“It’s a total quandary of what to do,” says New York designer Adam Lippes, who has gone back and forth with his team about whether or not to show for pre-fall and resort. Lippes skipped pre-fall 2022 and 2023, but showed once again in 2024. “For the few seasons we didn’t show, they felt a bit like lost seasons.”
For these, Lippes still released pre-fall collections to sell, accompanied by lookbooks for buyers. Designer Rachel Scott’s Diotima takes a similar approach — she’s just returned from Paris, where she presented a full pre-fall collection to buyers. But she didn’t show to press this year. Instead, part of Diotima’s pre-fall collection will show as main during New York Fashion Week, plus a small capsule or show collection Scott will market after.
Not showing for pre-fall is strategic. “I need to hold the imagery for when we present the collection in February,” Scott says. “We make two collections a year, and don’t have the budget to do four full collections or shoot it multiple times, so we need to be very strategic about what we produce in terms of imagery, and how we use it.”
The timing for pre-fall in NY in particular is unideal, Scott says, right before the end of the year and the holidays. Instead, Diotima hosts wholesale appointments in Paris in January, when domestic retail partners travel there alongside accounts from Europe and Asia that may not travel to the US. “That being said, it has become increasingly important to have presentations,” she adds. During the main ready-to-wear season, Diotima presents a small capsule and holds appointments in her New York studio for buyers.
Some brands haven’t dropped pre-fall entirely, they’ve simply changed up the release schedule (meaning they weren’t included in Vogue Runway’s pre-fall 2024 count, as the collections won’t be released until it’s in season).
New York-based Area is one brand that takes this approach. “We have not forgotten pre-fall,” says Kareem Burke, director of Area’s global marketing communications. “We operate on a hybrid see-now, buy-now cadence so the collection will be released in May/June as it is delivered to stores, as we’ve done for several years now. For example, our resort ’24 released in December of 2023 as it was delivered to stores.”
