Special Occasion Show Bows at the Hyatt in Los Angeles
Thirteen special occasion designers recently showcased their Fall lines at the Hyatt Hotel in Los Angeles as part of the West Coast Special Occasion Designers Market, which marks the return of a show for social occasion designers after a nearly 10-year hiatus, organizers said.
“I grew up with the hotel shows because I’m from the East Coast,” said Bonnie Maiden-Fountain, one of the show’s organizers and co-designer of social occasion line Camille Jumelle. “That’s where social occasion designers collected, and the buyers looked forward to it.”
Maiden-Fountain said Los Angeles stopped hosting hotel shows about 10 years ago, when buyers began shopping at downtown showroom buildings like the California Mart, New Mart and Cooper Building.
While other categories continued to develop, social occasion designers were left with fewer options. “L.A. is very big on the contemporary market, the junior market and menswear,” said Maiden-Fountain. “They support it fully. But for social occasion, we have nothing.”
More local designers are creating special occasion fashions again, but they do not have a local venue to show their collections, forcing them to showcase in New York, according to Maiden-Fountain.
“There’s no reason why the buyers have to go to New York,” she said, “because we have some of the best talent anywhere, right here in Los Angeles.”
Maiden-Fountain and her Camille Jumelle co-designer, Randy Brooks, organized the show, bringing in the designers and promoting the event themselves. The pair sent out 2,010-page, cardstock-covered booklets, and each of the 13 exhibiting designers mass-mailed thousands of their own composite cards.
More than 100 buyers called to schedule meetings for the appointment-driven show, said Maiden-Fountain, who added that the buyers were looking for both Fall and more immediate deliveries.
“We thought we were doing an August delivery,” she said, “but we’ve been asked for four- to six-week deliveries.”
The social occasion category continues to grow, according to Brooks and Maiden-Fountain who attribute the category’s strength to more women dressing up for social occasions. “New York may be the fashion capital, but in Los Angeles, we set the trends. We want to set the trends for social occasion,” Maiden-Fountain said.
One of the major trends being set in Los Angeles, according to Maiden-Fountain, is that women in their forties are working out and want more body-conscious styles for all purposes, including special occasions.
The West Coast Special Occasion Designers Market plans to have a show in the fall for Spring lines, but the date has not been solidified.
“We want this to be an ongoing event,” said Maiden-Fountain. “The other part of doing a hotel show is to develop relationships that drive traffic to the showrooms.” —Darryl James
