How Young Designers Make Fashion Week Work

When I tell friends I’m going to Paris Fashion Week, they expect me to be covering runway shows, celebrity fits, and exclusive parties. In response, I usually explain that I’m going there for another fashion week, one of a growing cohort of brands and designers showing their latest collections in temporary, makeshift showrooms tucked into art galleries, private apartments and vacant lofts across Le Marais. Repeating that explanation last week, I realized that, while not factually wrong, my opposition isn’t entirely true anymore either.

“It’s funny, in a way,” says Nick Williams of New York label Small Talk Studio, which is back in Paris after a one-year break. “What we’re here for officially isn’t part of Paris Fashion Week. We’re doing market week, as it’s called, which is just labels like us trying to sell next year’s collection to buyers who booked appointments in advance. But over the last couple of years it’s changed so much that it creates almost as much buzz and draws almost as big a crowd as the larger spectacle.”

That’s the thing about Paris Fashion Week right now, apart from the blistering heat: Walk around the city long enough and you realize its fringes have become part of the main event. It’s not just buyers, editors, writers, influencers, and other menswear enthusiasts who want in.

Increasingly, labels feel they have to be there too —to do business, for sure, but maybe to exist, too. Even when it’s a hassle. Even when it costs a significant amount of money. Even when there’s no guarantee it will pay off.

Nick Williams and Phil Ayers, co-founders of Small Talk, know the deal. After showing at DSMR — the multi-brand showroom that hosts labels like Kartik Research and Sage Nation — for a couple of seasons, this year they took the lead in setting up a showroom with three close friends from New York: Mark Clarke of Archie, Cole Star of Csillag, and Onea Engel-Bradley of Silphium Studio.

The space they found online sits just south of Le Marais, overlooking the Seine. They booked it remotely last March after the landlords’ assistant showed them around over FaceTime.

“It’s nice but a bit quirky,” Ayers writes me on Monday, having just arrived there and waiting for the rails, hangers, and tables they rented to arrive. “For most of the year it’s used as a yoga studio, which probably explains why it smells of incense and Palo Santo and there’s a shrine in the corner we’re trying to figure out how to cover.”

Williams, Ayers, Clarke and Engel-Bradley arrived from New York on Monday. Star flew in from Los Angeles a day later, carrying the 12 pieces comprising his Spring/Summer 2027 collection alongside his own clothes in a ‘90s Patagonia duffel bag handed down by his father.

The benefits of putting on the showroom together, all five tell me, go far beyond sharing costs, which run well into thousands of dollars. For example, in the weeks leading up to Paris, they’ve maintained a shared document with buyer appointments, comparing schedules and looking for opportunities to make introductions. “There’s no competition or gatekeeping between us whatsoever,” says Williams.

Part of that is because they’re friends, living and working close together around New York’s Garment District. It also helps that, while distinct, their labels have enough overlap to hang next to each other on a rack or be combined in a single outfit.

No surprise that many of them are stocked by the same stores, including Cueva in New York, Rising Star Laundry in San Francisco and Cypress in Dallas. While Cole Star is talking me through his collection, buyers from Santa Barbara-based store Jake & Jones walk in to see all four brands.

Star dresses much like the louche-yet-elegant clothes he makes: a loose vintage dress shirt, wide white trousers and worn loafers. It’s what Armani might have worn had he spent a summer in Los Angeles. The same goes for Clarke from Archie, who is wearing a classic American uniform — jeans and a T-shirt — made from the kind of crinkly, luxurious fabrics that define his collections with Archie, mostly milled in Japan and manufactured in the US. One standout piece this season is an anorak cut from a blend of naturally dyed Supima cotton and salt-shrunk recycled nylon.

It wouldn’t have looked out of place on Silphium’s rack, that’s full of workwear staples in natural fabrics like linen, ramie and cotton typewriter. Small Talk, too, starts with classic references, but, as Ayers puts it, “we always try to make our version of it by doing something playful, mostly through some sort of treatment, whether it’s a dye, a graphic or some embellishment.”

Looking at how they move in and around the showroom, you almost forget they’re doing business. Clarke is having a light beer on the pavement, Williams and Star are making dinner plans as Engel-Bradley carries what looks like an iced latte inside. “In a way, this is just bringing New York across the Pacific,” says Clarke. “I’m surrounded by people I would like to hang out with after work.” Engel-Bradley feels the same: “As a woman, menswear can be a challenging world to be in, but the relationships I have with these guys gives me a great feeling of comradery and togetherness.” But then again, Star reminds me, market week isn’t a series of transactions.

For one thing, orders aren’t placed until everyone’s back home. More importantly, the business itself can’t be separated from the often long-term relationships with buyers on which it is built. Once they’re reached that point, buyers don’t just buy into a label, they help shape them creatively.

“When you’re showing here,” says Engel-Bradley, “you’re opening yourself up to rejection, criticism and feedback you’re not otherwise exposed to when you’re working alone in your studio, including from people you trust and value.” That’s the kind of “ego-death,” as she calls it, designers need in order to grow.

None of the four New York labels in the showroom have come to Paris to expand their wholesale business. For some, that’s a matter of choice; for others, of production capacity. All are here mostly to tend to the relationships they already have. “Of course, it’s nice when a buyer we’ve never met walks in,” Williams says. “But it’s even more special to see someone you’ve worked with for years in the midst of this chaotic — and, this season, extremely hot — week.”

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