DON'T MISS A THING

A pilgrimage to steep your soul in art and fashion is a noble one indeed. The world’s art and fashion meccas offer events of various standings and definitions all year long, so how do you go about trying to craft a calendar that offers you the best of as many of them as possible?

1. Anchor Your Year to the Big Four in Fashion

While art events don’t happen on as much of a seasonal schedule, the world’s most glamorous and prestigious fashion events happen seasonally. Anchoring your travel plans to these glittering events will help you to build a travel calendar that includes both fashion and art and an incredibly exclusive set of events for you to experience. These are what are known as the “big four” of the yearly fashion calendar:

• New York Fashion Week — February 11–16 and September 11–16
• London Fashion Week — February 19–23 and September 17–21
• Milan Fashion Week — February 24–March 2 and September 22–28
• Paris Fashion Week — March 2–10 and September 28–October 6

Fortunately for all of us, art and fashion love to rub shoulders in the same cities! Now you can book a private jet for your trip (highly recommend), arrive fashionably, and, if you’re smart about it, get your art on at the same time.

• Spend 3–4 weeks in Europe during the September fashion month
• Pair Milan and Paris together for a longer trip instead of flying back home between events
• Add nearby art destinations like Venice or Basel between runway dates and do a little back and forth to get the most out of your time

2. Layer Art Events Onto Your Route

As we said, fashion and art often walk hand in hand and find their seats in many of the same chic, aesthetically pleasing cities. This means that building a calendar around the more static fashion events doesn’t leave you with minimised art experience options! These cities offer both art and fashion in plentiful amounts

• Milan. Milan Design Week has blossomed into a truly hybrid experience, inviting visitors onto the ever-shifting worlds of design, culture and luxury fashion. To make the best use of this overlap is to hit Design Week and book fashion showroom appointments, visit contemporary galleries and maybe even enjoy a little sojourn to Lake Como to round it all off.
• Paris. Couture week in Paris is, in no uncertain terms, unmissable for any runway and haute couture lover. Couture week takes place in January and July, making it easy to pair with a visit to the Louvre, the Palais de Tokyo, and the Fondation Louis Vuitton, whether you prefer the city in the winter or summertime. Couture week also tends to spawn collector events, collection launches and gallery dinners (these vary widely year by year) that you should keep an eye out for.

3. Make Use of Geographic Clustering

This is excellent advice for any multi-leg trip, so bear it in mind next time you’re planning a holiday or experience that includes multiple locations! Save on time, make your experience seamless and stress-free and group your events by region:

European Cluster

These are the classics, some of which we’ve already gone over in detail.

• London
• Paris
• Milan
• Copenhagen
• Berlin

Asian Cluster

Asian fashion weeks are becoming increasingly influential for emerging designers with a new perspective on how colour, textiles and silhouettes come together. The experimental art-fashion crossovers coming out of Asia as a whole are magnificent and should not be underestimated.

• Rakuten Fashion Week Tokyo
• Shanghai Fashion Week
• Seoul Fashion Week

4. Book Accommodation Well in Advance

Now that you have a broad idea of when the major fashion events take place and how to layer art events onto that same calendar, it’s time to talk logistics. Waiting until the full fashion week calendar drops to book your accommodation is holiday suicide. Plan your dates, book your flights, and enjoy whichever events fall within that window. If you don’t book your accommodation in advance, we can promise you faithfully that the accommodation will be left when it comes time to book (if any) will be… unique. Paris, in particular, a city which already faces a housing crisis, is not one to be left until the last minute. London, Milan, Tokyo, and Copenhagen aren’t far behind. 

5. Balance Energy, Not Just Budget

Fashion and art travel can be a lot more physically demanding than you anticipate, but anticipating it is the way to take the sting out of that tail. You’re likely to be visiting multiple venues in a single day, having late-night dinners (France is particularly guilty here, too), attending standing-only events and enduring crowded cities. Balancing your energy with these activities (remember all the hair, makeup and outfit changes you’ll be needing too!) is essential if you’re actually going to enjoy yourself. Take our advice and plan your weeks kindly:

• 5 or 6 event days
• 2 slower cultural and resting days
• Move on to our next city

Yes, we know that these events can be once-in-a-lifetime ones, but pushing yourself past the limits of your comfort and energy will only result in discomfort, mistakes, possibly even illness and a desire not to repeat the experience the following year. Take it a little bit easier than you think you need to, and you’ll have the time of your life.

Voila!

In the words of the great art lover and fashion aficionado Carrie Bradshaw, “And just like that”, we have solved all your calendar problems and opened a portal to a world full of vibrant colours and exciting ideas. Are you going to step through?

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