We visited Capsule Show and Axis Show, held in the same hall at Pier 94 yesterday through tomorrow, and here you will find highlights from our floor walk. Capsule is an established show that holds a dozen or so men’s and women’s events globally. This particular show was for retailers shopping for their female customer base and it offered a mix of apparel, footwear, accessories and beauty supplies.
This was Axis’s first ever show and like all the trades it already has its signature signage in the form of giant mirrored letters that spell out the show’s name. While Capsule and Axis are both owned by Reed Exhibitions (thus the sharing of entry and space), Axis is actually the women’s counter part to Agenda. [Update: According to a show organizer who reached out after this was posted, Agenda is in no way connected to and is a completely separate event from Axis, whose target customer is young contemporary.] It is not, however, a female version of Agenda, which is all about skate and streetwear and has a decidedly bro lean to it. Axis includes brands like Stussy and Blackscale, yes, but overall the feel of the show is more edgy and young contemporary. Really it makes sense to brand it under a different name because there are so few true female streetwear brands (Married to the Mob, Hellz and Dimepiece are about it) though clearly many of the brands in the section clearly have been influenced by streetwear.
Walking the floor it’s clear that Axis is filling a space on the New York trade show scene that was lacking. Coterie was too serious, and Capsule’s brands while edgy in their own right, are priced for a higher income customer. In many ways it’s Pool but a 2.0 version, in that it’s a touch more serious and not so artsy. That could of course be in part the aura of its location in New York City, which makes everything thing feel more intense. Check all our images below, all snapped by Lois Sakany for TheSnobette.
