Ms. Wolkoff in her Midtown office. (Emily Anne Epstein)

In the 31st-floor offices of SWW Creative, the walls are beige, the carpet is gray and the cabinets are standard-issue wood-grain. There’s no Eames armchair, no runway stills splashed across the walls, not even a lucite coffee table with a copy of Grace Coddington’s memoir. There’s not a flower in sight.

While fashion professionals are known to obsess over the color of their pens, SWW Creative’s offices are about as splashy as an insurance agency’s. Stephanie Winston Wolkoff is not concerned.

Ms. Wolkoff, who orchestrated Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week’s Lincoln Center expansion, isn’t in it for Smythson notebooks or a pair of Céline fur sandals. She is an executor first and a fashionist somewhere further down the line, finding more satisfaction in a spreadsheet than an Avedon. Though she’s a front-row fixture and a special-occasion catwalker, she doesn’t scour the runways for her own closet. Instead, Ms. Wolkoff, who stands a statuesque 6-foot-1, prefers the simplicity of a uniform—Ralph Lauren is her everyday.

“The outside world thinks that Fashion Week is so amazing and so glamorous and so over-the-top,” said Ms. Wolkoff, who has been overseeing the twice-annual event since 2009. “Is it important to have celebrities there? Great. Is it important to have the athletes in the front row? Super. But the truth is, this is a business.”

And yet, by acknowledging as much—and reimagining Fashion Week as populist and business-friendly—she has rankled fashion’s artistes, who feel that recent changes have given the event a noticeable odor of commerce. Under Ms. Wolkoff’s tenure, corporate sponsorships have taken center stage in a lobby concourse that more closely resembles the Javits Center than the heart of couture. Also, for the first time, there are events for the public, in the form of fashion-art collaborations with Lincoln Center’s performance groups. It’s gone from a tent to a circus.

“Lincoln Center is amazing—they have amazing facilities, they have everything you could possibly need,” said Stefan Golangco, the communications director of progressive menswear line Asher Levine. “But our brand is also about being underground and being off-schedule and being a little bit ... maybe less commercial. [Showing at Lincoln Center] doesn’t feel unique to your brand, especially if you’re a small label. You kind of get lost in the shuffle.”

While Fashion Week may be a few days longer now and may feel bigger (the tents certainly are), the number of shows in its main hub hasn’t grown materially since Ms. Wolkoff entered the mix. The total number of designers showing at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week itself has remained pretty much the same—the big explosion has been predominantly offsite. In 2007, when Fashion Week was still at Bryant Park, 90 designers showed at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week while 165 showed offsite. Last year, 91 designers showed at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week at Lincoln Center and 231 showed offsite, according to data from the Fashion Calendar, a fashion event scheduler, and IMG.

(Emily Anne Epstein)

Many of the designers opting to show offsite are looking for a particular sense of place; a mythology that matches their brand. “I always dreamed about being a part of Bryant Park, and when Fashion Week lost its location, I was really bummed about it. I lived for that moment,” said Nary Manivong, an emerging designer who has chosen to show his work offsite and off-schedule.

Of course, nobody can keep everyone happy, and Ms. Wolkoff is aware of that. She’s not interested in reclaiming defectors. She is interested in making sure the event goes off seamlessly.

“I stay in control of every little thing,” said the maestro of Post-it notes, corkboards and carefully stacked folders. “I want to make sure that nothing falls through the cracks. If I could delegate a little better, I would be better off.”

She is well-known for indifference to the theatrics so often associated with fashion, calling herself an industry “Switzerland.” “There’s no drama,” Elle’s creative director, Joe Zee, told The Observer. “Whatever is happening behind the scenes, everything still feels very put together.”

Every detail is per Ms. Wolkoff’s design, said associates, one of whom likened her preparedness to that of a Boy Scout. “I don’t feel it’s appropriate to put my hands up in the air and say, ‘too bad,’ you know, or ‘It’s not my job,’” Ms. Wolkoff said. “There were times when I’d be sweeping the floor before an event if the floor was dirty. I wouldn’t wait for someone to come into the room and do it themselves.”

Ms. Wolkoff is known in the industry as “General Winston”—a name bestowed on her by Anna Wintour, a career-long mentor who tapped her to become Lincoln Center’s director of fashion when Fashion Week was pushed out of Bryant Park by an ice-skating rink. Ms. Wolkoff, who had previously headed the Vogue-hosted Costume Institute Benefit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is credited with helping elevate it from an East Coast event to a star-studded couture pageant.

She is one of the many New York fashion success stories who owe their rise in large part to Ms. Wintour’s mentorship. Ms. Wolkoff was a client services manager at Sotheby’s when Ms. Wintour hired her to do PR for Vogue, despite her lack of fashion experience. Raised amid acres of farmland in the Catskill Mountains, the black-belt preferred working on her jump kick to reading magazines. “Fashion was not something that I knew about,” she said. “It just wasn’t really particularly interesting.”

But what Ms. Wolkoff did have was an intensely disciplined work ethic, which was solidified playing power forward for Fordham University’s Division 1 basketball team. The diligence of waking up for predawn practice drills developed a personal drive that became impossible to turn off. (To this day, she calibrates her schedule to the minute, opting to have a manicurist come in to do her nails at her desk so she doesn’t have to cut into family or work time.)

(Emily Anne Epstein)

And she looks the part. Described by an associate as “the first person you see when you walk into a room,” Ms. Wolkoff came equipped with Vogue-worthy family associations: her stepfather is Bruce Winston, jeweler Harry Winston’s son.

“I didn’t have quite the understanding of the difference between Vogue, Elle, Harper’s and the rest of the world,” Ms. Wolkoff said, recalling her interview at the magazine. She was hired the same day. “I knew Anna Wintour was the editor in chief of Vogue, I just didn’t understand what it meant to wait around to meet with Anna Wintour. I didn’t lie that I read Vogue every day or that I grew up loving fashion, but I did know how to roll up my sleeves and do whatever it took to learn it.”

In the cosa nostra of fashion, Ms. Wintour’s blessing is likened to being “made” by a mafia boss. The wheels are slicked, critics are silenced and success is imminent. Accordingly, Ms. Wolkoff’s ascent at Vogue was rapid; she jumped from PR manager to special events manager to the head of the Costume Institute Benefit.

“The Costume Institute Benefit became my baby. It was something that I lived, breathed, day and night,” she said. “It was all about excellence. It was all about never taking ‘no’ for an answer from anyone in order to achieve the ultimate goal.”

At Lincoln Center, Ms. Wolkoff expanded on the foundations laid by Fern Mallis, the founder of Fashion Week, whose efforts put American designers on the global fashion map.

“We wanted to compete with Paris and Milan and other world capitals. There was very limited international business coming to New York, because we weren’t organized,” Ms. Mallis told The Observer. One of the initiatives she pursued was corporate sponsorships that would help offset the costs of the runway productions.

(Emily Anne Epstein)

Ms. Wolkoff nurtured those relationships, creating events that were open to the public rather than only buyers and editors, prying open the former fashion fortress and transforming it into a sprawling campus. “My goal was to put fashion on par with all the other cultural institutions that were at Lincoln Center,” Ms. Wolkoff said. “I always wanted to somehow democratize Fashion Week in a way that hadn’t been done before. I wanted to create a place where editors, models and designers could rub elbows with the everyday person.”

Some designers have balked at the new venue and the new vision, opting to take their shows elsewhere. Marquee New York brands like Proenza Schouler, Marc Jacobs and Alexander Wang have all decided to sidestep Lincoln Center. “The feedback I’ve gotten is that it’s way more commercial out there. But at the end of the day, that’s what it’s about,” Ms. Mallis said. “I certainly miss Bryant Park.”

Mr. Zee says that Ms. Wolkoff’s innovations have “matured” the biannual event. A self-proclaimed “fashion dinosaur,” he has been to shows at every fashion week, since long before they ever found a home at Bryant Park.

“I kind of love Lincoln Center,” he said. “She’s really made it into a true event. It’s not about going to a fashion show and leaving—she makes it into a true experience. It’s like growing up: Bryant Park was the teenage years, and now you grow up and you migrate uptown. It’s bigger, more glamorous ... it’s more what it is.”

At the end of the day, the models need to walk, the buyers need to shop, the editors need to see the season’s best and the designers need to sell their handiwork. It’s a trade show.

“If you look at who’s involved in fashion, there’s glamour, and smoke and mirrors, but it is a true business,” Vanessa von Bismarck, co-founder of fashion PR firm BPCM, told The Observer. “[Ms. Wolkoff] is someone with a business mind and [she] knows how the business works.”

(Mario Zucca)

In June of last year, Ms. Wolkoff stepped down as Lincoln Center’s director of fashion to take charge of her own company, SWW Creative. She still oversees the event, but now IMG and Lincoln Center are her clients, along with a number of other companies, including the Council of Fashion Designers of America, Penske Media Corporation and Kapture, an iPhone photo-sharing app.

Setting up shop privately enabled Ms. Wolkoff to dictate her own terms, which include being able to pick her three kids up from school and get home for dinner with her husband, real estate developer David Wolkoff. “I didn’t have children not to be with them,” she said. And even though her daughter Alexi has made the occasional runway appearance, she’s not an aspiring Tavi. “My children do not know the difference between Tar-jay and any other designer brand,” Ms. Wolkoff said proudly.

After bedtime, she typically dives back into work. “I go to sleep once I’ve put my third child to sleep, and I will wake up around 1 o’clock in the morning and work for a couple of hours, and then go back to bed,” she said, pointing to the 1,777 emails that had accrued in the past hour.

Once left alone, Ms. Wolkoff settled back into her seat and began riffling through the stacks of paper spread across her desk. She checked her iPhone and called out to her assistant. It was clear: she may be the first person you see when you enter a room, but she’s also the last to leave.

eepstein@observer.com

Yeehaw. (Angelito Jusay)

Square dancing brings a lot of things to mind; the Empire State building just isn’t one of them. Yet, there it was, all aglow in its red and blue, standing over a crowd of do-si-doing New Yorkers—hipster toddlers in mini-knits and European grandmothers, tangled in an unapologetic mess . We had heard about it, but when we took a peek this Monday, we weren’t expecting to stumble upon the sea of cowboy hats that stretched before us in Bryant park, and neither were our neighboring spectators. But such is the surprise of the city.

One of our fellow passersby could hardly contain her excitement.

“Oh my god, I love New York.”

And this is the reaction the Bryant Park Corporation was looking for. Bryant Park Square Dance is new to the roster of park activities this year, part of the 20^th Anniversary series. Beginning on Sept. 10, the festivities included Appalachian musical stylings, pulled pork, overpriced apple cider and several bails of hay. White plastic cowboy hats were being handed out, representative—albeit unintentionally —in their industrial stiffness the anachronistic quality of the evening.

We found ourselves next to a businesswoman in all her pencil-skirted glory, a tourist couple, and an elderly lady with brilliant white pigtails. We also spied a pair of drag queens looking fabulous in patent-leather go-go boots, and a group of twenty-somethings in dime store floral dresses. Everyone, it seemed, was here.

The dancing, on the whole, was bad. After an hour and a half, we were only able to master circling left and right. While slightly reluctant to admit to the chaos that was erupting unabashedly around him, Dave Harvey, the dance’s “caller,” explained that he could still “handle dancers who don’t know which end of a fiddle to blow into,” though, honestly, we really weren’t sure what this meant.

“Some people come in an ironic spirit, and that’s fine,” Mr. Harvey said, “but I take it seriously.”

Looking around, we hoped to find someone who shared Mr. Harvey’s spirit. And that’s when we saw her—our beckoning teacher of all things Western—from across the lawn: a woman in a floor-length gingham hoop skirt.

Did you attend the other events?

“Yes, the one last week. Without the dress.”

Did you buy it for tonight?

“No. I owned it.”

Where are you from?

“Germany.”

rebwebb@observer.com

Great for weddings or funerals. (The New York Marble Cemetery)

Green space in New York is at a premium. Graveyards have it in spades. It was only a matter of time before some enterprising cemetery started offering itself as an event venue. The New York Marble Cemetery in the East Village has already hosted weddings, a Stella McCartney show and a Vogue fashion shoot, reports The New York Times.

Sure, you might literally be dancing on someone's grave, but not, you know, spitefully. And the bodies are in catacomb-like compartments—156 vaulted rooms of marble, connected by passageways—so at least there is a bit more remove than a mere six-feet of dirt between the coffins and the grass. Also, having walls with the names of the dead inscribed on them rather than headstones makes the space a lot more accommodating than most graveyards.

The trustees of the the Marble Cemetery, who are the descendants of those buried in the vaults, faced a problem familiar to many aging cemeteries—decades after the cemetery ended its "active" life, i.e. stopped accepting new burials, they desperately needed money for upkeep.

Trustee Caroline S. DuBois told The Times that the trustees mulled ways to make the cemetery pay for itself before deciding to rent it out as a venue, at New York prices, of course—the fee for a wedding is $2,500.

It "has morphed into a business," she said.

From a historical perspective, it's not all that weird. New Yorkers have long played above former potter's fields, including Washington Square Park, Madison Square Park and Bryant Park. But apparently there are some lines that cannot be crossed—a promotional tequila event, for example, was turned down.

As for starting a new life together amid the dead, the prospect apparently doesn't spook couples as much as the brutal battle for coveted outdoor event space. Of course, now that it's been written up in The Times, it will probably be as hard to get into the Marble Cemetery as it is to get into, well, heaven.

kvelsey@observer.com

The Battle of Bryant Park (Kim Velsey)

Above the gentle hum of conversation and the less gentle hum of traffic rumbling past on Fifth Avenue, one could hear the chirping of birds and the clanking of metal as a small group of New Yorkers took turns thwacking each other with swords.

Bryant Park, which decades ago was one of the most notorious needle parks in the city, is now a veritable wonderland of ice skating, fashion tents and  movie nights. Except for Tuesdays this spring, that is, when the gauntlet—if not the grittiness—returns in the form of free sword-fighting lessons taught by coaches from the Manhattan Fencing Center.

“They’re practicing a straight attack to the head,” said fencing center director Julia Gelman, who interpreted the group’s exercises for both the Observer and perplexed passersby.

Some spectators were eager to jump into the fray, but in fencing, as in so many other things, timing is paramount. “After we go over the rules and footwork, it’s kind of dangerous to come in late,” explained Ms. Gelman, as she proffered a sign-up sheet for the following week. The Observer would have to sit this duel out.

“If he’s attack, I attack!” yelled Coach Andrew Lamianski in his charming Belarusian accent, demonstrating how one parries a sword attack to the head by swiftly thrusting his or her own saber into the opponent’s side.

Mr. Lamianski, who was wearing an almost, but not quite, matching Adidas track suit and color coordinated black and blue sneakers, looked exactly as The Observer thought a fencing coach should. A former member of the Belarusian national team, he moved lightly despite some middle-aged heft, deftly ducking between students’ swords to offer pointers and an occasional shoulder pat/“very, very good” or the less effusive, “alright”/approving nod.

Ms. Gelman told us that the uninitiated might think a sword is a sword is a sword. But this is not so.

There was the saber (the light swords in use today), the foil (next week’s lesson) and the épée “the heaviest one of all and it leaves the most black and blues, so it’s the least popular.”

An older French man came to inquire about the class. Did he want to sign up? asked Ms. Gelman. “Maybe next week,” the man declined gently. “When we are 10, 12 years old we used to play, we are watching the old movies with this.”

The man, who very politely refused to give his name, noting that years earlier he had been warned against speaking with journalists, particularly American ones, opined that it was “very very interesting. Today there are hardly any movies with this.”

He lost himself in memories of the swashbuckling silver screen for a moment, then perked up with a question, “The swords—they are real, no?”

“Quite real, but not sharp,” Ms. Gelman responded.

“But I don’t understand why it’s free and why they are doing this,” the man pressed in his Gallic purr. “There is an objective?”

“Because we’re the Olympic club and we’re right around the corner and no one has any idea we exist,” said Ms. Gelman, in a tone of bemused exasperation. “All of the Olympic men’s and women’s sabre teams train with our coaches.”

If they make the team, they come here to train? we wondered.

“The other way around,” she patiently corrected. “If they want to make the team, they come here to train with our coaches.”

The French man sipped his deep orange smoothie reflectively, “If I were younger,” he mused wistfully before wandering away.

Ms. Gelman, who did not seem the type to indulge in wistfulness, said that she used to fence, but no longer does.

“No time. I’m directing,” she explained matter-of-factly. "It’s really popular with adults now, but back when I did it, it was mostly children—parents were trying to get their kids a scholarship somewhere. St. John’s or Duke or Penn State..”

The list of places one could get a fencing scholarship went on and on. We were impressed.

Gathering the students in a circle, Mr. Lamianski demonstrated the gentlemanly structure of a bout (salute, attack, parry, hit, handshake) and recounted what, from the snippets we could catch, seemed to be an instructive (and uplifting? possibly even heartwarming?) anecdote about winning and the nature of competition. If not for the masks, we are sure we would have seen reflective, enlightened looks on the students' faces.

So who were these would-be warriors training on their lunch breaks? It was hard to tell.

Their heads and torsos were obscured by helmets and matching white jackets, leaving only legs and feet, a cross-section of New Yorkers' hindquarters: pinstriped trousers with shiny banker shoes, Converse and skinny jeans and, our favorite, the most fearsome of the fighters, a woman—the only woman—with buckled suede boots, leggings and a russet-colored braid that fell over one shoulder. Unlike the others, who slouched lazily when they rotated out of the pairs exercises, she practiced savage-looking attacks.

“Usually, we have more women than men because they’re the more adventurous ones, but not today,” Ms. Gelman said with a shrug. Otherwise, many of the club’s fencers were “children and Wall Street guys… they say it’s a great stress reliever and they think it helps them learn strategy.”

The hour passed in what seemed to be the blink of an eye. Soon the masks were tumbling off, revealing sweaty brows and red faces.

There were four fencers from HSBC’s I.T. department—“It’s an irregular activity. We figured it would be a nice way to spend the break,” said Nick Soukeras, he of the pinstriped pants and shiny shoes.

“I’m just visiting a friend in New York,” said the girl with the braided hair, Adrian Wittenberg. “I was wandering around yesterday and saw the sign.”

Alex Gray (jeans, converse, a handlebar—or was it a D'Artagnan?—mustache), said that his girlfriend read about the class online “and was like, you need to go!” ("I used to do a little fencing when I lived in North Carolina," Mr. Gray explained).

Watching Ms. Gelman and Mr. Lamianski zip the swords into large duffel bags, we felt a little sad. But fencers would soon return, jugglers and ping pong players, too, park operations assistant Sarah Xu assured us. In the summer, the park would even host the Swedish lawn game kubb.

Was anything too dangerous for Bryant Park?

Ms. Xu considered this for a moment. “We don’t allow jugglers to throw knives or anything" she said. "I think that would be too dangerous.”

kvelsey@observer.com

Nice curves. (Hines)

While it might not be as, uh, edgy as the Torre Verre, Hines unveiled another new Manhattan project today, one with a location even more enticing than next to MoMA. The Houston-based developer will construct a 28-story office tower at the corner of Sixth Avenue and 40th Street, across from Bryant Park.

It is only the latest stage in the park's transformation. Not only is there 'Wich Craft and movie in the park now, instead of muggers and drugs, but it is also lined some of the shiniest new baubles in the city, including the Dursts' eponymous tower and the recently reclad Verizon and HSBC buildings. And we still haven't gotten a look at the project Lord Norman Foster has planned for the Bryant Park Hotel.

As for this one, it is up to Hines' typically stachitecture-struck standards, featuring the work of Pei Cobb Freed principal Henry Cobb. His most recent marquee project was the new Goldman Sachs headquarters at 200 West Street downtown—a building this new one very much resembles, a cross between it and Durst's crystalline confection. Just like the latter, Hines' tower is all about the park, with concave corners that meet at a point, creating unique views of the greensward below.

The tower will be built on the shrowded site at left, kitty corner from the park. (Bing)

“The building was conceived in response to the extraordinary circumstance of its location at the corner of Bryant Park," Mr. Cobb said in a release. "The hourglass facade detail will be a lens through which building occupants can view the park with dramatic and alluring immediacy."

It will not have the pride of place on the skyline that One Bryant Park or the MoMA Tower do, rising to only 28 as-of-right stories, with 450,000 square feet inside. There is, of course, the usual LEED chasing, an unusual curved stainless steel orb at the entrance that serves as both a canopy and a sculptural piece, and two terraces at a setback overlooking the park. The project, built in partnership with Pacolet Milliken, which has owned the site since 1954, could begin construction as soon as next year and be completed by 2014.

The building plays deference to the park across the street. (Hines)

The developers seem to be following in the steps of 510 Madison, creating a boutique building aimed at flush clients but not corporations—your run of the mill hedge funds, law firms and fashion houses. "We are privileged to develop a project that combines such an exceptional location with a distinguished design," said Tommy Craig, Hines senior vice president in charge of the Tri-State region. "It will be a singular opportunity for mid-sized tenants in the midtown market."

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

Bird watching in Bryant Park. (Bryant Park Blog)

Notwithstanding the seemingly thousands of pigeons that have occupied Bryant Park, Manhattan is getting its first wild bird sanctuary.

The Wild Bird Fund will be an 800-square-foot roost for all manner of feathered friend at 565 Columbus Avenue, between 87th and 88th streets. 

“This will be a great location for them," Winick Realty’s Brian Tregerman in a statement. "Not only is the store close to Central Park, but it’s also on what’s becoming a very pet-oriented block, with the Center of Avian and Exotic Medicine and a pet store nearby.”

(We feel compelled to point out, however, that the world's most famous urban park is but a block or so away. Should the birds bust their cage, as it were, that could make for some serious avian watching for generations to come.)

Mr. Tregerman, along with Joseph Isa, represented both sides in the 10-year lease transaction.

lkusisto@observer.com

“[T]his year we are witnessing about a 20 percent increase in demand,” said Sar Inbar, one of three partners behind Upsilon Ventures.

Upsilon Ventures operates the Holiday Shops at the Pond at Bryant Park, and as the July 17 application deadline for vendors approaches, Mr. Inbar has noted a striking uptick, one that he largely attributes to the economy. “I think that the most important value factor that really drives vendors’ interest even more now is our business model,” Mr. Inbar said. “It eliminates a lot of the long-term factors.”

Mr. Inbar won’t have exact numbers until the application deadline, but last year, for 120 shops, Upsilon received 328 applications and more than 450 inquiries. It would make sense that in this buckling retail economy, this sort of set-up would attract businesses. For one, it's not a huge investment. Booths range in price from $10,000 to $27,500, depending on size and location.

“In this overall climate, where so many people have lost jobs and are looking for different outlets and avenues to make money, this provides an excellent opportunity,” agreed Cory Zelnik, of Zelnik & Co., a retail real estate brokerage, who is not involved in the market. “For businesses that exist, this allows them to make more money without a long-term commitment."

Eldon Scott, the president of U.S. operations for Urban Space Management, which operates the Columbus Circle and Union Square holiday markets, said his firm has noticed the same phenomenon, in this recession and in recessions past. In fact, there have been instances of shop owners closing their stores and still operating businesses at the seasonal fairs.

“This year we’ve seen that," Mr. Scott said. "The other thing we’ve seen is more people who may have been working on Wall Street or somewhere and have decided to follow an interest they have. We have a lot of people who will test an idea at a market. You’re guaranteed traffic. And you get your product and idea in front of a lot of people without having a major committment in terms of real estate."

As Mr. Zelnik put it, "It’s extra business without a tremendous cost.”

drubinstein@observer.com

The seventh annual series (subject to change) follows:

Developers filed plans on Friday for the View at Bryant Park, a good year after the Landmarks Preservation Commission approved designs for a 31-story cloud-buster at 20 West 40th Street. The site has since had to go through ULURP, the city's land-use review.

John Porges, one of the developers, said construction will begin this August on what is being billed as New York City's first, five-star green hotel.

The Starwood Capital 1 hotel, designed by Morris Adjmi Architects, will reportedly have 150 hotel rooms and 64 condos.

Starwood Capital announced plans last year to launch a new chain of LEED-certified hotels, dubbed "1," because one percent of all revenues will be donated to local environmental groups. The Natural Resources Defense Council is an adviser on the project.

According to the New York City Economic Development Corporation, the Port Authority is one of many possible locations under consideration, but a deal to move the bi-weekly fashion shows to the grungy midtown bus terminal is nowhere near being finalized.

"Fashion Week is a vital asset to New York City and we are working expeditiously with IMG and the fashion industry to find a suitable new home,” said Patrick Murphy, the head of fashion/retail industry growth initiatives at the NYEDC. “The reports of an imminent or scuttled deal to move to the Port Authority Bus Terminal were erroneous.”

It is no secret that Fashion Week is persona non grata at Bryant Park and the contract with the company that hosts the event, IMG, expires in 2010. The EDC would not specify the other potential venues in the running, but The New York Daily News wrote in March that one long-term solution on the table is relocating Fashion Week to somewhere on the redeveloped West Side rail yards.