Fashion Avenue NYC

Part of Seventh Avenue in New York City is also called Fashion Avenue — not as a nickname, but as a name that appears on the street signs themselves. The section runs through the Garment District, and it earned the name from its role as a centre of the garment and fashion industry and from the designers who established New York as a world fashion capital.

Where Fashion Avenue Is

The Garment District stretches from 12th Avenue to 5th Avenue and from 34th Street to 39th Street, and the Fashion Avenue portion of Seventh Avenue runs through it. The first, temporary signs designating the section of Seventh Avenue as “Fashion Avenue” were dual-posted in 1972, with permanent signs added over the ensuing years. The name is sometimes abbreviated “Fashion Ave”, and the United States Postal Service delivers mail using either street name — Seventh Avenue or Fashion Avenue addresses reach the same buildings.

For a visitor, the map link on this page traces the avenue, and the surrounding blocks explain the name better than the sign does: showrooms, fabric and trim suppliers, pattern services and the factories and contractors that historically made New York a place where clothing was not only designed and sold but physically produced. The garment district definition linked below gives the neighbourhood's background.

Fashion Avenue and the Fashion District

Fashion Avenue is a street; the Fashion District is the neighbourhood around it, and the two summaries on this site divide the subject that way. The fashion district NYC summary covers the Garment District as a working district — its boundaries, its suppliers and its present-day industry — while this page covers the named avenue itself. Readers researching the wider New York industry can continue to the New York fashion industry guide, which places both in the context of the city's clothing trade, including its sewing factories.

The naming itself is a piece of industry history. Cities do not dual-sign streets for industries that do not matter to them: the 1972 signs formalised what the trade already called the avenue, at a time when the surrounding blocks held one of the densest concentrations of clothing production in the world. The signs remain, and so does a working garment district, even as the industry around it has changed.

Visiting Fashion Avenue

Fashion Avenue rewards a walk rather than a drive-by. The blocks around it hold the suppliers the district is known for — fabric, trim and notion shops, sample services and showrooms — and the street signs themselves are the photo most visitors take. Combine the avenue with the wider district: the fashion district NYC summary covers the surrounding streets, and the New York fashion industry guide gives the trade context for what you are seeing. Weekdays show the district working; weekends show it quieter, with retail-facing shops still open for visiting designers and students.