Who's Next describes itself with two words you don't often see together: business and emotion. A trade show is a marketplace, thousands of people there to buy and sell. It's also a long, human day, and the two run closer than they sound.
I've spent a lot of days on that floor. Here's what one actually feels like, from the empty hall in the morning to the tired walk out at night.
Before the doors
It starts early, in a quiet hall. The lights are up, the coffee carts are warming, and the aisles are empty in a way they won't be again all day.
You finish the stand. You straighten the rack you already straightened twice. You lay out the linesheets, check the prices one more time, and put your phone away. The collection took months. The stand took a season of planning. And now there's nothing left to do but open.
There's a particular kind of nerves in that last quiet half hour. Not fear, exactly. More like the held breath before a season starts. Every brand on the floor feels some version of it, the famous ones too.
The doors open
Then the doors open, and the hall changes temperature. Buyers come in with badges and totes and a plan. Some walk straight past, eyes already on a stand three rows down. That's fine. You're not for everyone, and the ones who aren't for you walking by quickly is its own small mercy.
The first one who stops changes the morning. They pick up a piece, turn it over, ask the price and the minimum. You answer in one clean number because you came ready. They nod, take a card, say they'll come back. Maybe they do, maybe they don't. But the day has started, and you're in it now.
You learn to read people fast. The buyer who lingers on the fabric is different from the one scanning for a price tag, and different again from the journalist taking a photo for later. You adjust in seconds, a longer answer here, a quick one there. By the second hour it's instinct, and you've stopped noticing your own nerves.
The floor at full tilt
By late morning the hall is full. Who's Next runs around 38,000 visitors an edition, and roughly seven in ten are buyers (more on the show here). On a good aisle you feel it: a steady stream, the click of the floor, conversations layered over each other in a dozen languages.
This is the business part, and it's relentless in a good way. A linesheet open on the table. A buyer from a department store you've read about for years, suddenly standing in front of your rack, asking about delivery dates. An order taken. Then another conversation, and another, until you've lost track of the time and your voice is starting to go.
The named accounts walk these aisles, Galeries Lafayette, Le Bon Marché, Selfridges, Isetan, the buyers who shape what a whole city wears next season. The crowd is genuinely global: buyers and exhibitors from every continent, badges from countries you'd struggle to find on a map. You won't meet all of them. You only need a few of the right ones.
Finding your way: the sectors
The hall is huge, so it's built as a map. Who's Next is laid out in sectors, so buyers walk straight to what they came for, and so do you when you step off your stand. The floor runs across:
- Ready-to-wear
- Textile accessories
- Bags and leather goods
- Shoes
- Jewellery
- Beauty and wellness
- Resort and swimwear
- Lifestyle
- Ethical fashion
- Youth creation, for the newest names
You learn the geography by the second day: where your buyers cluster, which aisle runs hot, where to point someone looking for a category you don't carry.
Between meetings
When the rush eases, you can step away from the stand. Who's Next runs talks, masterclasses and trend forums through the day, and twenty minutes listening to where next season is heading can change how you pitch your own rack that afternoon.
And it isn't only stands and meetings. There are animations across the floor, performances, workshops, beauty activations, and food trucks for when you finally get a break and need something that isn't a stand snack. There's more of the season a few halls over too, jewellery at Bijorhca, materials at Interfilière, home and gift at Shoppe Object. You wander a little, you see what's coming, and you come back to your stand with fresh eyes. The show feeds you as much as it sells for you.
And then the emotion
Here's the part the spreadsheets miss.
Somewhere in that day, a buyer you quietly admire stops at your stand and gets it. Not politely. They understand what you were trying to do, and they say so. After months of doubting whether the collection would land, someone with a trained eye tells you it does. That lands somewhere deeper than a sale.
There's the rest of it too. The brand next door you keep chatting to between buyers. The designer two stands down whose work makes you want to be sharper next season. The agent who introduces you to a buyer you'd never have reached. A trade show is a roomful of people who chose the same hard, strange business you did, all in one place for three days. That's rare, and it's good for you in ways that don't show up in the order book.
The quiet hour
Every day has a lull. Usually mid-afternoon, the floor thins, the energy dips, and the temptation is to sit down, eat at the stand, and check your phone.
Don't. The buyer who walks up at 4pm on a quiet day might be the account that makes your season, and they can read a tired, closed stand from across the aisle. Stay up, stay open, stay human. We wrote a whole piece on that, the do's and don'ts of a trade show, because the quiet hour is where a lot of orders are quietly lost.
From 5pm: the floor loosens
Around five, the register slows and the champagne bars open. The tone of the whole floor changes. Buyers who rushed past at noon now linger, a glass in hand, and the talk turns from prices and minimums to where you're from, what you're working on, who you both know. A lot of the real relationship-building happens in this hour, when nobody's in a hurry.
After 7pm: networking and the party
After seven it moves off the stands entirely. There's networking, and there's a party. Deals get sealed over a drink as often as over a linesheet, and the buyer who was non-committal at three is suddenly telling you, warmly, that they'll place the order. This is the emotion the show is named for, and it's quietly business too. The brands and buyers you share a drink with in September are the relationships that carry into next season.
The walk out
Eventually you do leave, later than you planned, tired in the good way. The selling hours wear you down, the evening picks you back up, and somewhere in there the day stopped feeling like work.
The part that pays off comes after: the list of who to follow up with, what they asked for, which pieces every buyer reached for and which nobody touched. Most orders close in the week after the show, not on the floor, so the version of you that writes it all down clearly is doing the next version a real favour.
Then you step out into the Paris night, a little hollow, a little proud. A long day, and a good one.
Why the two belong together
The business runs on the emotion. A buyer writes the order because something connected, with the product, and with the person standing behind it. The numbers are real, 38,000 visitors, 1,200 brands, buyers from 125 countries, but they move through handshakes and eye contact and a piece picked up off a rack.
That's what Who's Next means by business and emotion. Spend a day there and you stop seeing them as two things.
This is the day we prepare our brands for, and the floor we put them on. The next edition is 5 to 7 September 2026 at Porte de Versailles. If you want to be on it, read more about Who's Next, then apply here or book a 30-minute call.