There was a time when Fashion Week felt like a place you could not simply walk into. You had to be an editor, a buyer, a stylist, a brand client, a photographer, or at least someone whose name had been added to the list by someone important. Access was not about having a ticket. Access was about status.
Now it feels stranger. You open a website, choose a format, pay by card, and receive a QR code. Sometimes it is an official public program, sometimes an independent show next to the main schedule, sometimes a "fashion experience" with a seat, a drink, and a tote bag. And in that moment, it becomes a little sad: if entry can be bought, is this still a closed world, or just a well-packaged event?
I understood this especially clearly not at the show itself, but while preparing for it. At first, everything looks beautiful: the schedule, the brands, the addresses, the designers' names, the emails from PR teams. It feels like you are almost inside the industry. But then reality begins.
You need to understand which shows actually matter, where you can get in, where accreditation is required, where an email is enough, where you need to ask through someone you know, and where it is already too late. Some teams reply immediately; others stay silent for a week. Somewhere they write, "We'll get back to you." Somewhere they offer standing room. Somewhere confirmation arrives the day before the show, when you have already mentally crossed it off your plan.
Very quickly, Fashion Week turns not into a celebration of fashion, but into a spreadsheet.
One column is the brand. Another is the PR contact. Then comes the status: sent, follow-up, confirmed, declined, waiting list. Then the address, time, dress code, distance between venues, chance of making it on time, backup option, and a separate note: "do not forget charger." Because if your phone dies, the address, ticket, map, correspondence, and your peace of mind die with it.
At that moment, the beautiful legend that Fashion Week is only about dresses, camera flashes, and the front row disappears. In reality, it is logistics. Queues. Delays. Mistakes in guest lists. Confusing entrances. People standing at the door pretending they are definitely supposed to be let in. Assistants with tablets. Photographers who are sometimes more interested in who arrived at the show than in the show itself.
And maybe preparation shows best how Fashion Week has changed. Before, the main question was: "How do I get in?" Now the question is different: "Is it even worth going?"
Fashion Week has expanded. There are now more than a hundred fashion weeks around the world beyond the Big Four — New York, London, Milan, and Paris. Each city has its own calendar, its own designers, its own parties, its own photographers at the entrance, and its own desire to prove: we are part of the industry too.
On one hand, this is good. Fashion no longer belongs only to four capitals. Copenhagen, Seoul, Shanghai, Tbilisi, Berlin, Madrid, and dozens of other cities have emerged with strong designers, local energy, and their own view of clothing. The world has become bigger, and fashion has definitely benefited from that.
But there is another side. When Fashion Week exists almost everywhere, the phrase itself begins to lose weight. It used to sound like a password. Now sometimes it sounds like an item on a tourist program.
There are also too many shows. Milan Fashion Week in February 2026 included 162 events: shows, presentations, digital formats, and additional activities. Paris Fashion Week SS26 included 74 shows and 37 presentations. This is no longer a "week" in the old sense. It is a marathon where every hour someone is showing, opening, presenting, celebrating, or launching something.
And if before the problem was how to get inside, now the problem is how to choose what actually matters.
At some point, you look at the schedule and understand: it is physically impossible to see everything. And you do not need to. Some events exist mainly for content, some for buyers, some for press, some for influencers, and some simply because the brand also wants to be part of the stream. Some shows are discussed all season. Others disappear from memory by the evening.
Access has also become easier. London Fashion Week began selling tickets to the general public back in 2019: a standard ticket cost £135, while a front-row seat cost £245. This is probably the most honest symbol of the new era. The front row used to be a sign of power. Now, in some formats, it is a price tier.
I do not think this is bad in itself. There was a lot of snobbery in the old closed system. The industry liked to talk about taste, but often meant connections. Open shows, tickets, livestreams, and city programs gave people a chance to see fashion closer. Not through a magazine spread a month later, but almost immediately — from a phone, from the street, from the hall, if you were lucky or if you bought a ticket.
But the problem lies elsewhere. Fashion Week has become more accessible, yet it continues to behave as if it were still a secret club.
From the outside, everything is open: photos appear within minutes, videos on the same day, reviews the next morning. But inside, the hierarchy game continues. Who sits in the front row. Who sits in the second. Who stands. Who is placed next to a celebrity. Who is brought in through the side entrance. Who came without an invitation. Who stayed at the door but still ended up in street style.
This becomes especially clear when you speak not with editors and influencers, but with people who work inside the brands themselves. In small surveys and conversations with back-office teams, the same strange detail often comes up: many have never been to their own brand's fashion show.
They have employee discounts, sample sales, corporate newsletters, beautiful post-show emails, and access to internal presentations. But the show itself still remains somewhere in another room. It is seen by top management, PR, buyers, press, VIP clients, celebrity guests, and people the brand needs as part of the external image. Those who help the brand work every day usually watch the show like everyone else — through a link.
One friend of mine works as a photographer for a large fashion brand. He does not shoot supermodels or campaigns. Every day, he photographs clothes for the website and marketplaces: dresses, jackets, bags, shoes — white background, proper light, dozens of angles. He sees collections before customers do, but he has never been invited to his own brand's show.
Once, he tried to get in. Not as a guest from the street, but as someone who actually works with the brand's product every day. First, he asked his manager. Then he wrote to people he knew in another team. Then he waited, hoping maybe an extra place would appear, or at least standing room. In the end, the answer was polite but clear: there are very few seats, and priority goes to press, clients, and important guests.
There is something very honest in that. Today, an ordinary person can sometimes buy a ticket to a public Fashion Week format faster than a brand employee can get into their own company's show. Inside, you have a corporate email, a discount, and a badge. But at the show door, everyone is divided again into those needed for the picture and those who helped build that picture.
From the outside, it seems the door has opened for everyone. In practice, there are simply more doors. Editors and buyers enter through one. Celebrities through another. Influencers through a third. Those who bought a ticket to a public format through a fourth. And then there are people at the entrance who do not go anywhere, but still become part of the picture: street style photographers shoot them, they create noise, they make Fashion Week look like an event even before the show begins.
So Fashion Week no longer looks like a fully closed club. It looks more like a large event where everyone receives a different version of access. Someone sees the collection from the front row, someone standing against the wall, someone through a phone screen, and someone only through other people's stories. And the more versions of access there are, the less mystery remains.
Maybe mystery was the main product of the old Fashion Week. Not only clothing. Not only designers. Not only editors. But the feeling that somewhere behind a closed door, someone was deciding what we would want six months later.
Now the door is half open. Sometimes too wide. We see backstage, guests, seating plans, makeup, the final walk, the afterparty, taxis at the entrance, and the tired faces of assistants. We see not only the magic, but also the mechanism. And when the mechanism becomes too visible, the miracle starts to look like production.
But maybe that is more honest.
Fashion Week is not dead. It has simply become more mass-market and less mysterious. It still has moments worth standing in line for, crossing the city for, and waiting until the last minute for a confirmation email. There are debuts after which it really feels like you have seen the beginning of a new story. There are collections that work better live than on screen. There are rooms where, for a few minutes, all the noise around disappears.
You just have to search for those moments harder now. They drown in the schedule, in the content, in the open formats, in the tickets, in every city and every brand trying to become an event.
And maybe the main loss is not that Fashion Week has become easier to enter. The main loss is that fashion has learned too well how to turn mystery into a product. Before, you wanted to get behind a closed door. Now you are sold the feeling that you are almost behind it.
Almost in the industry.
Almost in the front row.
Almost one of them.
And that "almost" has become the new business of Fashion Week.
