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On July 20, 1943, with The dark clouds of war still hanging over Europe, The Plaza Hotel in New York was hosting a feast called Fashion Press Week.

The rooms were filled with American media, designers and mall buyers.

And this media week is now a fashion week held twice a year in many fashion capitals.

Why was the first Fashion week born in 1943? Why in New York and not Paris, the global fashion hub at the time?

"1943" is the key word here - it's the middle of World War II.

Previously, editors and buyers from around the world flew to Paris every year to see shows, interviews and orders.

The outbreak of World War II broke the thriving situation of the European fashion industry, and many fashion houses were forced to close.

Although the United States entered the war at this time, the war did not affect its home market, which gave local designers an opportunity to develop.

Just as our Chinese designers have always wanted to break the global fashion system monopolized by Western designers, American designers also spent more than half a century of hard work and efforts to break the monopoly of Paris as the only global fashion center at that time.

In the first half of the 19th century and before, New York designers had been working for their black slaves at the request of Southern plantation owners; As well as for the crew staying in the port to make uniforms, accumulated a certain amount of industrial resources.

Until the invention of the sewing machine in the mid-19th century, the clothing industry in New York began to gradually shift from tailors to individual tailoring to machines for mass production.

The American Civil War of 1861-1865 gave New York the opportunity to supply the army with a large number of uniforms.

These massive mass production orders made New York the first city to industrialize the garment industry.

By the second half of the 19th century, most residents of the United States had begun to buy ready-made clothing from stores.

At that time, the people of Europe were still mostly using tailors to customize their own clothes.