Center Stage at Hong Kong Fashion Week
Espen Salberg, center, with the models who showed his Spring/Summer 2010 line at Hong Kong Fashion Week
HONG KONG—Hong Kong Fashion Week is a great place to debut your fashion if you hope to sell to buyers around the world. It’s truly an international place.
At least, that was Espen Salberg’s theory. The designer has been living his own life under the “It’s a small world” theme.
Salberg, a former world professional Latin American dance champion, is a Norwegian who spent 17 years in Italy before moving to Bali, Indonesia.
After conquering the world one paso doble at a time, he branched out into fashion geared for the dance crowd. His claim to fame is that he designed dresses for Jennifer Lopez in the movie “Shall We Dance.” His motto for his Espen International label, he says, is “Dancewear anywhere.”
Now he is moving more toward the anywhere side of business by introducing fashions for the general public.
One of his trademarks were tulle flowers hand-stitched onto the skirts of ballroom-like dresses and onto the sides of knit fabric knickers. “You buy the material, cut the strips and sew,” he said, explaining how his workers shaped the labor-intensive embellishments.
A newcomer to Hong Kong Fashion Week, Salberg was gushing with enthusiasm as photographers clicked photos of him with his elegantly attired models.
“This is my first real fashion show,” he said. It has generated interest from buyers in Italy, Spain and the United States.
