"The fashionable are an honest lot. While some people try to pretend that looks don't matter, the fashionable fully embrace their superficiality.
And there's nothing quite as deliciously shallow as fashion week in New York.
This is when thousands of people -- from big-name apparel presidents to no-name friends-of-friends-of-a-stylist's cousin -- gather in the name of clothes. And fight over seats. (For a business based on beauty, things can turn ugly quickly.)
American designers unveil their fall 2007-08 collections Feb. 2-9 at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week. Almost 90 formal runway shows are scheduled in a giant tent pitched in a midtown Manhattan park. The tent has two venues that seat 420 and 970 but actually pack in far more with standing room. In addition, scores of smaller shows and events take place throughout the, city hosted by companies hoping to cash in on the cachet of fashion week.
This season, Portland designer Dayna Pinkham (www.pinkhammillinery.com) brings her Pinkham Millinery to New York for an informal trunk show. It can be a challenge for a small company to get people to leave the tents' back-to-back runway shows to take in yet more fashion.
"This is my second year of it," Pinkham said. "I've been going about trying to figure the right way to do it. Last year one of my clients sponsored me, and we had a show in one of her apartments," across from the Museum of Modern Art. The event drew a respectable 30 people. "Now we wanted to try more of a commercial location."
Pinkham will display her hats on the third floor of a trendy restaurant Thursday afternoon. She already has a few appointments booked with buyers and media, and is hopeful they will lead to sales and publicity in the months to come.
Fashion week is, after all, a trade show. That fact often gets lost in the flash of the celebrity, the jumbling of groupies and the general fabulousness of the weeklong event. Image is, if not everything, pretty darn profitable. "
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