Model Shaun Ross Calls Out The Folks Curating NYFW Rooms: ‘Fashion Week Has Changed’

Shaun Ross took to social media to air out his grievances with influencer culture taking over NYFW. The model posted a video on Instagram page offering advice to the publicists and marketers responsible for building more diverse guest lists. He wants fashion week and its iconic after parties to return to its eclectic roots. 

Ross acknowledged that influencers contribute to New York Fashion Week. He is an influencer in his own right with 800,000 Instagram followers. But he was a professional before that. Ross has been one of the most celebrated models in the fashion industry and he has left a respected impact. He walked runways for some of fashion week’s biggest shows for years in cities like New York and Milan. 

This gave him a metaphorical front-row seat to the ins and outs of the industry. “When I was coming up, I feel like PR back then really, really knew how to curate a room,” he explained in the candid clip.

Everybody keeps asking if New York Fashion Week is dead. Maybe the question is if excluding the right people is sucking the life out of it. 

(Well-Informed) Influencers Welcome 

Influencers like Wisdom Kaye respect fashion. Their content celebrates it. Not everyone with a following does.

Ross feels the disconnect is coming from people in silos. He credits previous generations of communications professionals with giving us moments where musical genres, art forms, and industries collided. “To be a publicist back then, your eyes and nose and ears had to be everywhere at all times figuring out what was in the news, what was happening, what’s coming up,” he continues. “You’re spotting somebody from a mile away that no one’s paying attention to, and you are predicting.” 

He pointed out that relying on algorithms to determine the value of someone might have excluded many of the marginalized people who helped create the fashion scene as we know it in the past. 

“A lot of Black and brown people were not invited inside of the rooms, not unless you were somebody that had a very high status or you were somebody that was already making a name, or you had a name for yourself. Being Black, being Brown in the room was just something that you didn’t commonly see,” he says. Industry upstarts worked their way into the rooms, not to document that they were there with pictures but to enjoy the fun and form lasting connections. 

“Back then when you made it in a room that you were not initially invited to, you made the best of it. You shook the hands, you had fun. You had such a great time.” 

He described a situation where he had to encourage an influencer to stop posing for pictures that made it look like she was dancing and actually dance. The vibe of the party and the quality of her content were helped by his intervention. 

Reacting Versus Trendsetting

He explains how people who don’t even understand the history behind the runway show they’re sitting front row at. Brand representatives have placed so much faith in public discourse they’re not vetting it for relevance. As a result, standards are not being upheld. Trends are being set backward.

“You have these big brands, and they are pushing aside people that have worked really, really hard to be recognized in this industry,” says Ross. “You pushed them aside because you see somebody that has a million followers and they have traction. But you’re not asking yourself, like, what is that traction? Who is that audience? Who are the people that are looking at this person?” 

Business of Fashion recently released a piece that explained that cultural influence could no longer be based solely on a follower count.

The answer to correcting this is putting intentional selections on the guest list. 

Algorithmic Blind Spots Blocking Opportunities 

Not only is an overreliance on followers likely to introduce the same people into rooms. It could push out some of the most powerful people in the industry. Makeup artists, stylists, and cultural architects aren’t always the most visible. 

Fern Malis created New York Fashion Week, and in 2019 a publicity firm insulted her with a standing-room-only ticket based on arbitrary numbers. “I’ve heard this from one or two PR firms, that they’ve all had meetings with their staff after that about how important it is to know who’s coming, and to understand who is in your seats … often, it’s younger, new people who don’t know who people are,” she told Page Six at the time.

Algorithms are built as silos. This means that people will come across those that cater to their personal taste levels. 

That doesn’t mean they’re not making a difference. Excluding them from the parties is how you end up with what Ross called “dry” parties.