More than a century ago, the Vanderbilt family helped shape Grand Central Terminal — the Beaux-Arts landmark that still anchors Midtown Manhattan. On Tuesday night, the family name came home.
Consuelo Vanderbilt Costin and Michaela Seewald chose the terminal’s Vanderbilt Hall for the New York Fashion Week debut of their new venture, Vanderbilt & Seewald Global Studio. Before a packed audience, with the hall’s chandeliers overhead, Costin brought the Vanderbilt name back to the building her family helped create.
The past was literally present. AEXA Technology supplied holograms of four figures from the family story — Cornelius Vanderbilt, the railroad and shipping magnate whose fortune built the legacy; Alva Vanderbilt, the Gilded Age hostess and suffragist; Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, the sculptor and patron who founded the Whitney Museum; and Consuelo Vanderbilt Balsan, the duchess whose name Costin carries. They watched over a runway showing the work of designers from Mexico, Sweden and France.
That continuity is the point of the venture. V&S Global Studio pairs investment, strategic guidance, media, technology and direct-to-consumer commerce to help international designers build an American and global presence — while keeping their ownership, creative control and brand identity. It is, in its way, a very Vanderbilt proposition: build the infrastructure, then let others travel on it.
Costin is the founder and chief executive of House of Vanderbilt and a co-founder of SohoMuse. Seewald, her partner in the venture, is the founder and chief executive of V24 Media.
For the designers, the appeal is practical as well as symbolic: capital, strategic guidance and a direct route to American shoppers, without surrendering the companies they built.
The debut’s three designers each carried their own heritage onto the runway. Lorena Saravia draws on Mexican craftsmanship, reworked with a modern luxury hand. Dustin Glickman of DSTN brought Stockholm’s “dark cowboy” aesthetic across the Atlantic. Nabil Hayari of Hayari Paris represented the couture tradition of Paris — a city where the Vanderbilt name also left its mark.
Mario Lopez emceed the evening, which opened with a joint US Army and US Navy color guard — fitting, with the United States approaching its 250th anniversary — and a musical performance by Leslie Ann Lopez. Livestream e-commerce and Click-to-Buy technology let viewers everywhere purchase looks as they appeared.
And in a break with fashion-week tradition, the show started on time — a small courtesy, perhaps, from a family that once ran its empire on railroad schedules.
More on the venture is available at vsglobalstudio.com.
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