Fern Mallis, the founder and organizer of New York Fashion Week, is leaving her post as senior VP of IMG Fashion to start her own consulting firm, reports The Daily Front Row (an IMG property).

Perhaps the individual most closely associated with cheerleading stateside design, Mallis launched New York Fashion Week in Bryant Park in 1993, when she was executive director of the CFDA, in an effort to bring all the designers under one roof.

Through the founding of a more centralized fashion week in New York, instead of shows scattered around town in unregulated venues, the whole industry in the city grew considerably, creating enthusiasm around American designers and creating thousands of jobs.

In addition to organizing shows in the U.S., Mallis also helped launch shows in Mumbai, Moscow, Sydney and Berlin and was a judge on Bravo's Isaac Mizrahi-hosted reality program, 'The Fashion Show.'

It seems her new career path -- which coincides with New York Fashion Week moving from Bryant Park to Lincoln Center -- might continue to take Mallis places beyond New York, as well as on the tube once again.

"I am ready to be starting my own company and look forward to advising and consulting on a wide variety of style, fashion, media and lifestyle programs, initiatives and branding strategies in the US and around the world," Mallis said of her new firm, dubbed Fern Mallis LLC. "It's time for me to participate in the exciting world outside 'the tents'."

Perhaps not surprisingly, IMG Fashion has signed on to be her first client, with other fashion brands hungry for her decades of expertise to surely follow suit.