WWD: Sum up the state of American fashion today.
Ken Downing: American fashion continues to be important. What Americans bring to our industry — it’s that Yankee ingenuity of clothes that have a realism to them that customers respond to and want to wear.
As an industry, we are very much in a moment of transformation. Where [New York fashion] was once very coveted — people wanting to come to see the amazing collections — somewhere along the way, that has faded. It’s fallen from favor.
I believe that a lot of the falling from favor isn’t from a lack of creativity, a lack of quality, [but] from the arduous fashion calendar that seems to bend and slip and jerk all over the city. It’s important to determine collectively as Americans what we can do to reignite the excitement around American designers, so that the European and foreign buyers who used to look forward to coming to America want to return.
WWD: You think there’s been a falloff in attendance?
K.D.: I know it. I’m hearing it from buyers from the U.K., from Europe and from other parts of the world. It’s expensive to travel, it’s expensive to have teams here. They have either stopped coming and
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