Author: Gwen Egan

Fashion is great. Self-expression is awesome! People being able to translate their internal feelings of identity into their outer shell is something that seems completely unique to the human experience. However, what is not so great is the industry surrounding fashion. It feels like there’s never a week that isn’t New York/Paris/Milan/Denver/Chicago/Timbuktu fashion week for spring/fall/autumn/the first Monday in May/when Anna Wintour sneezes. 

It’s even more than the feeling! There are 13 weeks of the year taken up by ‘Fashion Week’. And it’s not the expression of well-known designers or haute couture that makes me upset – frankly, I thought Bella Hadid’s spray-on dress was pretty damn cool — it’s how much waste this must create. Every season in cities across the world, not only are designers making entire collections but hundreds if not thousands of people are also buying different outfits every five seconds, creating an insane amount of clothing waste on top of an already almost insurmountable mountain measuring at about 1.92 million tonnes of textile waste each year. 

I propose a simple solution. One big-ol’ fashion week in a rotating list of host cities (modeled after The Olympics) would have just as much or even more press and give designers time to work on a whole year’s worth of pieces instead of being confined to summer/fall and winter/spring. 

Also, imagine the power of if Emma Chamberlain planned her outfit for an entire year…