Fashionista reports on a new home for NYFW:
In a few years, [the 7 train] will be the closest subway to the Hudson Yards, which will soon be the official location of New York Fashion Week–at least if Diane von Furstenberg, Steven Kolb and Mayor Bloomberg have anything to do with it.
Not only are they endorsing the massive Westside development as fashion week’s next location (as was reported back in 2011), but they’ve actually been working with developers to ensure that the Culture Shed–a mixed use space in which shows would be held–is designed withNew York Fashion Week in mind, meaning it would be the first permanent structure more or less designed specifically for NYFW.
In fact, it was basically von Furstenberg’s idea in the first place. In 2006, she was meeting with Dan Doctoroff, then NYC’s Debuty Mayor. She tells WWD: “He asked me what I wished for, and I said, ‘Give us a pier for fashion week.’ Dan smiled and we started to talk. The idea of Culture Shed was born.”
Kolb told the trade that the CFDA has been working with the Hudson Yards on the development of the Culture Shed, with the “ultimate result of it being a potential home for fashion week.”
WWD reports that the Culture Shed will be comprised of four runways, studios, exhibition space and “a dramatic 140-foot-high canopy that slides along tracks to create indoor and outdoor space”. It will be located on West 30th Street between 10th and 11th Avenues, aka really, really far away from everything, except the rest of the Hudson Yards, which will also include a 750,000-square-foot retail center, dining, cinemas, a food market, office towers, and access to the 7 train.
Of course, given the fact that most off-site shows are staged at Milk Studios or elsewhere on the far west side of Manhattan, it’s a pretty convenient location. It will also make Upper West Siders, who’ve called fashion week an “assault” on their neighborhood, and have been trying to get it moved, very happy.
The Culture Shed will reportedly be operational by 2017.
