Meet the agency behind some of the biggest sets at Fashion Week

The future of fashion production, according to Dominic Kaffka, is adaptability.

For the creative director and executive producer of event creative and production agency Focus Grp, that means constantly reimagining what a live show looks and feels like. The agency is responsible for grand activations and sets at global fashion and retail events—including New York Fashion Week.

Kaffka said he believes that regardless of a shifting economic and political climate, the need for “live moments” is here to stay. While he admits that event producers need to constantly innovate on the job, he said “that live experience you cannot replace with an AR or a piece of content.”

It’s why at NYFW last month, the company was hired to produce six runway shows, including for top designers and fashion houses such as Jason Wu, Grace Ling, and Toteme.

Flash in the plan: Each show, Kaffka said, starts with its own creative DNA—often six months before showtime.

“We worked with Jason Wu and the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation on his show the other week, and that process started in February this year,” he told Retail Brew, adding that the company had access to original artwork from Rauschenberg, which it incorporated into the set for the runway show. The result was “part runway, part retrospective, part museum exhibit,” according to Focus Grp.

Likewise, for Swedish luxury retailer Toteme, Kaffka and his team built a custom set at “The Pool,” an event venue at the Seagram building in Manhattan.

“It was really about creating something customized for the room, with custom fabrics, custom carpets, custom benches—everything was custom made for a nine-minute show,” he said. “It was such an intimate show.”

While it may seem like once the process is in motion, these shows and events come together rather quickly, Kaffka said there are many moving pieces. Coordinating lighting designers, set builders, and other creative specialists is a production feat in itself.

“That’s really what our role is,” he said. “It’s a little bit like a conductor of an orchestra that changes every day.”

Vision hero: Of course, the final outcome has to align with the designer’s vision. In the case of Wu, for instance, Kaffka said the process involved daily calls for weeks with the designer.

He said the company starts with “very detailed” briefing, creative and brainstorming calls, “so all our clients are working very closely with us on a weekly or bi-weekly basis—video calls, mostly,” he said. “Then [there are] in-person site visits in the show locations once you’re closer to the actual show date.”

Lately, Kaffka said, what has made the job more complex is trying to find non-traditional venues. “It’s like designers, or especially the fashion industry people, always want to get something that others can’t have,” he said.

He cites the example of Toteme again, whose September 2024 show took place inside the Solow Building, “the most exclusive office building in the world” where “no one ever before had done any event,” Kaffka told us.

“Our clients always come to us [saying,] ‘Do you have any venues? Do you have a space where no one ever brought the fashion crowd?’ That’s super important,” he added.

That hankering for novelty, or doing something no one else has done, has become part of the culture of fashion events, where the right venue can help spark a viral TikTok moment.

“A lot of brands are really not creating the show just for the purpose of doing an eight- or 10-minute show,” Kaffka said. “[But] because the content goes so viral and it lives online so much longer, really the return of investment you’re getting building an elaborate set or finding a really unique venue pays off because it lives online, and you reach so many more people if you do something very unique or special.”