IMG Fashion, a division of super-agency WME-IMG, has announced an alliance with Spring, the creative agency and production company, with a goal to turn the latter’s Spring Studios in Tribeca into a new hub for New York Fashion Week.
In an announcement shared prior to Jeremy Scott’s 20th anniversary show at Spring on Friday evening, IMG revealed that “NYFW: The Shows” will relocate in February 2018 as a venue for runway shows, presentations, events and retail pop-ups.
IMG declined to share information on how the deal with Spring is structured, however the partnership may prove to be a boon to IMG, which has lost market share to venues like Spring Studios that offer glossy spaces bathed in natural light, as compared to the former tents at Bryant Park and Lincoln Center, which were windowless and moodier. Spring Studios is already popular with high-profile brands at New York Fashion Week; in previous seasons it has been tapped by the likes of Michael Kors, Altuzarra and Diane von Furstenberg.
While both the CFDA and IMG have worked with Skylight Studios since leaving Lincoln Center in 2015, using Skylight Clarkson Square as NYFW’s base, CFDA chief executive Steven Kolb said earlier this year that, in the future, New York Fashion Week will be “decentralised.”
The CFDA, of course, has its own venue in development: the long-awaited Culture Shed, a new centre for the arts supported by the trade organisation that is also expected to host New York Fashion Week shows when it opens at the end of 2018.