New York Fashion Week 2019 Backstage Photos: Stylists, Models, Hair and Makeup at NYFW

The digital landscape has changed the way we consume fashion—brands can now design, shoot, advertise and sell looks in an increasingly shrinking period of time, and micro-trends come and go in a flash.

The lumbering biannual behemoth of New York Fashion Week (NYFW) should feel irrelevant, but it still retains all the excitement of its first outing in 1943. NYFW now seems more attainable and interactive than ever before—live streams and Instagrammers mean anyone can witness the exclusive event, which remains largely invite-only in person. The event feels like a centering presence in a fashion world that is fracturing and evolving at a frenetic pace.

From the painstaking backstage preparations to the glossy hoopla of the front row, all the trappings of NYFW mean it's still one of the fashion world's most exciting annual events. It's big money too—a 2012 analysis by the New York City Economic Development Corporation found fashion week earns the city $887 million a year.

This year is no different. Established fashion houses Tom Ford, Marc Jacobs and Ralph Lauren are showing alongside avant-garde labels like Telfar and Vaquera. IMG, which hosts over half of the official schedule, expects almost 48,000 visitors to pile into Spring Studios, NYFW's main venue. The official schedule contains 138 shows, presentations and private appointments.

NYFW kicks off a month of global fashion weeks—London will pick up the bejeweled baton next, followed by Milan and Paris. Each of the big four Fashion Weeks has its own flavor—New York is glitzy and forward-thinking, London is edgier, Milan is high glam and Paris is classic, heritage chic.

This year, NYFW kicked off with the amfAR Gala, attended by the likes of Kim Kardashian West and Heidi Klum. The week's first stunt happened on Thursday, when fashion house Ralph Lauren invited the fashion elite to breakfast at their Upper East Side shop—Karlie Kloss and Rosie Huntington-Whiteley were in attendance.

If the catwalks and galas are the glossy surface of Fashion Week, backstage is where the nuts and bolts of pure fashion production are on display. The world's best models, stylists and makeup artists gather to create the front-of-house glamor, which veers from genuinely wearable looks to flights of creative fantasy. These are the best backstage pictures from NYFW19 so far.