explore the quirky fashion week invites that broke the mold

Quirky fashion invites are now souvenirs attendees can keep

Major fashion houses have created playful, quirky, and tech-infused fashion invites over the years, from Hermès, FENDI, and Louis Vuitton to Balenciaga, Maison Margiela, and more. As the time moves on, fashion houses have replaced the traditional flat paper card with three-dimensional objects as invitations. Instead of a printed slip, a typical invitation design, the brands now create objects that can be displayed, collected, or used. The fashion invites have then evolved into becoming souvenirs, using non-traditional materials from food and healthcare industries, and applying reactive and new technologies to allow these objects to interact with the invitees.

These invitations have moved away from being pieces of paper and turned more to becoming physical objects invitees can keep for themselves. It is what the late Virgil Abloh designed during Louis Vuitton’s FW20 show, where he sent out a functioning wall clock with the monogram of the brand replacing the numbers on the dial, and the invitation details supplied alongside the timepiece. Balenciaga laser-etched its FW22 show info onto the rear surface of a silver, screen-cracked iPhone 6S, permanently embedding the information in its metal shell. During its AW09/10 show, Maison Margiela produced a small plastic television model with details printed on the non-working screen, so compact users can take it anywhere with them as a reminder. These examples show how brands have moved away from paper and into wanting their guests to keep the object as a physical memory of the show they attended.

wall clock invite for Louis Vuitton FW20 show | image by Virgil Abloh, read more here

food, medical and organic materials inspire the designs

Unusual but playful materials and everyday objects have gone on to inspire the fashion invites of the major houses over the years. Instead of relying on card and ink, their design teams have turned to food, plastic film, medical packaging, or organic materials to create the invitations. FENDI went back to its Italian roots and sent out its SS21 invitation as a packet of pasta formed through extrusion technology to display the brand’s FF logo. The pasta was packaged with a plastic window, the same material that Miu Miu adopted for its SS25 when the house delivered a solid block of soap-looking pressed salt to its invitees.

Silicone-like material defined the Hermès SS96 show as the brand created a transparent PVC handbag in the shape of its Kelly bag. On the exterior, the team printed with show details, completing the Security Envelope design stunt. Bag is also the motif of Bottega Veneta’s SS26 fashion invite; a flat-pack leather one, in this case. Once picked up, the Maison’s bag extended to reveal a basket-like accessory. Other brands worked with tools used in the healthcare industry, at least that’s what Act N°1 produced for the fashion label’s FW20/21 show. Here, they invited the audience using a blood-bag-style container filled with red liquid, similar to the IV bag solution in the hospitals.

Balenciaga engraves the FW22 on a screen-cracked iPhone 6s | image by jaaaared via Grailed

Paper invites use new technologies and are more artist-crafted

Another unusual material that sparked conversations when it was released came through Moschino’s SS17 fashion invite. Here, the then Creative Director Jeremy Scott sent out prescription bottles that double as mini bags or containers, flaunting in public what’s typically stashed in medicine cabinets and private spaces. The plastic container theme continues with Dries Van Noten and its SS15 fashion invite, where the house invited the attendees using a square-shaped plastic box filled with moss, the show’s details engraved onto the see-through exterior. Other fashion houses reverted to using paper, but this time, the invites looked more artist-crafted and used new technologies.

Gucci’s SS17 invitation had a floral-inspired pop-up theater model made of paper, a colorful ensemble of layered materials that were folded and precisely die-cut to produce the miniature stage. With Rains and its SS24 fashion invite, ‘drenched’ was the theme and quite literally when its blank paper invitation could only reveal the details of the show once the attendee applied water on it or put it under the rain. Through the years, the invitations are no longer discarded after the show, now that fashion houses use them as a testing ground for retainable object designs. They experiment with industrial processes, play with new materials, and encourage guests to treat the fashion invites as more than paper and keep them.

Maison Margiela produced a mini plastic TV for the AW09/10 show | image by Andrea Fanelli via Are.na