Runway recall

True fashion fans are as captivated by fashion’s past as much as its present; the brands, the people, the stop-you-in-your-tracks creativity and drama. Which is why we think you’ll be as excited as we are by the launch of Runway Recall, a celebration of the industry’s most spectacular catwalk moments, all captured on film and taken from NET-A-PORTER’s archive.

In 2010, NET-A-PORTER bought an incredible cache of 12,000 video tapes from a father-son duo who had been filming fashion weeks since the late ’70s. It’s one of the biggest archives of fashion history, made up of around 6,000 hours of footage and covering 700 designers, starting in 1979 for London Fashion Week and, from 1988 onwards, covering New York, Milan and Paris, too. For the past four years, an expert team has been painstakingly digitizing the tapes and cataloguing them so we can share them with you.

It’s a veritable treasure trove for fashion buffs: every single one of Alexander McQueen’s shows, including his graduate collection; landmark footage of big-hitting labels under their founding designers like Calvin Klein, Helmut Lang and Maison Martin Margiela; and history-making names no longer in business like Christian Lacroix, Antony Price and Stephen Sprouse.

The opening of New York Fashion Week is the perfect moment to open up the archives, with a look at the biggest moments in the city’s fashion history. And, as things in London, Milan and Paris kick off over the coming weeks, we’ll look back at their highlights as well. Follow us on Instagram to see iconic moments from some of the biggest labels as they show their latest collections.