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While there were other fashion-footwear organizations before it, the Fashion Footwear Association of New York is the gold standard. At 25 years old, it is also now the silver standard.
From day one, FFANY has worked diligently to make New York the premier fashion-footwear destination for retail buyers in the U.S. The association also has long mined the "shoe-business-as-show-business" angle, whether by hosting important networking parties, its famed Fashion Medal of Honor events or Shoes on Sale, the annual breast-cancer-research benefit launched to great acclaim in 1994. It remains an industry-galvanizing event that is perhaps FFANY's greatest legacy.
Over the course of its 25-year history, FFANY's multipronged approach has been instrumental in cementing New York's identity as a global fashion capital while advancing a serious philanthropic commitment, whether raising funds for breast cancer or AIDS research or to construct a children's hospital in the Middle East. Along the way, the association has promoted the fashion-footwear industry through various scholarship programs, seminars and fashion shows and has hosted soirees at venues as varied as the St. Regis Hotel, Carnegie Hall, the Museum of Natural History and Central Park. It has attracted industry legends, political powerbrokers and some of the entertainment industry's biggest names.
But before all of this -- and in stark contrast to today's global, on-demand, Blackberry-fied market -- there was a small group of New York-based designer brands simply looking to woo buyers.
FFORMING FFANY
During a recent interview with Footwear News, FFANY President Emeritus Dick Jacobson recalled the period leading up to FFANY's inception. According to Jacobson, who was president of FFANY for 19 years until his retirement in 1998, after which Joe Moore took over the reins, retailers were growing tired of a disjointed market approach.
"I remember calling Bruce Nordstrom [in the late 1970s] about coming up to New York to see Nina," said Jacobson, who was the brand's EVP at the time. "He said, `Dick, we'd like to come in, but we're invited next week and the week after. Why don't you guys get your act together?'
"So we began to talk about having a united front when these buyers came in, to make it convenient, make it the same week," Jacobson continued, speaking from his home in Palm...