Made Fashion Week lands in Paris

Made Fashion Week, a sponsoring program for runway shows, created in New York in response to the 2009 crisis, will be organizing its first Paris edition between February 26 and 30, simultaneous to the Paris RTW Fashion Week. Over four days, the hotel Salomon de Rothschild house will host presentations and runway shows of emerging designers like Anthony Vaccarello, Aganovich, Nicolas Andreas Taralis, Ligia Dias and Tanudiredja Heaven.

The event will mark the Paris debut of Chinese designer Yang Li, based in London and a former disciple of Raf Simons at the Academy of Antwerp. For this rising star, just 25 years old, visibility in Paris is an absolute strategic shift.

Made attracts as much attention in New York as the official runway shows sponsored by IMG and Mercedes-Benz, which mostly take place at the Lincoln Center and formerly in tents in Bryant Park. The founders Keith Baptista, Jenne Lombardo and Mazdack Rassi (the latter is the father of Milk Studios in the Meatpacking District, a crucial address for the fashion industry) have applied their enthusiasm for young designers and networking skills to solicit sponsors as influential as HTC or M.A.C as backers of young brands the trio deems to have a high potential. Just to give an inkling of their talent radar, they have discovered the likes of Alexander Wang and Proenza Schouler, whose careers took off with the support of Made.

Such an illustrious back-story means that Parisian institutions are welcoming the new guardian angels from America with open arms. “We are glad for anything that makes it easier for young designers,” said Didier Grumbach, consulted by the organizers last season during a test edition. Moreover, there is no nationalism in fashion,” he pointed out.

For this autumn-winter 2013/2014 edition, Made Fashion Week will start modestly with some ten events, but the organizers’ goal is to reproduce the original program over time. Thanks to Made, around forty young designers and houses now stage runway shows or present their collections in New York.