Fashion Forward, a private, invitation-only “cultural house,” had its inaugural dinner in New York City last week.
Organizers said it marked the first physical gathering of a community “designed to bring fashion into conversation with the wider cultural forces shaping it.”
Fashion Forward was co-founded by Jordana Guimaraes, who serves as chief curator, and Christopher Hunt, who is the creative director. Guimaraes and Hunt built the group on the premise that fashion does not evolve in isolation. “It responds to art, business, media, education, film, sport, philosophy and the wider culture surrounding it,” they said.
Fashion Forward is an interdisciplinary ecosystem that connects leaders and thinkers across those various areas and disciplines. “Rather than building its programming around traditional industry panels or large-scale conferences, Fashion Forward is centered on a different model: intimate rooms, deliberately intersecting perspectives and conversations intended to continue beyond the event itself,” Guimaraes and Hunt said in a statement, adding that last week’s dinner “brought that concept to life.”
The event was hosted in partnership with Prive New York and brought together around 30 leaders and cultural voices—all distinct and all around a single table.
Attendees included Leonardo Lawson, founder of Bond Creative Management and a leader behind Vfiles’ FIFA 1904 fashion initiative; Rohit Burman, senior vice president of sustainability at PVH; Luisa Herrera Garcia, senior vice president of production at Alexander Wang; Matt Kaden, co-CEO of IceCream and Billionaire Boys Club; Karin Satrom, creative director at The Metropolitan Opera; Pandora Amoratis, former style director at the Daily Mail; Liza Carbajo, senior consultant, global engagement and strategic partnerships at Istituto Marangoni Miami; Timo Weiland, investor and designer; Brian Alessandro, writer and filmmaker; artists Jason Naylor and Daniel Acero; and fashion designer and Project Runway alumnus Jason Troisi; among others that included industry executives, designers, academics and other cultural voices.
The mix of attendees was intentional, Guimaraes and Hunt said, noting that fashion executives sat alongside artists and business leaders alongside filmmakers, while academia sat alongside the media.
The evening began with “Opening the Table,” which is Fashion Forward’s in-person conversation series that featured Dale Noelle, founder of True, and Guimaraes for conversation titled “Evolution.”
“Using the evolution of the modeling industry as its starting point, the discussion explored the forces that have transformed the business, the human implications of that transformation and what may come next,” organizers said in a statement, noting that the discussion extended beyond modeling, and turned to a broader question facing nearly every creative and cultural industry: “How do industries move forward while determining what should change, what should remain and where people fit within that transformation?”
Guimaraes said, “We didn’t want our first dinner to be about telling people what the future looks like. We wanted to put people with very different experiences around one table and give them a reason to question it together. The most interesting thing was watching the conversation continue long after the formal discussion had ended.”
Organizers said the evening also established art as a physical part of the evolving cultural house with a piece by contemporary artist Daniel Acero. “Constructed with intricate wood detailing, the work features an infinity symbol at its center—representing continual evolution, connection and the idea that neither culture nor creative thought has a fixed endpoint.”
Hunt said Fashion Forward was never intended to exist only within fashion. “Culture is shaped when different worlds meet,” Hunt explained. “Art, film, sport, business, philosophy, media and fashion influence one another constantly. We want the house to create space for those intersections to happen intentionally.”
In between the dinners, Fashion Forward operates year-round via Digital House, where members can participate in conversations and editorial programming as well as participate in cross-disciplinary exchanges that are independent of geography.