Courtesy IMG

In February, executives of IMG’s fashion division gathered to be photographed in the empty cavernous building in Chelsea, the neighborhood of art galleries, where the Dia Art Foundation is down the block and the Commes des Garçons flagship next door. The crew of IMG executives and assistants were all wearing their updated versions of the downtown black uniform of fashion aficionados, as they chatted and checked their phones. There was an efficient modernity to them all. Gathered and gabbing, they brought to mind another term: a murder of crows. Too severe? Not really. A kind of keen-eyed severity is what IMG brings to NYFW: The Shows, which it owns and operates, and which the ostentation of peacocks it serves needs from it. Crows, moreover, are known for being one of the smartest of animals and their feathers are seldom ruffled.

Leslie Russo, President of Fashion Events and Properties at IMG, has a thing about the number two so she was excited in February to be moving into the new suite of offices for her division of the company on the sixth floor of this 22nd Street building. After the photo shoot, she gave me a quick tour which included her corner office. From her desk she can see the Eduardo Kobra mural above the Empire Diner below. It brings to mind a Mount Rushmore of artists and includes Andy Warhol, Keith Haring, Frida Kahlo, and Jean-Michel Basquiat.

Sitting at her desk and gazing out at Andy is a full-circle moment for her since she got her start helping run events at Interview magazine when the late Ingrid Sischy was its Editor-in-Chief. Andy once said, “Fashion wasn’t what you wore someplace anymore; it was the whole reason for going,” which could be the cryptic mission statement for IMG’s NYFW: The Shows. Kahlo, for her part, summed up fashion’s shape-shifting allure itself with her comment that “nothing is absolute, everything changes, everything moves, everything revolves, everything flies and goes away.”

But it was Haring and Basquiat who were fashion prophets with their love and championing of streetwear, a category that has gained such importance in the 21st century and moved American fashion to the forefront, as Russo likes to point out. “If commercialization is putting my art on a shirt so that a kid who can’t afford a $30,000 painting can buy one, then I’m all for it,” Haring said.

Basquiat loved Armani suits, he wore Issey Miyake coats and walked the Commes des Garçons’s Spring/Summer 1987 show. His estate has licensed his artwork’s imagery to fashion labels at an assortment of prices, but the streetwear category has given his art a new framework. In 2018, the late Virgil Abloh created a capsule collection for Off-White that utilized Basquiat’s art. “Life is collaboration,” Abloh once said. “Where I think art can be sort of misguided is that it propagates this idea of itself as a solo love affair — one person, one idea, no one else involved.” That too could be mission statement for IMG since what it brings to New York Fashion Week is its collaborative zeal and expertise. It, like Abloh giving Basquiat a renewed framework, gives one as well to each New York Fashion Week that rolls around.

I was thinking of Abloh and his use of quotation marks when Russo and other executives settled around the table in their new conference room for some conversation. Indeed, it was the first “meeting” being held there and we were “christening” the space, as Abloh would have wanted me to write the terms. Also at the table, among others, were Patrick Conners, Senior Vice-President, Global Brand Partners; Joshua Glass, Executive Editorial Director; and Dominic Kaffka, Senior Vice-President. Russo expounded on NYFW: The Shows being more than New York-centric and helping American fashion itself take its place globally — and even cited Abloh while doing so.

Courtesy IMG

“First of all, social media and technology have changed access to consuming Fashion Week,” Russo said. “It doesn’t matter if you’re in Paris, France, or Paris, Texas, anymore. You can follow along on your Instagram. You can participate now by buying things through our partner, Afterpay. Look at Gigi Hadid, an IMG model, who has 72.5 million followers on Instagram. One post can reach that many people. Add it all up. For us, New York Fashion Week already is global because when you see who watches our social channels, it is from all over the world. I do feel that American fashion has an opportunity right now on a global scale to take credit for our contribution to fashion. Look at Virgil Abloh who literally changed fashion as the first Black designer to head Louis Vuitton men’s. He was from Chicago. American culture and diversity are here  — streetwear, sneakers — but I don’t think we’ve gotten credit as a country of our contribution that is incredibly relevant right now.”

I sensed Russo’s pride not only in American fashion, but also in the company she keeps at IMG’s fashion division. She has helped shape it and create it and nurture it. And while there’s no doubt she is the boss at the table, there is also a camaraderie that cuts through the corporate bull that can often bollix up the workings of company. So does she see this as more of a team or a family? “I am very old-school Italian so I do like to think off it as a family but I am going to say team for this reason: we’re competitive,” she said. “I honestly think of it as band — so that’s a little bit of both I guess.”

I stopped her to remind her that she once told me she thought of herself as Keith Richards in her job. The camaraderie at the table erupted in guffaws at that image. “I have zero of the talent, but I am the quieter personality type,” she said when the laughter died down. “I do probably think of us more as a band.  We are aligned in terms of being able to play together and compliment each other, I mean you don’t need four Keith Richards. I think what we try to do is put together a band that agrees philosophically but plays together really well in bringing their individual points of view and strengths to the table. Troubleshooters, that’s what we are. Troubleshooters,” she reiterated, which actually sounds like a good name for a band.

“It’s hands-on,” Kaffka said. “It’s solving problems from morning to night. We are prepared so we have a solution at the ready for most problems,” he said when I asked if his job was about finding a way to say “yes” instead of saying “no.”

The IMG fashion division also owns Art+Commerce, the agency that represents an array of image-makers.  But do the leaders of the division here at the table think of themselves as more of the “art” part of the industry or the “commerce” part? “I think we are truly both,” said Russo. “Maybe we’re the ‘+.’  I think this group that we have now — Patrick, Josh, and Dom — really comes from the background that merges the two. When I was interviewing Josh for his job, we discovered we both approach fashion as a sort of cultural pillar. We’re not making clothes. We’re not doing supply chain. What we really do is the cultural view of fashion and that entire ecosystem of the business gets routed through the things we do. We provide this platform and the resources for the artistic community in fashion. We all come from this background. Patrick and I come from Conde Nast. He was also at InStyle. Josh was Global Digital Editorial Director at L’Officiel and at CR Fashion Book he was Editorial and Digital Director. Dom as been in production here at IMG. It is the steroid version of what Interview magazine used to be. It creates culture.”

So does IMG see itself as a publisher and, if so, is there a wall between it and the shows just as there was in the magazine world from which its executives came between the publishing side and the editorial one? “Every designer is different,” said Glass. “Some designers are very intensive and very collaborative and we’re talking with them every day. Other designers want to come up with ideas themselves and we come to them once a month to take to them about what they’re doing and how we can work together. It’s never us telling them what to do or their telling us. It’s a mixture of things. As with the CFDA, they manage the calendar but we will say ‘Oh, we’re doing this special exhibition at this point so maybe we should do this,” he continued, referencing the “Art of Rodarte” immersive exhibition which was presented by Afterpay as part of NYFW: The Shows. “It’s finding where all the pieces fit together.”

“What is the IMG brand itself” I asked Connors.

“The IMG fashion brand within our community really does connect up our brand sponsors to culture,” he said. “When a brand wants to plug in to IMG fashion they not only have the opportunity to plug in to New York Fashion Week, but also off-season opportunities that we can custom create for them, too. But the truth is that what they are tapping into — yes, through a lens of fashion — is culture. And brands today no matter whether they are historic brands or emerging ones — like Afterpay — they want to tap into culture and the fastest way to do that is with brands already associated with culture. What we do is to work with them to develop the right way to be invested in our community and to have our community to invest in them — to invest in the product.”

But “culture” is huge term; it goes from Kardashian to Balanchine. “Do you ever go, ‘Well, that’s a little vulgar for us but it is perfect for you,’?” I asked. “I guess what I am really asking is if the client is always right?”

“No,”  said Connors. “This is why: they are coming to us for our advice.  They are coming to us consultants and experts in this.”

Giorgio Armani once said that “elegance in not standing out, but being remembered.” I asked this rather elegant lot of executives to remember their first fashion memory that came to mind. Kaffka recalled the walk-through he gave a top executive of their parent company, WME, of the Moynihan Hall space back in 2015 when NYFW moved from the tents in Bryant Park. Glass recalled an eighth row seat at a 9 a.m. Lacoste show in those tents when he was an assistant. “I wanted to be a rockstar and took guitar lessons and saved up for a cherry red electric guitar,” said Russo, explaining further her Keith Richards analogy. “A few years later, I sold it on my grandmother’s front lawn at a yard sale because I desperately wanted the white leather fringe crop coat worn by Sloane in Ferris Buellers Day off.  Having sold the guitar, I started school that year with the jacket effectively ending my music career. I wish I had that coat right now.”

Connors:  “I was at Conde Nast and I was working at Lucky magazine. I remember having to go to the tents in Bryant Park — not for myself, I was going to run something over to someone — and walking into the lobby area and my publisher at the time told me, ‘Just come in with me.’ I didn’t even have a seat. I just stood in the back. I can’t remember what show it was. After the show, I walked back to Conde Nast and Anna Wintour was right in front of me at the elevator bank. I got into the elevator and it was just her and me. And I thought, ‘This is the fashion moment. I came from the tents in Bryant Park to Anna Wintour.” You were supposedly not to get into an elevator with her. But I thought: this is it, this is why I came to New York. There was the exclusivity of it but also the power of it.”

“What did you talk about with her?” I asked.

“Absolutely nothing,” he said.

And there you have it: fashion. As was the cackle of camaraderie at Connors’ self-deprecation that had been redesigned as a couture moment. And the need finally — always — to get back to work. That was their “cue.” So they did.