send Richard my fall collection."
The Mississippi native's fall line, titled "Unchained," will walk the Mobile Fashion Week runway on Friday, Sept. 26 in the basement of Hargrove Engineers + Constructors at 20 S. Royal St.
Bursting with beautifully detailed blouses, skirts, shorts, dresses and jumpsuits with plunging necklines, the collection is chiefly made of decadent brocades and sumptuous silks in rich, royal plums, greens, reds and golds.

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"I wanted to do something kind of rocker chick. I've got spiked detailing on a lot of different things," said Gunkel, 28. "I've always been drawn to color and I mixed a lot of different textures together. I thought it would be more fun, so I played around with it a little more to make it more funky."
"Unchained" is the latest phase in the evolution of Gunkel's flourishing career.
Gunkel, who started sewing while she was in high school at Mercy Cross in Biloxi, and graduated with a degree in from Mississippi State University, is busy building her custom client base and running Stitched, her boutique in Hattiesburg.
The acclaimed designer has also boldly flung herself into the global and pop culture style scene.
She made it to the second round of interviews for this season of "Project Runway," and has studied and frolicked in fashion capitals like New York and London.
Her experience and talent haven't gone unnoticed. Gunkel beat out 45 designers to win the title of "Top Designer" at Fashion Week New Orleans in 2013.
"When it showed on the runway we called it the 'Midas Touch' collection because everything was glistening with gold and was shimmery, and it really just stood miles apart from the other designers," said Tracee Dundas, founder and creative director of Fashion Week New Orleans. "Ashley styles for today's woman, and has a very contemporary modern take on fashion. She realizes you can have some special touches, but you don't want to go too over the top with it. I think she's got a great eye."
Gunkel's clients are also smitten with the designer's attire and attitude.
"She's just very unique and has a lot of spunk and it shows in her clothing line," said Long Beach. Miss. resident Jenny Levens, who had never purchased custom-made clothes before she became a A. Gunkaholic. "I don't get out of my box too much. I'm kind of conservative. And she tests me because she knows I'll go for it. She'll challenge my style."
Levens, who has purchased A. Gunk pieces from feathered skirts to formals, was introduced to Gunkel's garments via a friend's Facebook page featuring a lustrous A. Gunk dress on a runway.
"I loved the way that the light hit the dress. It was so pretty," Levens recalled. "That's the first piece that I ever fell in love with. It was a plaid dress with a cream top and a bow in the back."
Levens recalled thinking to herself, "I have to have that dress."
Project Gunkway
Like many contemporary designers, Gunkel has dreams of working with the likes of Tim Gunn and Heidi Klum on Lifetime's fashion reality competition "Project Runway."
And this year, she got pretty close to making that dream a reality. Gunkel made it to the second round of interviews for the current season. She went to Atlanta where her work was judged by season nine contestants Anthony Ryan Auld and Laura Kathleen Baker.
"You're on camera and they critique you right there," Gunkel said. "They said they really liked my designs, which I was thankful for, but they thought I was too safe to be on 'Project Runway.' They told me that they wanted to see more avant-garde stuff, out-of-the-box stuff from me."
Gunkel said other factors may have worked against her as well.
"My time slot didn't really help. I was the very last interview that they had that day," she said. "I felt like they were tired of seeing everybody all day ... I'm gonna try again" next season.
Gunkel isn't about to let the rejection alter her ambition.
"It's a matter of opinion," she said. "And that's all fashion is. It's a matter of opinion and what people like."
If Gunkel does make it to the show, she's convinced she has the inspiration and energy to create great looks in the shockingly short time frames the "Project Runway" designers are given to complete their garments.
"I put myself in situations like that all the time. I'm a bad procrastinator," she said. "I've had instances where I've made a dress in a night. I don't sleep all night, but I get it done. This year I went to two weddings and I made the outfits I wore to them the night before."
Gunkel also knows firsthand how intimidating Project Runway's signature fabric store is.
When she was interning for Donna Karan in New York City, Gunkel made a pilgrimage to Project Runway material mecca Mood Fabrics on 37th street in New York's Fashion District. That's where the show's designers go to shop for their weekly challenges. They usually only have a half-hour at the most to hunt for fabrics.
"My biggest fear is going into Mood and trying to find something specific," Gunkel said. "It's huge. There is just so much fabric and its impossible to see everything. There are so many bolts, and you have to pull them out."
From high school to high fashion
Before Gunkel sought the guidance of Tim Gunn, her original fashion mentor was the seamstress mother of her high school boyfriend.
"She offered to make my prom dress for me in my junior year of high school. I designed it and picked out the fabric, and she started teaching me how to sew," Gunkel said. "When I was younger I would always sketch out different things, but that's when I first started learning how to actually sew."
The dress was an orange scoop-neck high-low gown with criss-cross spaghetti straps and a big bustle train. The great experience she had collaborating on the piece compelled her to pursue a career in fashion.
She recalled thinking "this is so awesome. I can make whatever I want and nobody's gonna ever have it. So I decided it was what I wanted to go to college for."
Gunkel attended Mississippi State University, where she majored in apparel, textiles and merchandising with an emphasis in fashion design, and minored in marketing.
In the summer following her junior year, Gunkel had a blast studying abroad in London.
"I love London. It's my favorite place ever," she said. "We stayed at King's College and had classes on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Tuesdays and Thursdays were field trip days. We went to the Victoria and Albert Museum, Harrods (a luxury department store) ... We just explored the city. It's awesome."
Right after After Gunkel graduated in 2008, she moved to Manhattan to intern for Donna Karan.
"I worked with different designers, one for her Pure line and some for DKNY. I mainly worked on getting things ready for fashion week in September," Gunkel said. "I did model fittings and a lot of online trend research and look book organization."
Gunkel didn't get a chance to get to know the legendary designer for whom she was working.
"When we did model fittings, Donna Karan would come to some of them. And I actually got asked to stay on and work fashion week and she was backstage for that," Gunkel said. "She never talked to interns or anything."
Following the internship, Gunkel went back to Mississippi and began working at Dillard's and designing simultaneously. She spent two years as a salesgirl before being promoted to the buying office.
"I worked for three years as a buyer, which has helped me with my business now," she said. "It really was beneficial for me."
Working a full time job during the day, and working on her own designs at night really started to wear on Gunkel, so she made a bold move.
Last year, she quit her job and concentrated on her own clothing line and running her own business. In December Gunkel opened Stitched, a trendy boutique in Hattiesburg featuring her own creations as well as clothing and accessories from other regional designers and vendors.
Once Gunkel started focusing on building her business and brand, all of her experience, education and hard work started paying off.
Winning the Top Designer honor at Fashion Week New Orleans made her a prime property on the Gulf Coast fashion scene. New clients started seeking her out and boutiques started carrying her pieces.
Gunkel has a lot on her fashion plate and she's eager to add even more.
"I'm going to try and do an exclusive formal wear collection later this year to present to people for Mardi Gras balls and prom. I've already got two girls that want me to do their prom dresses," she said. "I'm doing what I want to do."
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Fashion, art, design mesh for Downtown Collective

To Velvet Lounge owner April Reardon, fashion can be a lot of things.
Clothing. Eyeglasses. A piece of art. Even your couch.
Reardon and other downtown Frederick artists and business owners want to show people that Frederick has it all.
The Downtown Collective event is this weekend, blending fashion, art and home design.
While in years past the event has simply been a fashion show, this year the Downtown Frederick Partnership is helping Reardon and other organizers bring everything together.
For people like Reardon, who have seen the city's fashion scene emerging over the years, the event is seen as one that could become the pinnacle fashion and arts event in Frederick.

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The event is modeled off of Georgetown's FAD: Fashion Art Design.
"But we are running with it in a way cooler direction," Reardon said.
Some parts of the event will be scattered around the streets of downtown Frederick. On Friday night, galleries will be open for an art walk. On Saturday afternoon, artists will be doing live demonstrations on the streets. Home design stores will be displaying local art on their walls for the weekend.
But main events will take place at the newly-renovated Monocacy Valley Cannery at East and South streets. On Friday night, there will be a home and design panel with five local designers who own home design stores. On Saturday night, there will be a fashion show with clothing from many downtown boutiques, with jewelry and accessories displays from local stores. Home design vignettes of different rooms of a house will be scattered around the cannery, with local art displayed.
"We want to show people what great style Frederick has," said Brittany Diehl, promotion and social media manager for the Downtown Frederick Partnership.
Frederick's art scene has come a long way since Reardon opened Velvet Lounge 16 years ago, she said.
"It's so much more connected than it used to be," she said, "and there is a lot more fashion."
Sandy Steele, owner of The Loft at Al on East Street, said this is the first event that she knows of that will connect the home design community with the fashion and art communities.
Steele will be displaying the artwork of Latifah Shay of Middletown for the event. Shay's paintings are abstract, colorful and expressive.
After moving here from Pennsylvania about six weeks ago, Shay said she can already tell there is an active art scene in Frederick. "It's not fully mature, though," she said. "There is room for it to grow."
The event's participants said it makes sense for the event to bring art and home design together, since together they complete a home.
Art enriches space, bringing a different dimension to it, Shay said. "It opens up a space, adding a whole additional layer of language."
Steele said she is excited by people like Jennifer Finley, who are working hard to bring the art and design community together.
Finley, cofounder of Artomatic@Frederick, recently opened The ArtistAngle Gallery on South Carroll Street. Her plan is to help introduce local artists in her membership program to local businesses, starting with this event.
"I think it's going to change the art community," said Steele.
It will take time to get everyone on board with the event, Finley said, but she is hopeful that artists and store owners will see the benefit of collaborating together.
"I want to see us all supporting each other," Finley said, "creating a larger presence."
Follow Jen Fifield on Twitter: @JenAFifield.
What: The Downtown Collective
When: Sept. 19 and 20
Friday, 5:30 p.m. to 6:15 p.m.: Home and design panel and question-answer session with local interior design and home furnishing professionals. Also, explore room vignettes from local home design shops with local art. At the Monocacy Valley Cannery at South and East streets.
Friday, 6 p.m. to 9 p.m.: Take a gallery walk at more than 25 downtown art galleries and home design shops, which have been paired with local artists.
Saturday, 2 to 4 p.m.: Live art demonstrations out on the streets of downtown Frederick.
Saturday, 7 p.m.: Fashion show showing clothing and accessories from local boutiques, with welcome reception and post show dessert and cash bar. Also, explore room vignettes from local home design shops with local art. Cost: $25. At the Monocacy Valley Cannery at South and East streets.
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A Tailored Approach

I was excited for a lot of different things when I went to Ghana this summer. I was looking forward to seeing rainforests for the first time, meeting people from a completely different culture, trying new, spicy food, buying colorful local artwork, and listening to music with pumping beats and dance moves that I could only dream of learning.
One thing I never foresaw being excited about was Ghanaian fashion (simply because I had never heard about it before) but, upon arriving in Ghana, I immediately saw Ghanaian men and women dressed in complex patterns and rich colors. Every street was a tapestry of the most interesting clothing I have ever seen, and within days of arriving I decided getting Ghanaian clothing was one of my top priorities.
So after settling in I started looking for Ghanaian clothes in markets and shops.
I couldn’t find anything. Zilch. Nada. Nothing.

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Every clothes store I looked at only had western clothing. When I asked where I could buy a Ghanaian shirt, I got pointed to touristy areas of the city — clearly not where actual Ghanaians bought their clothes. This was frustrating, to say the least.
After a few weeks of silently trying to figure out how Ghanaians get their clothes without ever buying them (and failing miserably), I risked looking naïve and asked my coworker.
It turns out the reason why you can’t buy Ghanaian clothing in the western sense is that every piece of Ghanaian clothing is tailored. Unlike in the US where tailoring is a luxury, getting personally made clothes in Ghana is typical and inexpensive. With this information I realized that I had the opportunity to affordably design my own clothing out of the beautiful fabrics I admired every day.
And so began my small voyage into the world of Ghanaian designing, an experience that I want to share with you all, partially because I hope it will inspire every Princeton student to travel to Ghana, but (if that fails) because clothing – how it’s perceived and how it’s made – is a cultural phenomenon. I never realized that until I saw how utterly different this process of getting clothing was from my own.
With that being said, here are the three steps I took to attain both amateur fashion designer status and the four items of clothing that now make up my Ghanaian wardrobe.
Step 1: Buying Fabric
Of course the raw ingredient of clothing is fabric, so choosing your colors and patterns is the first step. There’s an interesting unifying system to buying fabrics in Ghana – you can find the same fabric brands throughout the country. The fabric brands lie on a spectrum of quality – more expensive lines of fabric last longer and have vivid colors, while their cheaper counterparts bleed dye when washed. Many brands are locally made in Ghana and some are actually imported from The Netherlands. Having the same brands available everywhere is actually incredibly convenient; you can always count on the quality of your fabric and, once you know the prices of each line of fabric, you know if a salesperson is trying to rip you off.
Also unifying is the range of patterns available on Ghanaian fabric. Hundreds of designs exist, but after spending over a month in Ghana I noticed how people were wearing the same patterns and colors all over the country. Most designs on fabric have a history in Ghanaian culture – some colors and patterns are specifically used for certain events, and others have symbolic meaning. New hip companies riff off the traditional Ghanaian designs, but you can still see the influence of patterns that have existed for hundreds of years. With this unity, wearing Ghanaian patterns is a way of participating in Ghanaian culture.
When I first imagined actually buying my fabric, I envisioned myself carefully looking at each beautiful design while talking to a salesperson about the complex cultural history of each pattern. Not so. Most places where fabric is sold the cloth is piled from floor to ceiling and hundreds of options are available – this works well for Ghanaians, who are generally well-acquainted with many of the designs. Of course I’m not Ghanaian or well-acquainted with Ghanaian patterns, so I spent hours in the Kumasi Central Market in what was the most visually overwhelming experience of my life.
Step 2: Designing the Clothes
After surviving the stress of choosing from countless fabric options comes a less overwhelming although equally challenging part of the process – designing your clothes. And because you get to design what you wear, the final product is as much individualized as it is recognizably Ghanaian.
This was by far my favorite part of getting my clothes made. I pulled out a sketch pad and drew the clothes I had always looked for in the US but with all the details I wanted and could never get in a pre-made piece – I drew overall shorts with the perfect buttons, a casual-but-tight patterned skirt, loose shorts, and a slightly oversized button-down.
Step 3: Getting it Tailored
I initially assumed getting something tailored would take weeks and that I would need to commute hours through city traffic just to make it happen. On the day I decided to find a tailor I asked where the closest one was, expecting the worst. Of course the inconvenience I planned for was all in my head – I found out that not only were there tailors down the block and a few others within walking distance, but getting items tailored takes days rather than weeks. I had to remind myself that for Ghanaians this was not the hassle or extravagance it is in the US.
My tailor worked in a one-room shop with her sister. They used my designs to work on my clothes; I stopped by regularly to see the progress, do fittings, and ask for alterations. When they were finished I had the four most unique pieces of clothing I could imagine – and, because they were tailored, they fit me perfectly.
Moral of the story: fashion is inextricably linked to culture in ways we rarely expect. And if you ever happen to find yourself in the bustling chaos of Accra, find the closest fabric store and start designing your wardrobe!
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Tech Companies and Fashion Designers Try to Put the 'Wear' in 'Wearables'

Thanks to smartwatches, fitness bracelets and other forms of wearable tech, giant tech brands, such as Samsung and Intel, have amped up their presence at New York Fashion Week.
Meanwhile, the fashion world's interest in wearable devices went from ho-hum to "I'm listening," with the launch of Apple Inc. Apple Watch.
Tech companies need designers to help put the "wear" in wearables—which, even more than cellphones, are a form of personal expression, like a handbag, tech executives say. The industry is reaching out for the design savvy that will help move the new devices beyond early adopters and fitness fanatics to mass appeal.
‪"We desperately need the fashion industry," said Ayse Ildeniz, vice president of the new devices group at Intel Corp., which unveiled its wearable collaboration with the fashion label Opening Ceremony—a pair of snakeskin smart bracelets with semiprecious stones that receive notifications and send alerts, to be sold at Barneys New York.

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"The fashion industry understands the aesthetic sense, but also it is very much in tune with why a woman would wear something on her body," Ms. Ildeniz said.
As shoppers spend more disposable income on digital devices, the fashion industry is battling to hold on to its share of their wallets. The wearables market has big-dollar potential: Cowen and Co. estimates it will grow to $170 billion by 2020.
"Our customer wants this technology," says designer Rebecca Minkoff, who has partnered with Case-Mate, a mobile accessories firm, on two wearable devices. A $120 chain-link, studded bracelet alerts wearers to calls and texts via Bluetooth connection. A $60 black leather bracelet is a USB charging device. A model in Ms. Minkoff's Spring 2015 show wore both.
"If we are going to get into this, it's going to be fashion first," Ms. Minkoff said.
‪For its runway show Monday, Rag & Bone made a custom pouch to hold aGoPro GPRO +1.05% camera, the small, high-definition videocam first popular among athletes.
Rag & Bone also perched three dozen GoPros around the venue, including backstage and on the cement poles lining the runway, to shoot the action from new and unfamiliar angles.
Marcus Wainwright, one of the label's two managing partners said he has used a GoPro while skiing and thought, "They capture so much, why haven't they been used in a show capacity?"
Putting wearable devices on the runway is an attempt to change their positioning far away the traditional tech spotlight. Ms. Minkoff says her pieces "double as a bracelet."
Tory Burch's collaboration with Fitbit, announced this summer, bills its bracelet and pendant-necklace as a "super-chic accessory."
Intel prefers not to call its snakeskin product a "wearable," but rather a "MICA," short for "my intelligent communication accessory," and described it in the release as a "feminine accessory."
Many members of the fashion world remain skeptical. "The problem with technology is it's a bit cold. It's a bit sharp," said Carine Roitfeld, editor in chief of CR Fashion Book and global fashion director at Harper's Bazaar.
Ms. Roitfeld's comments came in a panel discussion hosted Saturday by Samsung Electronics Co. and touted as a "Tech x Fashion Talk."
On stage, in a high-ceilinged ballroom at the tony Park Hyatt New York, Ms. Roitfeld remained unconvinced. Looking at the moderator, former CNN reporter Alina Cho, wearing a Swarovski crystal-encrusted Samsung Gear S smartwatch, Ms. Roitfeld said, "I'm not sure I would like to wear the bracelet that you are wearing."
‪All eyes turned to Howard Nuk, the head of industrial design at Samsung Design America seated at the other end of the stage. He pointed to the smartwatch's curved shape (meant to hug the wrist) and to its interchangeable nature (the screen pops out for a switch of watchband).
In an interview after the panel, Mr. Nuk said Ms. Roitfeld's comments made him think: "How can tech be soft and warm?"
Naysayers are talking about the products, Mr. Nuk said, keeping the conversation going. "There's huge potential. And I think fashion is the key."
Samsung has an elaborate space in the lobby of the Lincoln Center fashion week tents, where it has offered hands-on previews of new products as well as manicures. After all, both phones and wearables draw attention to one's hands.
Samsung's latest collaboration, a line of custom leather bands for the Gear S smartwatch with Diesel Black Gold, appeared on the runway Tuesday.
"For a brand to be desired, the influence of influencers in fashion is essential," said Younghee Lee, global executive vice president of global marketing for Samsung.
Intel had a sought-after partner in Opening Ceremony. Rather than a traditional runway show, the brand staged a one-act play by Jonah Hill and Spike Jonze at the Metropolitan Opera with a cast clothed in the new collection. The MICA smart bracelet was a subtle feature, added to a model's wrist in a scene about making an ensemble look less "normal."
‪"It was one of my proudest moments," said Intel Chief Executive Brian Krzanich, who watched the play from the front row and then joined the audience onstage afterward for a closer look at the collection. Clad in a white button-down shirt, slightly wrinkled khakis and a black belt and shoes, he gamely posed for photos, beaming while standing next to model Karlie Kloss, who was part of the play. ‪"I don't think the tech world would ever have a show like this," he said.
Although Intel's earlier attempts at wearables functioned well, they lacked visual appeal, he said. "But when we worked with Opening Ceremony, all of a sudden they are beautiful," he added.
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a non-fashion person's guide

On Thursday, New York City will celebrate Fashion Week — one of the special times in the year when good-looking humans dress funny and somehow dictate to the rest of the world what it means to look good and fashionable. For many, it's a joke. For some, it's a livelihood. But whether you hate it or love it, Fashion Week is, undeniably, a global event.
What is Fashion Week?
Fashion Week is a designated period of time when designers present their spring/summer or fall/winter lines to an audience. New York, Paris, Milan, and London are considered the big four fashion week cities.
New York's Fashion Week begins today. It's followed by London and Milan, and the season concludes in Paris at the beginning of October. Designers show clothes for the season ahead, so this week's fashion will feature designers' spring and summer lines. In the spring, it all starts over, and there will be Fashion Weeks to show off fall/winter clothing.

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Why is Fashion Week important to designers?
At the heart of it, it's business.
"Fashion Week is a trade show. It's a glorified trade show," Lauren Indvik, the editor-in-chief of Fashionista, told me. "It's a chance to get in front of buyers and press."
Buyers represent fashion stores like Barneys and Bloomingdale's and are in charge of stocking store shelves with pieces from designers. The press, of course, means editors like Vogue's Anna Wintour, Harper's Bazaar's Glenda Bailey, and Elle's Robbie Myers, who determine what is shown in the pages of their influential fashion magazines.
"Showing at Mercedes Benz Fashion Week is a pivotal moment," Joanne Arbuckle, Dean of the Fashion Institute of Technology's School of Art and Design, explained. "It's a culmination of your season's work. It's your moment when you're presenting it to the world."
Arbuckle explains that the attention is significant because a good fashion week can be a breakthrough for a designer and make them a household name. If an editor likes something on the runway, they may feature it in a magazine. That trickles down to buyers, who want to keep their stores stocked with the hottest trends.
"Fashion Week is a time for buyers to interpret a designer's message as a whole and take the most important parts of it to the store level, so a customer understands and desires to take home a spirit of the brand," Daisy Yu, a sales manager for the Nina Ricci fashion house explained to me.
Yu's job is to look at the artistic statements being shown on the runway and translate that into meaningful presentations for buyers.
"The runway collection, specifically, is always more of an artistic statement by a designer. The price-points are higher, the pieces are more exquisite and more elevated in terms of fabrics and embroideries," she added.
How did Fashion Week start?
Paris.
Arbuckle says that American editors and buyers would fly to couture shows in Paris. It was around the time of WWII that Americans began designing their own high couture stateside. "That was really the birth of the American designer. They would show their collections and their lines in their showrooms," she explained.
The woman who started Fashion Week in New York City, Arbuckle said, was Fern Mallis. Mallis, a former top gun at IMG Fashion, galvanized designers and brought the tents — the places where fashion shows took place — to New York City's Bryant Park in 1993.
Why is Fashion Week important to models?
Models are essential to fashion week. A model makes a garment look good and can showcase how it drapes on a human body. (Granted, models have atypical physiques. But that's the idea.) There's an incentive for designers to book the best models — ones who can walk, ones who get tons of press, ones who can show off the garment:
For models, Fashion Week is a way to drive up value. In the days leading up to Fashion Week and during the event, models go to casting sessions, where they are seen by directors, designers, assistants, publicists, and stylists.
Models want to get booked for A-list shows (e.g. Marc Jacobs, Prada, Dior, Givenchy etc.). They're not necessarily making piles of money by walking in these shows, but they are getting themselves in front of important gatekeepers. These editors and casting directors could eventually help models land lucrative advertising campaigns and important magazine spreads.
Joan Smalls, one of the top models in the world today, got her first big break walking in the Givenchy couture show in 2010. From there, she walked in shows for Anna Sui, Gucci, Burberry, and Prada, shot editorials for Italian Vogue, German Vogue, American Vogue, and French Vogue, and signed a Gucci contract within the next 12 months. Smalls now has a reported net worth of $9 million.
Why is Fashion Week important to editors?
Editors and critics at newspapers like The New York Times have traditionally written reviews and buying guides, and created editorial spreads. Through these pieces, they, more or less, tell people what to wear, who is promising, and who isn't. Until earlier this year, Cathy Horyn was the chief critic for the Times. She was famous for her scathing reviews.
"Mr. de la Renta is far more a hot dog than an éminence grise of American fashion," she wrote in a review of Oscar de la Renta's work in 2012 — a review that the designer didn't really care for. A few designers have had beef with Horyn, and the debate over who the final judge of fashion is culminated in Lady Gaga taking to the pages of V Magazine, and changing up a song to give Horyn a piece of her mind in 2012.
Indvik tells me that things have shifted a bit. In the age of social media and the internet, fashion has been democratized. Fashion shows aren't exclusively for editors to tell readers what's good anymore. The photos of each look in a show are posted within hours, and thanks to Twitter and Instagram, sometimes, those looks are posted in an instant. Thus, Fashion Week followers have become critics, too.
"They want to look at images," Indvik said of Fashionista's readers, explaining that her readers are also interested in the news of the show, like what row Anna Wintour is sitting in or if a streaker sneaks in.
"You can kind of follow it piecemeal on Twitter," Indvik explained of the real-time aspect of Fashion Week today. At Fashionista, Indvik will be overseeing her team's coverage, where the site will operate more like a liveblog of an awards show or a sporting event.
What are the biggest criticisms of Fashion Week?
The criticisms that come to the forefront aren't ones that are particularly new or novel to the fashion industry. The two biggest ones are the images that the fashion industry perpetuates and the lack of diversity in the fashion shows. They're closely related.
For many years, there's been a hefty amount of criticism about models promoting unhealthy representations of beauty and suffering from eating disorders. There are also complaints about using underage models (who are also unrealistically skinny) and that these underage models are being taken advantage of by adults who don't have their best interests in mind.
Even though there are laws being pushed and initiatives in the fashion community to curb these transgressions, enforcing them is much easier said than done.
"[S]eason after season, we still see models who appear to be dangerously thin or, here at the beginning of another New York Fashion Week, models who are as young as 14," The New York Times's Eric Wilson reported in 2012. "Even though designers and modeling agencies have pledged not to cast girls younger than 16 in the shows. If you believe them."
The fashion world is very powerful and to some degree, has power over what people find beautiful. And seeing young men and women be dangerously thin, as Wilson puts it, could push someone, models included, toward an eating disorder or an unrealistic body image.
This also plays into the idea of diversity. Again, the fashion world dictates beauty. And oftentimes, that beauty only means white men and women. Jezebel has done a good job of tabulating Fashion Week's lack of racial diversity over the years. This February, the site reported that "of all the models who walked [in New York Fashion Week for Fall/Winter 2014] 78.69 percent of them were white."
WTF is this?
Is Fashion Week a little silly?
Yes.
A lot of that silliness comes in the form of letting people know how important or unimportant they are — something that can be seen in who sits where. Seats at a fashion show are usually arranged in rows. The most important people sit in the first row, the second most important in the second row, and so on and so on, until you get to the swirling maelstrom of mediocrity in the upper rows.
"It's totally a status thing," Indvik said, explaining the row system. "Fashion loves hierarchy. … [Editors, celebrities, insiders] see this [the seating chart] as an affirmation of their personal status."
Perhaps the silliest thing to come out of fashion week in recent years was the diarrhea-gate of 2013. Like an Oregon Trail journey gone sour, many fashion insiders were hit with bouts of severe diarrhea. The cause, some doctors believe, was from fashion insiders eating too much of the trendy vegetable known as kale.
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