L.A. Designer Seeks Award Recognition
For designers, placing their fashions in front of the right audience can be crucial. It’s important enough that Mickey Sills, founder of Los Angeles–based sleepwear label Scanty, signed up to give himself some extra work packed with inspiration and headaches.
The 48-year-old Sills is competing to produce a fashion show. However, this will be done under high-pressure stakes familiar to viewers of Bravo TV’s “Project Runway.”
On Aug. 1, Sills entered the Elle magazine–sponsored Mercury Milan Style Award competition, in conjunction with the Mercury Division of Ford Motor Co. Members of the public can vote for a winning designer at contest Web site milan.elle.com.
The competition’s first round featured designing something for a Mercury Milan car. The grand prize is the chance to produce a fashion show in the media fishbowl of New York Fashion Week. The added challenge is that the winner will have only 10 days to produce a stellar, primetime-worthy fashion show.
Sills thought the timeline sounded crazy, but the media attention is compelling enough to where his company gets a major payoff. “I hope we get recognized,” he said. “I hope we get breaks like big guys. It gives us a shot to show what we got.”
The Scanty label has been sold at high-profile retailers such as the Kitson store on Robertson Boulevard in Los Angeles. But increased media attention holds the possibility that a product can be kicked to the center of the industry’s collective radar screens.
Contests are one avenue in which Newport Beach, Calif.–based Trovata, a darling of the fashion industry, got notice and increased sales, said Jeff Halmos, an executive with Trovata. In 2005, the label won the Ecco Domani Fashion Foundation award and the coveted Council of Fashion Designers of America award. Although the initial excitement of winning these awards has subsided, Halmos says his label still rides on mileage from them.
“We got more business,” Halmos said. “It helped a lot with international recognition. Any bit of publicity helps.”
Sills’ saga started when his public relations company, New York–based Think Public Relations, enrolled him in a contest. The designer built a steamer trunk to fit into a Mercury Milan trunk, as his submission for the first part of the contest.
People visiting the contest Web site voted his submission as one of their favorites. A picture of the trunk was published in the September issue of Elle magazine. The increased media attention caused a reaction, too.
“If they can’t keep us on our toes, what good are we?” —Andrew Asch
