Take up your all-access pass to one of the most dynamic areas of the international fashion industry. Lavishly illustrated and packed with industry insights, The Fashion Show is the must-have guide to showing off a collection. You will learn about: The context of the fashion show and its significance for brands, designers, journalists and others working in the fashion industry; How a fashion show is produced, everything from agreeing a vision to casting the models to setting up backstage; What happens on show day, and how to use the impact of your show. Future fashion designers, fashion marketers, fashion managers, fashion PRs – and creative practitioners looking to learn more about this fascinating part of the industry, you are cordially invited to join Gill Stark in the front row of The Fashion Show.

Every experience brings with it a piece of our life, it is up to us to grasp it, make it ours, and live to the full the teachings that have arisen from it. But it takes courage to accept them, sometimes they are able to annihilate you, to bend you, to the point of turning you into an unknown being that you knew nothing about. A being able to really choose what to experience, a being able to go where no one had dared to go before, a being who understood that life must be lived to the end, accepting every consequence, overcoming every obstacle, falling and rising continually, because what has always belonged to us cannot be taken from us, and it is not possible that it is hidden from us. We have had the gift of free will, it is our helm, it is up to us to direct it where we want it to arrive, only to us. Today, that boy I was, gave way to the man I am. My name is Luke Bouer, and this is my story.

This is your invitation to the front row. Spanning over seven decades and 300 shows, this beautiful book tells the story of the high fashion catwalk. Through this inspirational collection of fashion show invites and tales from fashion week, curator and fashion writer Iain R Webb opens a window into the world’s most exclusive fashion houses. Whether it’s dreamy romance at Givenchy, cutting-edge modernity at Alexander McQueen, floral drama at Valentino, vintage-inspired fun at Kenzo or heartfelt emotion at Yves Saint Laurent’s final haute couture show, the unique themes and styles that have graced the runway in the past 50 years are gloriously curated and described in The Fashion Show. From understated presentation to melodramatic performance, this stylish archive is your passport to the international fashion collections.

Beginning with Alexander McQueen's infamous attempt to live stream his 2009 Plato's Atlantis collection on SHOWStudio, this book traces how digital and social media have disrupted social structures within the field of fashion, and transformed the way it is communicated and consumed. Analysing key case studies, from Chanel, Givenchy, Yeezy and Opening Cermony to interactive social media and 'see now buy now' campaigns from Burberry, Topshop and Tommy Hilfiger, The Fashion Show Goes Live analyses the mode and impact of fashion shows' transmission. Through the rise of experimental film, fashion shows tailored for media transmission and the use of live streaming and social media to render shows 'immediate' to consumers, fashion weeks – and fashion shows – have become not just trend barometers but material sites that demonstrate media's effects. Rebecca Halliday evaluates the performativity of consumer relations to such live streams and other mediatized content. In linking these relations back to fashion show footage, she demonstrates that although intended to communicate fashion to mass audiences, these practices also promote it as exclusive and aspirational. Despite democratized, international access to content, the shows themselves remain elite events; kindling new forms of consumer attention, interaction, immaterial labour and desire. Through the microcosm of the fashion show, The Fashion Show Goes Live asks broader socio-political questions about the effects of the fashion industry's mediatization, challenging the notion that new technology has fostered inclusivity.