Fern Mallis Talks CFDA, NYFW and Bryant Park Tents
Rosemary Feitelberg
8 min read
As the executive director of the Council of Fashion Designers of America from 1991 to 2001, Fern Mallis was instrumental in helping to create what is now commonly known as New York Fashion Week.
In 1993, she led the charge to centralize the big American fashion shows by creating Seventh on Sixth Productions, the precursor to NYFW. In the years that followed, the event expanded and transformed in different ways, with Bryant Park being the base camp for 16 years.
In 2001, when Seventh on Sixth was sold to IMG, Mallis became senior vice president of IMG Fashion and later rolled out fashion weeks internationally in such locations as Los Angeles, Berlin and Melbourne, Australia. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed at that time but proceeds from the sale benefited the CFDA Foundation to further philanthropic endeavors. It also shifted Seventh on Sixth from a nonprofit to a private company.
After a 10-year run with IMG, Mallis went on to create her own “Fashion Icons” talk series at 92Y with designers and fashion types, and has published two books culled from those interviews.
In a recent interview, she discussed her CFDA years, as well as successes and struggles there.
After reading in WWD that the CFDA’s then-president Carolyne Roehm had resigned and executive director Robert Isabell’s contract had not been renewed, Mallis’ interest was piqued. Industry friends encouraged her to pursue the executive director’s post, so she sent a résumé to Stan Herman and Monika Tilley, who were leading the search.
Interviews ensued, including group ones that included Calvin Klein, Bill Blass and other power players. Asked why she should be hired after a 10-year hiatus from fashion, Mallis said she explained, “‘I never stopped wearing clothes, shopping or looking at magazines. I believe fashion is in my DNA. My father worked [as a salesman for a scarf company] in the garment center and all of my uncles [too]. In high school, I was voted ‘Best Dressed’ and I won the fashion design medal. I had been a Mademoiselle guest editor, fashion director at Gimbels East and I had worked on Seventh Avenue.”
Having worked with International Design Center of New York, rallying together the interior furnishings and architecture industry, she wanted to do the same with designers. “At that time, the architects in New York were the big stars and the fashion designers weren’t so visible and prominent,” Mallis said.
Once her role was ratified, she was off-and-running on what would become a decadelong endeavor in tandem with Herman. They democratized the membership so that it was “no longer trying to be an elitist, private club and letting in a more diverse membership,” which she said “alienated some people.”
Upgrading the public’s perception of the 200-member CFDA was a priority. For starters, Mallis tapped Pentagram’s Michael Bierut to redesign its logo and she took a pay cut to hire an assistant to answer the CFDA’s phone, among other things. In the year prior, volunteers would periodically drop into the CFDA office to take down any messages that had been left on the answering machine.
Centralizing the shows stemmed partially from an accident. After pieces of a crumbling ceiling landed on fashion critics Suzy Menkes and Carrie Donovan at a 1991 Michael Kors show, Mallis quickly realized her job description had changed. “Organizing fashion shows was never part of the discussion when I was being hired,” she explained.
Relocating the CFDA office from a tiny space was another early upgrade. Mallis’ architect friend Scott Bromley and other interior specialists helped spruce up the new space with black furniture and other modern accents at no cost. “We finally had a decent office that you could invite someone to a meeting,” Mallis said. “That is where we started and grew. In the closet, we set up a desk for a man to investigate the cost of putting fashion shows together. That became the first objective — to organize, centralize and modernize [New York] Fashion Week, because of the Michael Kors [fashion show] disaster.”
The search began in 1991 and Bryant Park became the choice due partially to Herman, who had seen the park’s transformation from his West 40th Street office and was part of the park’s restoration committee. He also had a good relationship with Bryant Park Corp. founder Dan Biederman. The park was not the finely landscaped year round attraction that it is now. The park was still shaking off its image for being littered with syringe needles and ridden with rats. “The restoration that was done there was probably one of the best urban renewals that was ever done in the city, if not the country,” Mallis said. The first shows there were held in November 1993.
Another move that happened during the Mallis-Herman years was relocating the CFDA’s annual awards to the New York State Theater and promenade at Lincoln Center in 1991. That more dramatic venue had considerably more seating than a smaller one that had been used at the Metropolitan Museum of Art the year before. For the first time, the awards were held after cocktails and dinner. Those wishing to just attend the awards, dessert and dancing could buy $150 to $200 tickets for that versus $850 ones that included dinner.
Another shining moment was expanding Seventh on Sale, the designer sample sale to benefit AIDS research, with a 1992 San Francisco edition.
Along with the General Motors-supported designer “Concept Cure” cars, the Fashion Targets Breast Cancer initiative was another favorite project. Chaired by Ralph Lauren, the FTCB inaugural monthlong effort bowed in 1994 with a special T-shirt. The design was overseen by the Polo Ralph Lauren Corp. and sold to stores to benefit the Nina Hyde Center for Breast Cancer Research. “An enormous PSA campaign” involved enlisting fashion magazines to photograph models like Naomi Campbell wearing the FTBC T-shirts during breaks of their already scheduled fashion shoots. “Every magazine gave us free ad space. It was a really beautifully thought-out campaign,” Mallis said.
The campaign’s launch event was held at the White House with a robust designer turnout with Karan, Lauren, Oscar de la Renta and others meeting with then-First Lady Hillary Clinton. The inaugural FTBC effort garnered $2 million through sales of 400,000 limited-edition T-shirts, WWD reported at that time.
FTBC was later licensed to the Breast Cancer Institute of Brazil, and through other organizations in the U.K., Australia and other countries.
To accommodate menswear designers and accessories designers, a men’s week was later started and accessories exhibitions were held in the space that is now the Bryant Park Hotel on West 40th Street to tie into NYFW. Accessories were later showcased within Bryant Park, which took some wrangling with city officials to get the rights to do so. “That changed the footprint of fashion week for sure,” Mallis said. “There was a season where we got thrown out of Bryant Park and we moved to Chelsea Piers.”
Of course, Mallis faced setbacks at the CFDA. “There was a time when no matter what we did, we never got the acknowledgment for it. WWD was always on our case, always criticizing every awards gala, finding everything wrong with everything. It was a tough time for us and we couldn’t quite figure out why we were being treated that way,” Mallis said.
She also noted the challenge of raising adequate funds to cover all of the CFDA programs that had been initiated, like ones for scholarships.
After a show season at Pier 59 was unpopular (despite Mallis’ enthusiasm for the venue), Nicole Miller’s chief executive officer Bud Konheim later approached his friend, then-New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, to urge him to allow a return to Bryant Park with a larger, more visible and cohesive footprint. Over time, though, some CFDA members complained that the tents were costing a lot of money and taking a lot of the CFDA leadership’s time, Mallis said. “After IMG [whose models often walked the NYFW runways] circled the wagons, they offered to buy fashion week. They were also in the business of selling sponsorships to all kinds of sports and entertainment events…that became a big turning point after 10 years of it being Seventh on Sixth at CFDA and the board unanimously agreed to sell the entity.”
At that point Mallis had to choose between staying with the CFDA or moving with the tents to IMG. After going with the latter, she saw the potential for global expansion for fashion weeks. “IMG upped the ante with sponsorship programs and television shows with Carolyn Murphy. We had different levels of sponsorship and tiers of benefits,” she said.
Undeniably, the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, was a day like no other. That coincided with IMG’s first season and Mercedes-Benz’s lead sponsorship. “We were trying to do the right thing by Mercedes and trying to impress IMG, which had all of its people in place, upping the ante on all sides of the fence,” Mallis said. Artist Stephen Sprouse had created the “Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week” in graffiti similar to the style he was using for Louis Vuitton handbags for Marc Jacobs at that time. But the harrowing attacks stopped everything. “The rest is history. Two days into the shows we had to shut everything down, and the world changed,” Mallis said.
Mallis also recalled the corporate overtone that changed NYFW under IMG. “I didn’t miss that the only words that you heard on the corridors was ‘EBITDA’ as opposed to ‘design.’ Everything shifted for me. It was suddenly about the sponsors and less about the designers. I found that very frustrating and said, ‘Do you remember why we built these tents and created this? To give the designers a platform.’”
