The two leading tradeshow organisers Messe Frankfurt and Premium Group are joining forces to launch Frankfurt Fashion Week. From summer 2021, the Rhine-Main metropolis will be the new home of a forward-looking fashion and lifestyle community. The vision of a Fashion Week in Frankfurt am Main is now being turned into a reality with tradeshows, conferences, runway shows and events set to take place throughout the entire city. At the focus: the two overarching themes of digitalisation and sustainability.
Unveiling the Unexpected: Frankfurt Fashion Week will be making its debut in summer 2021. Joining forces to get the event off the ground are the world’s largest trade fair, congress and event organiser with its own exhibition grounds – Messe Frankfurt – and the organiser of Europe’s biggest fashion fair – the Premium Group – as the initiators, as well as the City of Frankfurt am Main and the German state of Hesse as hosts. Together they aim to create a brand-new ecosystem for tradeshows, conferences, runway shows and events for professionals and consumers in Frankfurt am Main. “This will transform the financial centre of Frankfurt into a new hotspot for the international fashion and lifestyle scene and create a new, international fashion metropolis. Organising a Fashion Week in Frankfurt presents a unique economic opportunity for the City of Frankfurt am Main. We are expecting positive knock-on effects with the generation of more than 200 million euros per year for our hometown and the region,” emphasised Peter Feldmann, the Senior Mayor of the City of Frankfurt am Main, at a press conference recently.
“Five platforms, three tradeshows, two conferences, over 2,000 designers, brands and fashion companies – Frankfurt Fashion Week will become an extremely attractive and relevant destination for the international fashion business. We believe in the concept of a physical Fashion Week, but one that is different to anything we have seen before. Frankfurt Fashion Week will enable us to fully play to our textile strengths gained from over 50 textile tradeshows worldwide. And it will result in new synergies along the entire supply chain”, says Detlef Braun, Member of the Executive Board of Messe Frankfurt.
From skyscrapers, exhibition and concert halls and bars to clubs and off-locations – the whole city will become a stage for long-lasting business connections. Fashion, design, media, art and music – the runway shows and events of Frankfurt Fashion Week bring together Frankfurt’s creative scene with the international fashion community. Progressively curated and presented, closely interwoven with local and international key players.
“Frankfurt Fashion Week is purposely aimed at a forward-looking, digital-savvy fashion and lifestyle community. B2B, B2C, B2P, P2P – all avenues are open. A synthesis of fashion, lifestyle, digital innovations and sustainability is always guaranteed to result in something new and unexpected. And that is exactly our aim. Unveiling the unexpected. Frankfurt is a fresh, new location for this. We’re looking forward to it,” says Anita Tillmann, Managing Partner of the Premium Group.
The India Opportunity
“Messe Frankfurt’s Texpertise strength combined with the vision of Frankfurt Fashion Week will create an exciting ecosystem for a cross-integrated tradeshow and fashion event format. The coming times will see fashion and sustainability take new meaning and the content of FFW focused around digitisation and sustainability will be reflective of that – a space where transformation will take shape and an opportunity that India’s textile, fashion and design community can simultaneously leverage” said Mr Raj Manek, Executive Director & Board Member, Messe Frankfurt Asia Holdings Ltd.
New technology meets applied sustainability
“Unveiling The Unexpected” is a promise: Frankfurt Fashion Week pools fashion, design, sustainability and technology, giving rise to unexpected cooperations and showing what is already possible today. ‘Applied Sustainability’ and ‘Applied Digitisation’ form the strategic pillars of the event. Frankfurt Fashion Week will make innovative, more sustainable products, collections and business models accessible to the wider market. At the same time, it also promotes the future-oriented interconnection of fashion and technology as part of the real-digital reality. With leading international fairs like Techtextil, Texprocess and Texworld – and over 50 textile fairs worldwide – the Texpertise Network of Messe Frankfurt will open up further synergies. For a networked and more sustainable way of doing business in the textile supply chain.