Nestled between two runways at the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week tent at Lincoln Center, the American Express Skybox is an ideal place to catch a show or two. In between Custo Barcelona and DVF, AmEx card members had the pleasure of listening to a Q&A with CFDA CEO Steven Kolb. Before he dashed off to the DVF show, in amazing studded Louboutins, Steven chatted about Impact, the first museum exhibit to celebrate the CFDA:

“What’s great about this exhibit is that it has 70 American designers starting with Donald Brooks in 1962, Pauline Trigère, Arnold Scaasi, and it takes the visitor through five decades of fashion right up to Alexander Wang and Proenza Schouler. When we were coming up with this concept to celebrate our anniversary and we decided to do an exhibit, I was meeting with the president of the CFDA, Diane von Furstenberg, whose show you’re going to watch in a few minutes. We were just kind of talking about what the exhibit should be and she said, ”It needs to be impactful and important. Really impactful… I want to make an imact.” and she said “Ah, that’s what we’re going to call it. Impact.” and that’s how we came up with the name. It really represents American fashion. One thing that is interesting about fashion in New York compared to Milan, Paris, or London is that we’re often criticized for being too comercial; for selling clothes. But really, the true test of selling success is selling clothes, that’s why you want to make clothes. And you can see the evolution of fashion over the course of these 50 years in a real balance of creativity and commerce.”

Last Thursday, to kick off the first day of fashion week, Anna Wintour, Kate Winslet, Tommy Hilfiger, Zac Posen, Betsey Johnson, and more gathered to celebrate the opening. This exhibit is not to be missed – catch it at The Museum at FIT.