Drivers and pedestrians bitched about workmen unloading delivery trucks on East 40th Street near Bryant Park last night.  They don’t know how good they have it.

Fashion Week, opens Feb. 13 for its final run at the midtown Manhattan park.  When it leaves for a new home at Lincoln Center, so will millions in hotel room and restaurant revenue (though models don’t eat very much) at nearby establishments.  Two chic W hotels on East 39th Street, the Tuscany and Court, are already on the sale block.

On the surface, it appears Fashion Week’s owner,  IMG, is simply trading one location for another.  Beneath the catwalk, though, looms the more ominous truth that the business model for event organizers is beginning to break.

Two top designers, Vera Wang and Betsey Johnson, will not be displaying their latest creations on the runways in Bryant Park.  Instead, each will attract a throng of media and celebrities to events at their own New York flagship stores.

In another highly publicized case of the middleman being eliminated, Apple decided against future participation in IDG’s MacWorld tradeshow.   Whether Apple goes it alone in publicizing new iProducts or cozies up with the not-for-profit Consumer Electonics Association, which operates the massive Consumer Electronics Show, remains to be seen.

What’s clear is that disintermediation is not just an online phenomenon.  Conventional wisdom is that “face-to-face” would prosper even as marketers moved their spend online and away from print and broadcast.  In-person events are indeed happening, but brand owners are choosing to rewrite the rules and control their own gatherings rather than spending their budgets with organizers who cannot swear allegiance to a single brand.