As couture-clad leggy models slink down the runway this week at the annual Seventh on Sixth fashion show in New York, some other folks will be slinking their way to the bank—and not just the fashion houses hoping to get in on the $180 billion U.S. consumer-apparel market. Those who will also cash in include the backers of this increasingly high-profile, not to mention increasingly mainstream, spectacle.

Seventh on Sixth is part of a growing industry in itself. The event, as well as fashion weeks everywhere, has become bigger than just the business of buying and selling clothes, and the people who run fashion weeks are thinking bigger than New York or Paris runways. They’ve turned organizing shows into a profitable business, and are trying to bring fashion exhibitions in line with other forms of entertainment, such as sports and film.

Today, the events, managed by talent agency IMG, are profitable, sponsored, expensive to be in, expensive to attend, and spinning off into new locations around the globe. Forget the frocks and flocks of fashion editors; fashion week itself is a budding big business.

“There are cities and countries all over the word calling,” says Fern Mallis, vice president of fashion at IMG. Besides the well-known Paris and New York shows, IMG has either produced, bought, launched, or sold sponsorship for fashion weeks in Los Angeles; Miami; Sydney; Singapore; Lakmi, India; London; Hong Kong; Mexico City; and Moscow, as well as the more obscure fashion haunts of San Francisco, Dallas, and Houston. Mallis won’t reveal its total revenue is on the events, but says its fashion division is “growing fast.”

It’s a young business. Until 1991, New York’s designers were left to do their own thing. But that year, the ceiling of the Michael Kors showroom came down on fashion journalist Suzy Menkes’ head and the Council of Fashion Designers of America decided it would be better if it took charge. That November, CFDA rented a space in the Hotel Macklowe and asked designers to show there. Starting price for a small designer was $1,300—a pittance considering that then, at the apex of the supermodel age, it was said that Calvin Klein spent $250,000 on models for a single show.

Two years later CFDA launched a parallel group, Seventh on Sixth, and, inspired by the tent that housed the1992 Democratic National Convention, decided to hold the shows in Bryant Park. The cost of entry rose to $12,000, which included lights, runway, seats, clothing rails, mirrors, tables backstage, and security. (For a smaller fee, designers could and still can be listed on the official schedule and show wherever they like.) Eleven sponsors, including Clairol, General Motors, the New York Times, and Prescriptives, were enlisted to help cover the total costs of about $1.25 million. Evian, the title sponsor, paid a reported $200,000 in addition to providing bottled water for attendees.

In 2001, ten years after the shows went commercial, IMG took over management of the New York fashion shows, spending $5 million to produce them that year (they were subsequently cancelled mid-week after the September 11 terrorist attacks), and increasing to an estimated $12 million this year. Last year, IMG turned a profit on the shows for the first time, according to the New York Post.

IMG’s take comes in some part from the fashion houses themselves, who pay more and more each year to wedge a coveted spot in the event. The largest tent now costs $48,000. Additional revenue comes from the Daily, IMG’s fashion-week daily publication, which Brandusa Niro, its publication director, insists has been profitable from the start. A single ad page runs $10,950, about half the cost of a page in Women’s Wear Daily. (Another small part of revenues comes from ticket sales to the public—$200 purchased through American Express, or via ads on websites, such as Craigslist, for $500 or more.)

The balance of the costs is covered by IMG’s deft packaging of the event, bringing in a host of multimillion-dollar sponsors and enticing them with earth-spanning deals. New this year are Pakistan and Berlin. Mercedes-Benz is the title sponsor of the events in Los Angeles, Miami, New York, and, of course, Berlin, as well as other IMG fashion events. American Express is currently negotiating a deal similar in scope. DHL Express, which took over from U.P.S. as the official shipping sponsor this year, has stuck with just the U.S. market, as part of an overall branding strategy. “Our heritage is international shipping,” says Karen Jones, DHL senior vice president of corporate and marketing communications. “We are just now on the journey of building the brand in the U.S.”

If all the sponsorship and rising rents seem a bit too commercial for something considered by some to be an art, don’t forget that, at the end of the day, these displays of haute couture are at their core simply trade shows, serving markets with needs.

Didier Grumbach, who heads up the Fédération Française de la Couture, a trade group that has been organizing shows since the 1930s, notes, “There is a need in most continents for local fashion weeks to cater to local supply and distribution. China needs a fashion week for its own market. All the retailers in the world cannot come to Paris. It wouldn’t make sense.”

In other words, there is Fashion with a capital F, which appears on the runways of New York, Milan, Paris, and London. But there are also designers in local markets who make clothes for a local clientele. Take Lakmi fashion week: It was sponsored by the Gitanjali Group—a large jewelry maker in the region—and featured names like Gayatri Khanna and Anuj Sharma. Not every designer needs to show in Paris and not every retailer needs to go to Paris to buy. With IMG’s help, there are now glamorous shows to promote products in local markets.

“Everyone understands that these events are all about getting someone to go into a store with their credit card and buy clothing,” Mallis says. “If the designers come back to show again next season, then we’ve done our job.”