MANHATTAN - Fashionistas can prepare to be seriously pampered this year during the city's annual Fashion's Night Out.
For shoppers planning an overnight stay, more than 30 hotels are offering deluxe packages crafted for Fashion's Night Out, including incentives such as a personal hairstylist and tickets to the coveted runway shows at the Mercedes Benz Fashion Show.
The evening, on Sept.8, kicks off Fashion Week.
"The fun thing about these exclusive packages is that they give visitors a glimpse of New York City’s glamorous side,” said Kimberly Spell, chief spokesperson for the city's NYC & Co., the city's tourism organization.
“From personal assistants, to private cars for Fashion's Night Out events, to fashion shows and after-party access, hotel guests will think they are New Yorkers, if only for a night.”
This is the second year that hotels like the Hilton New York Fashion District and the Ritz-Carlton New York will cater to the city's night of looking and feeling fabulous.
In its third year, Fashion's Night Out will see more than 1,000 participants open their doors until late at night, while celebrities come out to model, deejay and even sing show tunes to customers at stores as affordable as Macy's and as high-end as Oscar de la Renta.
This year, visitors will the chance to get exclusive access to the ritziest side of New York, including the keys to a chauffeur-driven Maserati from the Setai Fifth Avenue, VIP access to NYC celebrity nightclub Tenjune and a personal portrait by a fashion photographer at any of the W Hotels in Midtown, Union Square or Downtown.
Other Fashion's Night Out hotel offerings include complimentary cocktails, dinners, spa treatments, access to style consultants, shopping discounts, deals on rooms and more.
The package prices range from hundreds of dollars to thousands.
The partnership between the hotels and NYC & Co. was started as a way to further boost the fashion and retail industry's economic impact. The initiative was extremely popular last year, with each hotel seeing an average of up to 89 percent occupancy, the company's CEO George Fertitta said.
It's "an important event that contributes to the vitality of NYC’s economy," Fertitta said. "These unique hotel packages are just one more way and more reason to visit New York City — the world’s fashion capital — for a unique evening of late-night shopping and fun.”
The hotel packages are as much a perk for shoppers as they are a draw for the city, which relies heavily on the dollars of the fashion-forward shoppers that flock here each year, Fertitta added.
All in all, the city is home to over 900 fashion companies, which employ 165,000 people, account for 5.5 percent of the city's workforce and pay about $9 billion in wages in a year.
Plus, all the pampering "puts the fun back in shopping," a spokesperson for NYC & Company added.
The hotel packages can be booked starting Aug. 15 and are available until Sep. 30. To see a complete list of participating hotels and their deals visit the NYC & Company website.
