Milk Studios to leave Meatpacking

Milk Studios, a major hub for the fashion industry in Manhattan, will be leaving the Meatpacking District. Milk Studios and all of its enterprises will be packing up and leaving its 450 West 15th Street headquarters where it has been since 1998. The venue was known for fashion photoshoots, runway shows, and fashion parties. The news was reported by Business of Fashion.

In May, Google acquired the Milk building in an effort to find more space near their Chelsea headquarters. This gave Milk Studios the opportunity to exit their lease five years before it was set to expire, and they will now be exiting the building on July 1, 2020. Their goal is to find a new location to facilitate larger scale productions.

Milk is already at work on finding a new location that will likely be in Brooklyn where most of their employees live and where they have a space in Williamsburg. About 20 staff members are expected to be cut from Milk, mainly from the events division, but Milk plans to rehire them once they have a new location. Milk Makeup, the company's cosmetics brand, will be moving their offices elsewhere in Meatpacking.

Milk Studios was also the popular site of Made Fashion Week, which gave free show space to emerging young designers and helped catapult the careers of designers like Jeremy Scott and Joseph Altuzarra. Fashion is losing one of its most beloved venues, but to Brooklyn it might go.