History of Fashion Week Events in Miami Beach:
Creating a Miami Beach Fashion Week akin to New York, Paris or even Milan Fashion Week is not a new notion. In 1999, Beth Sobol founded Miami Beach International Fashion Week, which would eventually become Miami Fashion Week until its end in the mid 2010’s.
Miami Beach International Fashion Week took place at the Miami Beach Convention Center. Fashion week usually showcased around 40-60 designers from over 20 countries, while hosting seminars, live music performances. Additionally, an awards ceremony was held for the top designers and fashion students. Although, this event created by Beth Sobol is no longer produced on the beach, a similar fashion week still occurs.
In 2004, Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Miami kicked-off at the Raleigh Hotel on Collins Avenue. During its initial start there was tremendous support and enthusiasm for this event, which brought to Miami Beach a selection of editors, designers, and celebrities from all over the world to showcase what Miami Beach is most known for Swimwear. However, after a decade of lack lustered reviews and shows Mercedes-Benz the named sponsor for the event decided to part ways from the fashion week.
Since 2018, Miami Swim Week, which specializes in swimwear, takes place in Miami Beach during the second week of July. Miami Swim Week comprises two large-scale fashion events, the PARAISO fashion show and the Cabana swimwear trade show.
PARAISO, a four-day fashion event with forty shows throughout the City, including in Collins Park and Lincoln Road Garage on Alton Road. The Cabana trade show takes place in the Miami Beach Convention Center and includes categories spanning swimwear, resort wear, accessories, RTW, lingerie, jewelry, activewear, and footwear. Cabana ultimately connects brands, retailers, and industry trendsetters.
Although Miami Beach is no stranger to hosting fashion week events, the City of Miami Beach has not produced or partnered with past fashion week organizers.
New York Fashion Week:
New York Fashion Week is the nation's top fashion week event. New York City (NYC) is the center of fashion and offers world-class creative talent, retail space in highly populated locations, best-in-class production companies, and fashion and design schools. NYC is also home to more headquarters of fashion designers and fashion retailers than any other city in the United States. New York City’s fashion industry employs 180,000 people, accounting for 6% of the city’s workforce and generating $10.9 billion in total wages and generating close to $900 million per year for the City of New York through new job growth and tax revenues. In addition, an estimated 900 fashion companies are headquartered in New York City, which is also home to more than 75 major fashion trade shows and thousands of showrooms. New York City dedicates millions of dollars to New York Fashion week out of its 88 billion dollars fiscal budget for those reasons and more.
New York Fashion week is organized by the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA). The CFDA has over $35 million in net assets in 2019. Their revenue comes from a myriad of areas including membership dues, special events and their partnerships with over 20 different organizations including, Accenture, American Airlines and the New York Times. For all those reasons New York Fashion Week continues to dominate the fashion world and remains the event to emulate here in Miami Beach.
COVID-19 Pandemic and the Fashion Industry:
The Fashion industry has struggled severely to regain economic strength from the pandemic. For the past year leading luxury brands have pivoted to live-stream the fashion runway shows. Forward thinking smaller labels were live streaming their shows even before the pandemic to reach a wider audience. Today, the fashion industry overall has embraced the use of digital platforms to maintain luxury brand runway shows in the virtual world.