Any fashionista who has ever felt ready to basically sell her soul for an invitation to enter the tents at fashion week knows how notoriously exclusive NYFW is—but one fashion house may just be about to change that.
Fashion lovers, brace yourselves: Givenchy announced Monday that it will be offering 820 non-industry, non-celebrity fashion fans (read: if your name isn’t Anna Wintour or Kim Kardashian) seats to the brand’s first ever New York City runway presentation. As you can imagine, fashion girls everywhere are freaking out.
In addition to the 820 tickets that went up for grabs on Wednesday morning at 10 AM, Givenchy has also set aside 280 for students at fashion schools like Parsons and FIT, and another 100 for the residents living in the vicinity of the show’s yet-to-be-disclosed location. If you happen to snag a ticket, you won’t be seated next to Kim herself (there’s separate viewing areas for the fashion industry and the public) but if you’ve ever dreamed of hitting up a fashion week show, this is as good as it gets.
Riccardo Tisci, the head designer at Givenchy, has been known to be one of the most public and engaging designers on social media, but the house’s move is still an unprecedented one in terms of allowing the public to get in on the exclusive scene at New York Fashion Week. Generally speaking, fashion week is pretty off limits to those of us who aren’t editors, celebrities, buyers, models or bloggers, so opening a runway show to the public (especially at a major house like Givenchy) is a major deal.
We’d call Givenchy’s unexpected move a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, but we’re seriously hoping that other designers and brands will take notice and follow suit – we’d trade our NYFW live streams on our computer screens for the real deal any day!