California Apparel News

European Textile Rendez-Vous, the showcase of European fabric resources that launched last October, returned to Los Angeles for a March 11–12 run at The Standard Downtown.

Organized by Los Angeles–based Fox Fabrics Inc. and New York–based Renovazio LLC, the fabric show featured 25 mills, including Seterie Argenti, Riopele, Algitex, Inwool Jersey, Tesilgodi, Gommatex Jersey, Becagli, Profilo, Cucchetti, Efilan, Colombo, Pacini Nello, Duebi, Rosati, MTT, Caverni & Gramigni, Cotonificio Bonomi, Or-Bey, Cadica, 2000 Gori, Amor Tessuto, ADM, Montebello, Emmetex and NTB. The show drew designers from several companies, including BCBG, Bebe, Guess? Inc. and Joe’s Jeans, according to exhibitors.

Jade Howe, designer for Hause of Howe, came to the show in the morning of the first day but ended up spending most of the day finalizing orders for his menswear collection.

“We’ve been here since 9,” said Howe in the late afternoon on March 11. The designer typically shops for fabrics at Premiegrave;re Vision but skipped the Paris show this season. Howe praised the convenience of being able to shop for European fabrics in a single location. “These are a lot of the mills we’ve been working with,” he said.

Renovazio’s Marco Ciucci said he holds a similar event in New York but teamed with Fox Fabrics for the Los Angeles show. For now, the show will remain small, Ciucci said.

“For now, we like to keep it this way,” he said.

The show’s size seemed ideal to Seterie Argenti’s Michele Viganoacute;. “It’s a good size,” he said. “The customers are happy. They can be done in one day.”

For fabric reps coming in from Europe, such as Viganoacute;, the show is a good starting point for a West Coast sales visit.

“It’s easy,” he said. “You do two days here, and then it’s possible to do Seattle. It’s a nice trip.”

Viganoacute; said he was pleased with the turnout at the Los Angeles show—particularly since some of his customers skipped Paris this year. And for the customers who did stop by the Seterie Argenti booth in Paris, there were new fabrics available at the Los Angeles show.

“At this stage, our collections are complete,” Viganoacute; said. “We have some things here that we didn’t have at PV.”

Although the show fell in the middle of Los Angeles Fashion Week, the timing—between the Premiere Vision show in Paris, Fashion Coterie in New York, the MAGIC Marketplace in Las Vegas and the Los Angeles International Textile Show—was deemed ideal.

“Everyone likes the timing,” said Phil Fox, owner of Fox Fabrics. “It’s a couple of weeks after PV, it’s after MAGIC and Coterie and before the L.A. Textile show.”

Fox said the next run of the show is scheduled for the second week of October.

For more information, call Fox Fabrics at (213) 489-1727 or Ghita Ferro in Renovazio's Los Angeles office at (213) 624-2288. —Alison A. Nieder