You know, they've never done this before, ... They do it with the 'serious' arts. When we went to the American Academy and we threw this idea up, [fashion] was not on their radar screen. They were not thinking of fashion as something that was up in the league with the antiques, urban studies, and architecture, and poetry - the classics. But somehow, today, fashion has really morphed into something much bigger than it was. With fashion, because there's so much immediacy, and our shows are so globally broadcast, it may be the most immediate visual manifestation of the zeitgeist.

Michael Burke