NY Fashion Week To Leave Bryant Park

It's the end of an era, no more fashion tents in Bryant Park. IMG Fashion, the organizers of New York's famous Fashion Week have said that as of 2010 the event will be held at Damrosch Park at Lincoln Center. The new location offers more room than the tents at Bryant Park and better parking but it is located further uptown nearly a mile away and much further from where some designers have their offices. Some say that the new location may cause even more designers to hold their seasonal shows elsewhere, a move that could further splinter the event which has been less centralized in recent years.

This season begins February 13 and will host around 70 shows. Shows have been held in Bryant Park since 1993 but recent years have been seen conflict over the use of the space. In 2006, the Bryant Park Corporation announced it would no longer allow the shows to happen in the park, because they were interfering with public use of the area but later relented. The events are fashion tourism bringing in hundreds of thousands of attendees and around $466 million in visitor spending each year, according to the New York City Economic Development Corporation and the NY Times reports that IMG pays $1 million to $1.5 million to use the space each season.