New York Fashion Week just got a lot more welcoming.
Luxury French fashion brand Givenchy offered to give away 820 tickets to its NYFW show on Wednesday morning. Givenchy didn’t respond to requests for comment, and it wasn’t clear how quickly the tickets were claimed.
The first 410 people to sign up online were promised two tickets — one for themselves and one for a guest.
The move, a first for the haute couture brand, signals a shift from the usual restricted access that is a hallmark of fashion shows.
Givenchy’s creative director, Riccardo Tisci, told Women’s Wear Daily that the decision to open the show to the public has been a longtime dream of his. He told the trade journal that fashion “is amazing and very exclusive” but that he’d long envisioned a show where anybody could partake in the event.
Tisci told the magazine that the decision to make that move in New York City was steeped in personal significance.
“My father died when I was a baby, but my mom always said to me that my father would always say to her, ‘One day I will take you to the Big Apple.’ It never happened,” Tisci told WWD. He was later able to bring his mother to New York, but said the city had represented a dream since childhood.
Givenchy will be showing its Spring Summer 2016 ready-to-wear collection at NYFW this year instead of in Paris. The show, which will occur on September 11, follows the opening of the brand’s new flagship store in Manhattan last week.
