Fashion Week Invites Going Out of Style?

There's been a lot of buzz for the past couple weeks on how the economy will affect this season's shows at New York Fashion Week. With declining sales and rising costs, many designers have downsized guest lists, switched from lavish runway shows to low-key presentations, and canceled the after-show parties that are typically glamorous staples of the week. Insiders are predicting that looks this season will be safe and easy to market at a time when some designers simply want to stay in business.

On the upside, many strategies to save money help the environment too. The easiest way to accomplish both? Sending an evite instead of a hard invitation. Designers typically outlay thousands and thousands of dollars to print and mail hard invitations, leaving a huge environmental dent. This season, designers like Cynthia Rowley are simply sending evites, helping the earth and their bottom line at the same time.

"The invitation is an integral part of the branding and sets the tone for the overall theme of the collection," observes Marc Beckman, one of the fashion industry's top dealmakers, representing designers like Oscar de la Renta, Stella McCartney and Alexander McQueen. "It's imperative that a designer leverages the technology to the fullest extent possible so that it plays into the look, feel, and theme of the season." Beckman anticipates that evites will begin to become more interactive and creative as they continue to gain in popularity.

Behnaz Serafpour abandoned traditional paper invitations three seasons ago in favor of a PDF emailed to the over 500 invitees to her biannual show. "The feedback has been mostly positive, although it still seems unfamiliar to some guests," admits Serafour. Her environmentally correct evite is in sync with other aspects of her day-to-day business, like creating clothes with organic fabrics, using energy efficient materials whenever possible and minimizing paper and plastic use in her New York studio.

British designer Alice Temperley is abandoning more than just paper invitations for the debut of her Empress of the Orient collection. She's also skipping a traditional show, instead presenting her designs in a digital, filmed presentation that will be shown at venues in New York, Paris and her native London. Her goal is to help international fashion editors and retailers reduce their travel costs and carbon footprint by seeing collections wherever they're based instead of having to attend a show in a specific city. For the ultimate emission savings, it will also be available to watch online at www.temperleylondon.com.

With some designers slashing their show's guest list by up to 75 percent, fewer guests will mean fewer gift bags, saving around 2,000 bags and the loot inside that often gets chucked. Presentations will save the waste from seated shows, including paper seat numbers (taped on each attendee's chair and changed for each show) and seat assignment cards. It doesn't seem huge, but with over 60 shows in the Bryant Park Tents alone, it begins to make a mark.

There is, admittedly, one potential environmental downside of the popularity of presentations, however. Since presentations are not held at the Bryant Park Tents, editors will need to travel back and forth to venues in Chelsea, Soho, and the Meatpacking and Garment Districts to see many of this season's collections. Let's hope — for the sake of the earth as well as their expense accounts — they skip using an idling car and driver and take the subway.