Incubators Are Back — And Good Thing, Because Fashion Really Needs Them

When the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) announced its Fashion Incubator in 2009, it was with the intention to create a blue-chip support system for the next generation of American designers. For nearly a decade, the initiative handpicked fledgling labels to complete a two-year residency program, offering mentorship opportunities, business advice, and perhaps most alluringly, subsidized studio space in Manhattan’s Garment District. By 2017, as its fourth and final class was on its way out, the program itself was ending, too, and in 2018, the CFDA rebooted its accelerator model into a more democratized digital platform called “The Network,” open to all active CFDA members. Today, some of the CFDA’s Fashion Incubator designers have become bona fide industry leaders in their own right. Read more at Fashionista.