Akademik

   A venue for designers to showcase their new collections to the public that involves fashion models, sound, lighting, and a crew of others who help stage the runway show. Industry press and noted retailers are invited as well as celebrities and members of society. The first fashion shows can be traced to Paris beginning in the mid-1800s with designers Charles Frederick Worth, Jeanne Paquin, and Jean Patou. In the 1930s, Elsa Schiaparelli broke from the traditional model parade of her contemporaries and staged fashions shows using lights, acrobatics, and music. Designers Claude Montana and Thierry Mugler staged fashion show "extravaganzas" during the 1970s and 1980s that became media hypes, with fashion models often upstaging the clothes. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, designers John Galliano and Alexander McQueen continued to create some of the most spectacular shows, often with celebrity guests in attendance and sometimes even on the runway. While most twenty-first-century designers do not veer from the modern runway fashion show formula, others, most notably Viktor & Rolf, have transformed the fashion show experience for the new millennium by creating avant-garde conceptual performances.