When autumn arrives upon New York, it’s not only the leaves that fall to the ground. Fashion trends start to trickle their way down into the public; one might see more chicly dressed people milling around elaborately decorated venues and those who seldom follow fashion to a capital F might wonder, what’s the occasion?

The answer is Fashion Week, an event that takes place in New York from September 8 through September 14, which ignites a circuit of style in each of the fashion capitals of the world. London prepares its Fashion Week hot on the high heels of the conclusion of NYFW, then Milan, and finally Paris. High end designers take the chance during these weeks—or Fashion Month—to send their seasonal collections down the runway and straight to the public eye, producing their works six months ahead of schedule. Spring/summer collections shown in the fall, autumn/winter in the spring, so don’t grow alarmed when you see photos of models strutting in gossamer and florals.

Trends from this year’s Fashion Week, for those interested, include the rebirth of Romantic airs, (the whimsical, almost fantastical pieces of Valentino with ivory and lace), ostentatious excess (D&G’s line of Baroque patterns with bejeweled jackets and Italian motifs), and special ornamentation of the ears (Marni’s impressively wrought chandelier earrings combined with side-swept waves).

However, due to the growing pool of social media platforms, presenting creations during Fashion Week may seem obsolete. Celebrities take pictures of their favorite looks every day and upload it immediately to their Twitter account for fans to consume. Models about to strut down the catwalk post selfies on Instagram and Snapchat, inadvertently acting as living ads for the designers they wear. As a style enthusiast who follows multiple fashion blogs, I received no less than fifty photo sets of collection debuts last month, including YSL, Rodarte, Dior, and Marchesa.

These complex social networks make the new looks more accessible than ever, and it seems much easier to simply take photographs of the designs and upload to brand websites without presentation. So why embrace this technological advancement and keep Fashion Week alive? In the words of Michelle Li ’20: “Social media is the platform where most ideas come from. It influences us on what we should wear and heightens our enthusiasm, since fashion recommendations often comes directly from the runway from people who’ve been designing for years, something that doesn’t happen often when we dress every day.”

Indeed, Instagram works itself into a frenzy of style enthusiasm whenever Fashion Week rolls around. Photos on Instagram give those unable to enter venues a free glimpse of what Fashion Week shows. Eliminate social media coverage of Fashion Week and the amount of enthusiasm to consume the designers’ creations plummets.

Take Monique Lhuillier’s ready-to-wear line this year. The designer took inspiration from her bridal designing days to present a cotton candy and pastel palette with combinations of tulle, chiffon, and Chantilly lace. Once photos of the ethereal designs hit social media, nothing could stop people from reblogging them, using them in aesthetic mood boards, or tagging them under “outfit inspo” or “style ref.”

These platforms link the fashion world to consumers more easily while simultaneously acting as a source of inspiration for future designers and artists.

Not everyone supports the interconnectedness of Fashion Week with social networks, however.

“In a world of instant gratification, still forcing to drag these collections out while posting them online is just to draw attention to the product and not the art of fashion. It’s not too hard to distribute ideas and inspiration anymore,” Sam Prentiss ’17 explains. “There’s a false belief of secrecy when you see something that presumably has not been broadcasted to the public. The way they structure these releases leaves consumers in mass anticipation, to draw out a more public base than exclusive.”

Those students in Ridge who may not believe that the high fashion world holds any significance to their sense of dress may want to watch a famous scene of Meryl Streep playing a ruthless fashion editor-in-chief and lecturing a clueless Anne Hathaway in The Devil Wears Prada. In this scene, the character Hathaway snickers at two turquoise belts that look exactly the same. In turn, Streep’s character verbally attacks her for wearing a lumpy cerulean sweater while working in a fashion company because “you take yourself too seriously to care about what you put on your back.”

Many people act as Hathaway’s character, cynical to fashion and uncaring about dress. What does it matter that they might wear an all grey palette instead of a more stylish navy with brown?

Streep gives them plenty of evidence by demonstrating the influence of how cerulean quickly trickled down into department stores after designers such as de la Renta and YSL exhibited cerulean pieces, and says to Hathaway that “it’s sort of comical how you think you’ve made a choice that exempts you from the fashion industry when it fact, you’re wearing a sweater that was selected for you by the [designers’ influence]…from a pile of stuff.”

So indeed, Fashion Week, an entire exhibition of expert designers holds an insurmountable source of importance to each one of us.