DROPPING LIKE FLIES

Altuzarra Is the Latest Designer to Quit New York Fashion Week and Move His Show to Paris

Joseph Altuzarra’s namesake brand will show in Paris beginning with Spring 2018.

July 12, 2017

Altuzarra, the CFDA Award-winning American brand helmed by designer Joseph Altuzarra, will show at Paris Fashion Week beginning with the Spring 2018 collection, according to a press release Wednesday morning. The move makes designer Joseph Altuzarra the latest of the major American designers to decamp from New York Fashion Week to Paris: He follows Laura and Kate Mulleavy of Rodarte and Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez of Proenza Schouler, both of whose brands showed in Paris during couture week this season, and Thom Browne, who previously announced he would be moving his womenswear show to Paris. (Browne already shows his men’s collection in Paris.)

Altuzarra, the designer, was born and raised in Paris, attending university in the United States before launching his namesake label in New York in 2008. “The city holds a very deep personal significance for me,” he said of the move, according to the Wednesday release. “This has been a dream of mine since the very beginning and now the time feels right. I am honored to be invited by La Fédération de la Haute Couture et de la Mode to show in my hometown of Paris.”

Altuzarra Channels Hot-to-Trot David Lynch Vixen for Spring 2017

Photo by Mark Hartman.

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The move comes as something of a blow to New York Fashion Week, which has already lost several of its tentpole shows to fashion weeks abroad—most notably, Rodarte, Proenza Schouler, and Browne’s eponymous line—while other brands have opted to show outside the traditional fashion calendar entirely. Like these peers, Altuzarra’s collections are regularly highlights of the New York schedule, critically approved and with a star-studded front row. Last season, Altuzarra Fall 2017 was attended by a cadre of actors including Rose Leslie and Christina Ricci; the brand has won several CFDA Awards in its nearly decade-long span. But as New York Fashion Week’s major shows dwindle in number, a few marquee events remain: Marc Jacobs’s show-cum-closing ceremony, Opening Ceremony’s elaborately staged pageants, and New York transplant Raf Simons over at Calvin Klein. Perhaps they’re enough to keep it going.