Boston Fashion Week Reduced to Punchline

It’s a sad day for Boston fashion. While the Globe claims to be helping raise our town’s “style quotient” with their upcoming shopping insert—and further prove that Bostonians are every bit as fashionable as New Yorkers (we got style, yes we do!)—an embarrassing item posted today on gawker.com raises a pretty good point.

The Globe-sponsored Boston Fashion Week—“a platform for established industry professionals and aspiring newcomers to showcase the great wealth of local talent”—will run at the exact same time as the already very well-attended New York Fashion Week (September 5-12).

A week of fashion events and runway shows that aim to celebrate Boston designers, promote our town as a place that’s sartorially worthy of competing with New York, and draw attention and visitors from the fashion community at large—it’s a great idea. So why did organizers wittingly pit the event against New York Fashion Week? Don’t we deserve our own?

Two things seem obvious:

1) Boston Fashion Week dropped the ball on an opportunity to host an event that could have generated great national press for the participating designers (like the fabulous Sam Mendoza).

2) The event’s sponsors, including the Globe, should be held accountable for reducing Boston’s fashion community to an easy punch line. (One gawker reader noted that “crocs and lobster bibs are not fashion;” another said she was looking forward to catching the latest trends in polar fleece vests).

Enough, already.

—Alyssa Giacobbe