Magazine Says: \'Eat, Drink and Be Fashionable\'

By STUART ELLIOTT

A food magazine is expanding its forays into the garment game with an elaborate promotion for the annual New York Fashion Week.

The magazine, Bon Appétit, is adding elements to the Fashion Week promotion it began last year, called Feast or Fashion, promising this time around, “Fashion all day, food all night.”

For this year's Fashion Week, the promotion will begin next Friday and run through Sept. 13. (Fashion Week, formally known as Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week, begins next Thursday and runs through Sept. 13.)

More restaurants will participate in Bon Appétit Feast or Fashion than did last year, with the count climbing to about 45 from 10 or so. And eateries in cities outside New York will also take part.

There will also be more events, which will pair clothing designers with chefs and bartenders.

The magazine is also lining up more sponsors for the promotion than participated last year. The majo r sponsor for 2012, called the presenting sponsor, are the Chase Sapphire credit cards offered by JPMorgan Chase.

The other sponsors include Bombay Sapphire Gin, the Euphoria Calvin Klein fragrance, Hilton Hotels and Resorts, Elizabeth Arden, Santa Margherita wines and Seagram's seltzer water. (The twin Sapphires are apparently a coincidence.)

Information about the promotion will be available on the Web site, bafeastorfashion.com.

Bon Appétit has been actively seeking to tie itself to fashion for some time. Other recent examples include a joint promotion with Open Table and a Gap Inc. division, Banana Republic, to help sell a new Banana Republic clothing collection named Desk to Dinner.  (Open Table will be involved in Feast or Fashion, too.)

The idea behind the promotion is that “one tenth of 1 percent of the people” in New York for Fashion Week “get to go to the shows,” said Pamela Drucker Mann, vice pres ident and publisher at Bon Appétit, which is part of the Condé Nast Publications division of Advance Publications.

“What's everyone else doing?” she asked, then offered a reply: “Going out to dinner.”

“People can go to the restaurants by making reservations through Open Table,” Ms. Drucker Mann said, “and our staff will be outside the Fashion Week tents with iPads, making reservations on your behalf.”

“It's kind of ‘stunt-y,' ” she added, “but it's cool and fun.”

There will be advertising to help generate interest in Feast or Fashion, using social media that include Facebook, Instagram and Twitter as well as the magazine's Web site, bonappetit.com, and an ad in the magazine.