During the major four fashion weeks, BoF employs a small team led by editor-at-large Tim Blanks to review the runway shows and presentations we believe will be of interest to our community. There are no hard-and-fast rules about who we review and who we don't, although our tightly edited selection does include those who are moving the fashion conversation forward. In short, it's all about relevance and what we think our community is genuinely interested in reading.

Over the course of the past year, one thing became increasingly clear: devoting time to individually reviewing the majority of pre-collections doesn’t serve the interests of our community.

To be sure, the financial impact of the Pre-Fall season, which is currently underway, is critical for ready-to-wear brands. Pre-Fall collections remain on the sales floor from June or July through December — longer than any other season — and are therefore not marked down as quickly. Of course, they are also the most commercial of collections.

Devoting time to individually reviewing the majority of pre-collections doesn't serve the interests of our community.

For that reason alone, writing critical reviews of pre-collections — which are often derivative of the big ideas brought forth in the Spring/Summer and Autumn/Winter shows — seems unnecessary. And while the dialogue between designer and reviewer is important to continue throughout the year, it is perhaps unfair to judge these collections in the same way that we do the main collections.

What’s more, some designers are holding back images of their pre-collections until the wares arrive in stores, leaving publications to decide between covering these collections without imagery or waiting several months to publish their reviews. For trade publications, which aim to provide feedback to both designers and the industry that buys, sells, distributes and markets the clothes, this is too late in the cycle to be of any use.

Does this mean we will ignore the Pre-Fall and Resort seasons altogether? No. We will continue to post collection images, as we hope this will contribute to the building of a useful visual library for creative professionals and students. We will also cover newsworthy pre-collections — such as the Chanel Métiers d'Art collection that was shown on Tuesday and Coach's upcoming Pre-Fall and men's shows — as they often tell a bigger story about a brand beyond the clothes alone. In sum, we will do what makes sense for our community. Right now, that does not include deep coverage of Pre-Fall.

BoF has designed a new feature, enabling fashion houses and PR agencies to manage the uploading of Pre-Fall and Resort collection images on to the BoFW platform. To sign up to this feature and discover more, click here.