Première Vision Paris: attendance drops 8.3 percent

The latest edition of biannual fashion trade show Première Vision Paris, held between September 19 and 21, saw an 8.3 percent drop in the number of visitors compared to September 2017. Nearly 55,500 people from 124 countries attended the fair last month -- roughly the same number as the September 2016 edition.

Organizers attributed the drop to the fair’s proximity to Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year in Judaism. “The overlap of Yom Kippur with Première Vision Paris, due to which the dates of the show had been shifted to run from Wednesday to Friday, particularly impacted attendance”, reads a report published on Première Vision Paris’ website.

Most visitors (over 15,000) were French, followed by European counterparts. In total, 72 percent of visitorship was European, with Italy and the United Kingdom leading the way with 11 percent and 7 percent of the attendance, respectively. Première Vision Paris is also particularly popular among the Chinese: over 3100 visitors came from China.

The number of North American visitors declined slightly to 2,269 visitors, of which 1,918 came from the United States. The fair also experienced a significant drop in visitors from Turkey, where nearly 6 percent of all visitors came from. Despite being a key country in the sector, Turkey’s economic and monetary problems may have caused fashion professionals to drop their trip to Paris.

The next edition of Première Vision Paris will be held from February 12-14.