Over New York Fashion Week!
This week begins the fifth season of NOLA Fashion Week. While I’ve never been to New York Fashion Week, I imagine I’d go into both with the same mixture of feelings: excitement and premature exhaustion!
Luckily for me, NOLAFW is a way to get my feet wet on fashion week: one week long with 3-4 shows per evening. There’s no airfare or hotel costs, and it’ll be manageable with my full-time job.
Covering your local fashion week has some advantages over just jumping into New York Fashion Week:
- Less pressure, less stress. Chances are, your local fashion week won’t be nearly so large and spread out as NYFW. Which means fewer shows, less stress, and a greater chance to enjoy the whole experience. No worries about catching a cab to the next show! Just immersing yourself in fashion.
- A chance to network with your local fashion insiders. Local fashion weeks are a great time to meet your local designers, fellow bloggers, and the people in the city who care about fashion. Your people: in one spot. Use it as an opportunity to network offline — it’s just as important as promoting your site online. Be sure to bring plenty of business cards!
- Covering shows, designers, and events that give you a unique angle. As Jennine mentioned, many readers don’t care about NYFW. All of the major fashion houses and designers have a live stream of their show, with high resolution images on Style.com. But LA Fashion Week? NOLA Fashion Week? Miami Fashion Week? These designers and this experiences is foreign to your readers. And your readers may respond to discovering new, relatively unknown talents.
- Supporting your local industries and economy. I’m a HUGE fan of supporting local businesses and economies. Attending your local fashion week helps support local entrepreneurs. Each venue is rented, lights are installed, seats are put in– and that’s all money in the local economy. The response to designers determines whether anyone buys and stocks their garments, helping support local artisans and their dreams. All in all? Sounds like a good way to show pride for your city.
Maybe you don’t have a local fashion week– that doesn’t mean you can’t see whether your nearest metro hub isn’t hosting one! In this case, you may have some small travel expenses, but it won’t be nearly the chaos and circus that traveling to NYFW can be.
Have you ever attended a local fashion week? What was your experience like?
Since this is my first one, can you think of any pros to covering local fashion weeks that I may have forgotten?
[Image source: GoNola.com]
As a lingerie blogger, covering Lingerie Fashion Week was a wonderful experience. I admit, it actually didn’t get as much traction on my blog as some of my more personal posts, but it was a great way to get an insider look and connect with other people with the same interests. It happened right after NYFW, but even the few shows were totally different and a bit of a breath of fresh air, even to those burnt out on NYFW.