Beyond the runway: How New York Fashion Week is reimagining the attendee experience
You won’t see it strutting down the catwalk in New York. It won’t be spoken about with the breathless awe that editors and influencers use to discuss the latest designer collections. Behind the scenes, however, technology is quietly redefining the experience of attending New York Fashion Week.
Last week N4XT Experiences, a live events company which owns both New York Fashion Week (NYFW) and LA Fashion Week, said it was partnering with SAP in a collaboration that could affect everything from omnichannel commerce and in-store technology to AI-enabled innovation and physical retail activations.
A key focus will be a Retail Innovation Lab that opened at this years’ event. The two firms are also working on the development of .FW, which N4XT described as a digital platform envisioned to bring together NYFW Collections’ designers, partners, and audiences in one connected environment. Designed to support designer discovery, audience engagement, and commerce, .FW is expected to debut in the upcoming seasons, the company said.
Imad Izemrane, N4XT Experiences’ co-founder and CEO, noted NYFW can attract more than 500,000 visitors, including buyers, media and consumers. That means the company has to think about customer experience (CX) design through multiple perspectives and expectations. That means the technology supporting the event has to work across audiences.
.FW and the Retail Innovation Lab are intended to offer clearer pathways for discovery, engagement and follow-up, which defines the over-arching customer journey typical of those taking in NYFW, Izemrane said.
“Attendees can move from seeing a collection to understanding the story behind it, availability, and how to stay involved,” Izemrane told 360 Magazine. “The goal is to remove friction for everyone.”
Jan Gilg, SAP’s global president of customer success and Americas, said the Retail Innovation Lab is showcasing AI‑enabled capabilities like real‑time data integration, RFID‑powered checkout and smart mirrors, and connected digital signage.
“Fashion is fast‑moving, highly creative, and deeply dependent on customer experience, which makes it a great place to show the value of SAP’s CX investments,” Gilg said. “Fashion brands need to connect design, supply chain, marketing, and commerce data to truly understand demand and respond immediately.”
SAP brings those signals together, enabling more personalized and relevant experiences while protecting margins, Gilg added.
Izemrane said it’s important to distinguish the needs of buyers, who come to NYFW seeking access to designers, from media professionals looking for interviews and consumers who simply want to explore the latest collections.
“We want NYFW to feel more connected and intentional,” he said. “This partnership helps unify content, commerce and operations so attendees can experience the week in a more cohesive environment. This creates more touchpoints for designers, rather than a single show.”
While the fashion sector has nuances all its own, Gilg said it’s consistent other markets SAP serves in that any use of technology like AI needs to be grounded in clean, connected enterprise data and embedded into day‑to‑day operations.
“The goal isn’t flashy tech, but technology that actually runs behind the scenes and makes experiences better,” he said.
The impact will be measured across three core pillars that are always used to evaluate NYFW’s success, I said. These include global reach, economic impact and depth of engagement.
“We also look closely at engagement quality and continuity, assessing how designers, buyers, and consumers interact and whether those relationships extend beyond a single moment,” he said. “Our partnership with SAP allows us to move from broad visibility metrics to structured first-party performance data, tracking designer participation, platform engagement, and season-over-season growth through initiatives like the Retail Innovation Lab and .FW.”
