The origin of New York Fashion Week

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When Fashion Week was...Press Week?

The Fashion Week before Fashion Week

Chris Wild

1950s-1970s

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Paris, London, Milan, Berlin — Fashion Week is a central fixture in any major city of style, but the original was and is New York. New York Fashion Week was born out of something like necessity during World War II, when journeying to Nazi-occupied Paris was an impossibility for the fashion world.These pictures show New York Fashion Week — then called "Press Week" — during the '50s, '60s and early '70s, several decades before the arrival of the iconographic white tents of Bryant Park and now Lincoln Center.

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And, after all, what is a fashion? From the artistic point of view, it is usually a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months. - Oscar Wilde, "Personal Impressions of America", September 1883.
Original image replaced with Mashable logo
Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable
Original image replaced with Mashable logo
Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable
Original image replaced with Mashable logo
Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable
Original image replaced with Mashable logo
Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable
Original image replaced with Mashable logo
Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable
Original image replaced with Mashable logo
Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable
Original image replaced with Mashable logo
Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable
Original image replaced with Mashable logo
Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable
Original image replaced with Mashable logo
Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable
Original image replaced with Mashable logo
Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable
Original image replaced with Mashable logo
Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable
Original image replaced with Mashable logo
Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable
Original image replaced with Mashable logo
Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable
Original image replaced with Mashable logo
Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable
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