Last season’s personal take on show sets continued this fall at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week, where designers ranging from Joseph Altuzarra to Billy Reid to Reed Krakoff slashed guest lists in an effort to bring their wares closer to audiences. Oscar de la Renta made the dramatic decision to go from a two-show format to just one, thus eliminating more than 300 guests altogether. With New York juggling 350 shows and presentations across a span of nine days—this year held September 5 to 12—it’s become increasingly difficult for designers to one-up one another, so why not scale back and reconnect—and save a couple dollars in the process? Taking the notion of intimacy to the extreme, the Council of Fashion Designers of America's president, Diane von Furstenberg, even offhandedly remarked that a few years from now, designers may all be showing digitally. Is that really the future of fashion?
On the menswear front, where shows are noticeably more restrained than their female counterparts, designers appeared to have taken their cues from Ryan Gosling’s cinematic thriller, Drive. Opening Ceremony, General Idea, and Siki Im all infused exotic cars—either new or vintage—into their show sets. Opening Ceremony even went so far as to have models emerge from super cars that drove out onto a vast runway to start the show.
Here’s a look at the shows and events that rose above the rest—at least from a production standpoint.