Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week is ending its inaugural showing at Lincoln Center, its new home after leaving Bryant Park. Mercedes-Benz Director of Communications Geoff Day told us earlier this week that the move was almost a relief: As iconic as Bryant Park was, the show had become so larger and it was essentially a meat market, with pushing and shoving. Now, with 25% more space for designers, bloggers, attendees, and, yes, sponsors to spread around, Day said watching the shows was more of a "pleasure."
One of new features introduced at the show, to help ease the influx of show attendees (120,000 people attend each season), was Fashion GPS, which uses barcode technology to check people in (it's gotten mostly positive reviews—and given it was its first time out, it sounds a lot better than another recently rolled-out electronic piece of technology). And then there's the venue of Lincoln Center itself—besides offering three stages for designers in the tents, other venues, from the lobby of the Metropolitan Opera House to the fountain in the plaza, had been taken over for runway shows and parties.
Besides being more spacious, the tents themselves seem sturdier (even if the interior resembles a gleaming, sleek airport) and Lincoln Center's plaza is a beautiful, theatrical setting perfect for photography. Still, there are some who are a little uncomfortable with the new digs. The NY Times' Cathy Horyn misses the chaos and scruffiness of Bryant Park while one Wall Street Journal columnist wasn't sure about ceding his beloved Upper West Side to fashionistas. Anyway, isn't fashion supposed to be about change?
