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.

Frankfurt am Main, 8 June 2020. 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 the Senior Mayor of the City of Frankfurt am Main at today’s press conference. “It will bring a huge boost to the local hotel, hospitality and transportation sectors. Frankfurt is renowned for its style-defining impact on art, architecture and design and its unique club, bar and restaurant scene. Frankfurt Fashion Week will now also increase our appeal as an international fashion hotspot. We will be conveying the fashion and design theme to the rest of the city and complementing it with our own exciting events. It makes me proud that we have been able to attract these three prominent tradeshows with no less than 2,000 exhibitors from Berlin to Frankfurt,” concludes Feldmann.

“Securing this unique event for Frankfurt am Main is a huge opportunity to strengthen our image both nationally and internationally. In the next few years, the city is prepared to provide the necessary funds to show people from near and far that creative Frankfurt has what it takes to host a Fashion Week. Together with the State of Hesse and Messe Frankfurt, we, the City of Frankfurt, really want Frankfurt Fashion Week to get off to a flying start and make the city the fashion hotspot of Germany. And we will play our part in that,” adds Mayor and City Treasurer Uwe Becker, who together with the Councillor for Economic Affairs Markus Frank highlighted the development opportunities of Fashion Week in Frankfurt am Main. “From a fashion show on the Zeil – our profitable shopping street –, or a catwalk on the Eiserner Steg footbridge to streetwear in the Hafenpark so popular with skaters – the innovative, dynamic and cosmopolitan Main metropolis is welcoming Fashion Week with open arms,” adds Markus Frank.

Banking capital and fashion metropolis

Skyscrapers and turn-of-the-century villas. Architectural eyesores and structural masterpieces. Business and culture. Red-light district and luxury shopping. Many different worlds collide in Frankfurt; that’s what sets the city apart. It is against this backdrop that Frankfurt Fashion Week is inspiring new momentum.

“The Rhine-Main Region is predestined to host an internationally significant event of this magnitude. We are cosmopolitan and international: out of the 6.2 million people living in Hesse, one third have their roots in other countries. And that makes the fashion here just as diverse and individual. At the same time, an event like the upcoming Frankfurt Fashion Week is of huge economic significance for Frankfurt as a trade fair location. It is sending out an important and positive signal to an industry that has been particularly hard hit by the fallout of the coronavirus pandemic. The State of Hesse is committed to sustainable business practices, the conservation of resources and climate protection. Promoting the creative industries has been the aim of Hesse’s economic policy for years now. And as Frankfurt Fashion Week has made sustainability its overarching theme, it’s also a real gain from that perspective. There couldn’t be a better fit for Frankfurt and the State of Hesse,” says Tarek Al-Wazir, Hesse’s Minister of Economics, Energy, Transport and Housing and Vice Minister-President.

A core component of Frankfurt Fashion Week are Europe’s biggest fashion fairs: PREMIUM, Europe’s most relevant business platform for advanced women’s and menswear, SEEK, one of the most progressive tradeshows for contemporary fashion, and NEONYT, the leading hub for sustainable fashion. Together with the Fashionsustain and Fashiontech conferences, they are all moving from Berlin to Frankfurt am Main.

“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.

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