California Apparel News

After nearly a month of runway shows, events and trade shows, Los Angeles’ fashion community is assessing the sprawling—and occasionally chaotic—mix of events, and show producers are already gearing up for next season of L.A. Fashion Week.

The tough economy made it especially challenging for many show producers to line up sponsorship. But undeterred, the schedule included more than 60 events happening around town. This season’s lineup included returning events Downtown L.A. Fashion Week, L.A. Fashion Weekend and BOXeight and newcomers L.A. Fashion on Broadway and Rock Fashion Week. There were also many independent events, including Gen Art’s Fresh Faces in Fashion (now part of Rock Fashion Week) and Project Ethos; fund-raisers, including Passion Revealed; and private events featuring Kevan Hall, Corey Lynn Calter and others.

Most events were held in the evenings, leaving many in the industry available to attend the many trade events also scheduled in October, including the Majors Market, Los Angeles Fashion Market, the Los Angeles International Textile Show, Material World & Technology Solutions, GlobalTex and European Rendezvous.

Los Angeles–based Hall, who showed in the past at IMG’s Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week at Smashbox Studios, opted to show independently. (Although he said he’d consider joining the lineup of another fashion week event if he were asked to participate.) “Since there’s no more participation by IMG and Smashbox, you have to think out of the box and find a venue that is impactful, will showcase your collection in the best possible light and be an exciting venue for the clients,” Hall said. The designer showed his Kevan Hall Signature collection on a dramatic set on the lot of Universal Studios. The event was held in partnership with luxury auto dealer Rusnak Auto Group, which showcased its new cars from Rolls Royce, Porsche and Jaguar.

Hall, who was in his home state of Michigan earlier in October for Detroit Fashion Week, left for Arizona in early November for Scottsdale Fashion Week. (The designer showed at the Islands of the World Fashion Week in the Bahamas last year.) The back-to-back event schedule left little time for him to attend any other Los Angeles Fashion Week events. Still, he said it’s important for his business to show his collection in Los Angeles.

“I have existing clients here and I’m building clientele here,” he said, adding, “And other clients flew in from other cities for the show.”

Downtown L.A. Fashion Week

Downtown L.A. Fashion Week returned for its sophomore run at the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA with an expanded lineup and new format. This season, the schedule included a mix of runway shows and designer installations over the course of its Oct. 13–15 run.

Designer collections included Louver by Louis Verdad, Skingraft, Eduardo Lucero, Oliver Tolantino, Yotam Solomon, Michel Berandi, MartinMartin and others. “It was a big success for me,” said show producer Leanne Lewis. “I went from one event in March to doing 10 shows this season.”

Another new addition to the event was the Emerging Designers Showcase and the Fashion Angel Awards, which was held with the support of the City of Los Angeles, Department of Cultural Affairs.

“I’m hoping to build and grow on the Fashion Angel Awards,” Lewis said. “It’s best to do it once a year—otherwise it might not be so special. I want the best of the best to be vying to be on the catwalk.”

The designers selected from among 70 applicants, including Fernanda Carneiro, Phong Hong, and the design team of Leslie Henry and Jacquetta O’Dell, who call their collection Krys-n-Jack. The show drew about 500 attendees, although Lewis admits “it wasn’t a big money maker.” Tickets were priced at $10 and $15 to make the event accessible to fashion students. “The response from the schools really excited me,” Lewis said. “That to me was a success right there.”

Each Fashion Angel Award winner also received free consulting services from Moss Adams. Lewis said she hopes to attach a cash prize to the event in the future.

Lewis said she plans to return next season—and is considering adding a red-carpet fashion event timed to coincide with the Academy Awards. She said she’d like to include one signature event each season—this time, it was the vintage Valentino-themed runway show hosted by Elizabeth Mason, owner of The Paper Bag Princess upscale vintage boutique.

For future seasons, Lewis said, she hopes to bring more couture and established ready-to-wear designers, as well as continue to feature international designers. (She worked with the Israeli consulate to bring a group show of Israel-based designers to her event this season.)

“If we’re going to build fashion week and make it successful, we need to be careful who’s coming down the runway,” she said.

Plus, she said, she’d like to bring more buyers to the event and sell more tickets to the signature event. Tickets for Mason’s vintage gala, where actress Maria Bello was honored, sold for $50 to $200.

“Being a new company and taking on 10 shows in three days was overwhelming,” she said. “I could have spent more time on outreach [to buyers]. At the end of the day, I want the designers to make money.”

L.A. Fashion Weekend

L.A. Fashion Week producer and showroom owner Mikey Koffman hosted this season’s L.A. Fashion Weekend runway show on Oct. 17 on a soundstage at Sunset Gower Studios in Hollywood in front of a crowd of more than 430 people. Designers included Raw 7, Division E, Tavik Swimwear and Urban Republic Clothing. The audience included buyers from Bloomingdale’s, Metropark, Nordstrom, Fred Segal and Zappos, she said. Koffman, who owns the GalleryLA showroom in Los Angeles, has been producing Los Angeles Fashion Week events for several years, including the Green Initiative Humanitarian Fashion show at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week at Smashbox Studios in October 2008.

Producing a runway show is an expensive proposition, Koffman said. They often cost $50,000 and up, which leaves most producers losing money or breaking even if they are lucky. “The purpose of these shows is to make money,” she said. To attract revenue, these shows needed a big sponsor such as Mercedes-Benz and perhaps better scheduling the shows with market dates.

To attract big sponsors, she urged the producers for the scattered Los Angeles fashion week events to put together events in one venue during a designated week. The collective effort would appeal to a sponsor who wants to make a big marketing splash at a concentrated group of shows, she said.

Koffman said she will return to Sunset Gower Studios next season with a planned March 19–21 run of L.A. Fashion Weekend. For the March shows, Koffman said she intends to produce a consumer event where a retailer would produce a runway show and then direct the audience to a pop-up shop on the site of the show.

BOXeight

BOXeight—which is best known for its art, music and fashion events—dramatically changed its format for Los Angeles Fashion Week. The arts collective, founded by Peter Eaton Gurnz, hosted “Fashion: Refocus,” a photography and fashion event held in collaboration with Flaunt magazine and L.A. Models at BOXeight Studios in downtown Los Angeles. The event featured live photo shoots with some of the city’s best-known designers and photographers. Designers included Rami Kashou, Lloyd Klein, Skingraft, Louver by Louis Verdad, Jeffrey Sebelia, Corpus, Linda Antico, Orthodox, Michael Costello, Jerell Scott and others. Photographers included Gurnz, Ben Cope, Gitte Meldgaard, Kurt Iswarienko and others.

Photographs from the shows will be featured in a special-edition booklet published by Flaunt and BOXeight. The artsy event was held in lieu of the runway shows that BOXeight has produced over the past few years.

“Everybody really feels we have kind of found our niche in creating content around BOXeight and its relevance to [Fashion Week],” Gurnz said. “It was more effective, and the designers were happy with the result. It was a better use of time and energy.” According to Gurnz, the event received a large amount of press, reduced expenses for the designers and provided them with professional photos that they can use. It was a dynamic way to present the designers as well as showcase the creative talent in Los Angeles, including photographers, makeup artists and hairstylists.

Being creative is an integral part of the BOXeight philosophy, Gurnz said. “We like to be rogue and indie and create something new,” he said. “We don’t have to follow the rules.” Gurnz said they plan to hold the event again in the future although they haven’t ruled out doing runway shows. “We are going to keep moving forward and doing new things,” he said. “The economy has made it difficult for companies like mine to produce the content that they want to. If you want to stay on top and keep people excited about your brand and your productions, you have to get real creative and real innovative like we did at this last event.”

Gen Art and Rock Fashion Week

The nonprofit arts organization Gen Art is typically the kickoff event to L.A. Fashion Week. However, this year, under new partnership with New York–based Rock Media & Entertainment, Gen Art was held at the tail end of the calendar on Oct. 29 as the opening night of the two-day Rock Fashion Week event at the Petersen Automotive Museum. Jen Egan, Gen Art’s national vice president of marketing and business development, said organizers plan to return to the tradition of staging the show at the beginning of the calendar. “I believe that we’re going back to launching [L.A. Fashion Week],” Egan said.

This year’s annual “Fresh Faces in Fashion” show was scaled down from 12 to nine clothing designers because of the economic pinch. Collections included MG Black Label, Valerj Pobega, Leyendecker, Rory Beca and Seneca Rising, as well as accessories labels Generic Man, Stamp’d, CC Skye and Ludevine.

Aside from minor alterations, Egan said, Gen Art plans to continue the same format of a “Fresh Faces in Fashion” runway show for Spring collections and “New Garde” installation showcase for Fall collections.

“We were here before the advent of IMG/Smashbox Fashion Week [Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week at Smashbox Studios]. We’ve literally been here 13 years. Any significant designer to come out of Los Angeles has been discovered by Gen Art,” Egan said. “I feel like Gen Art is the anchor to Fashion Week, that we can play a bigger part in whatever fashion week it is, whoever the producer is; we can help them curate their shows so that they become more prestigious and [have] more cachet to them, so they’re not just taking a check. There needs to be quality control.”

In regard to the disjointed schedule this season, Egan said, “I do think that all these capsule events and having a fashion month was important in so far is it shows how much talent and design is out there. I think there was an inconvenient aspect in terms of buyers, editors and stylists schlepping all around going from one space to the next.” Egan’s suggestion was to find a space in either downtown Los Angeles or Hollywood and collaborate most of the shows under one banner. “It strengthens the brand of L.A. Fashion Week in general. It’s important to amortize those production costs because we’re all spending thousands of thousands of dollars that doesn’t need to be spent if we were all coming together as a community.”

Rock Media’s portion of the event included a slate of runway shows on Oct. 30, also at the Petersen. The lineup included Los Angeles–based intimates brand Biatta, Los Angeles–based Tristan + Trista and New York–based Boy Meets Girl. The event also featured the Pink Dress Collection, a benefit for Susan G. Komen for the Cure, featuring pink dresses and gowns from nearly 30 labels, including Tadashi Shoji, Sue Wong, Juicy Couture, Nikolaki, Ina Soltani and Samora.

Los Angeles is the third venue for Rock Fashion Week, which hosts similar events in Miami and New York.

“I’m really excited about the debut,” said Nicole Purcell, Rock Media president. “We reached the people we wanted to reach. Celebrity attendance was low. I think that our change [of venue from Paramount Studios to the Petersen] hurt us a bit.” Purcell said she and Rock Media Principal Scott Rosenblum are looking to host the next edition March 4–6.

Those dates would put the show several weeks before the scheduled Los Angeles Fashion Market, which is set for March 19–23.

But Purcell said the Los Angeles edition of Rock Fashion Week is shaping up to be more of a consumer event, like Rock Fashion Week in Miami, rather than the New York edition, which is geared more to retailers.

“I think [the Los Angeles event] is a little more consumer- and media [-focused] with less buyers than it would be in New York,” Purcell said.

Next season, organizers hope to expand to three days, and they are considering other venues, Purcell said.

“Each season we’re going to grow—this is what we’ve done in Miami, and that’s why we’re bigger in Miami,” she said. “I’m glad we did a little smaller [event in Los Angeles] so people could get a taste of us. As we grow, the event will grow to more designers and more days.”

L.A. Fashion on Broadway

Another newcomer to the Los Angeles Fashion Week lineup was L.A. Fashion on Broadway, which was held Oct. 14–15 at the Los Angeles Theatre in downtown Los Angeles. Among the labels showing were Maxine Dillon, Fremont, Future Heretics, Popomomo, David Alexander, Bohemian Society and Mike Vensel, among others. Executive Producer and Founder Lasia Casil said she plans to reprise the event in 2010, probably in the second or third week of March. It will be held again at the Los Angeles Theatre.

Her critique of Los Angeles Fashion Week is that it is too spread out and too long. “It is not focused,” she said. “It is discombobulated.” She said buyers and press with limited time need a central place where they can see a big group of shows and then have good access to designers and their sales agents. Every other fashion week in the world is concentrated for a week to 10 days, she said, adding that Los Angeles needs to follow suit so press and buyers can get the best distillation of the city’s designers.

Project Ethos

Jason Peskin—producer of the tri-annual fashion, art and music event Project Ethos—has staged 11 shows since he launched in 2005. The 12th edition of Project Ethos, which took place Oct. 24 at the House of Blues in West Hollywood, Calif., marked the first time the event has occurred during Los Angeles Fashion Week. Project Ethos is a consumer-driven, ticketed event in a club setting that is open to the public. Peskin said the new scheduling did not make a difference to the general audience. “To them it was just another Ethos event,” he said. However, the number of industry insiders in attendance spiked.

“We had the most buyers and media in attendance in the history of Project Ethos. This was surely due to the positioning of our event to be on this date,” said Peskin, who has been evolving the fashion portion of his show with a higher caliber of designers with each show. “Many of our designers in the past were not ready for such a large stage [as Los Angeles Fashion Week], which is why we consider ourselves an incubator. This year, we had grown a lot in terms of the fashion portion and felt like our production and designers selected for October were actually now ready for such a stage.” The production of the event remained the same, with seven designers, 15 looks each and a diverse range of styles that included punk rock–inspired line SYC FUK, Li Cari by young designer Jazmin Whitley of MTV reality show “House of Jazmin” and flamboyant party dresses by Cowgirl Heaven. Based on the successful industry attendance of this past show, Peskin said, “We will definitely schedule our events very close to fashion week or during it from now on.”

Going Direct to Consumers

Several designers opted for consumer-driven events during Los Angeles Fashion Week. Rachel Pally held an opening party on Oct. 22 for her pop-up store on La Brea Avenue. And Nony Tochterman hosted a runway show and shopping event on Oct. 20 at her Petro Zillia store on West Third Street.

“I partnered with a couple of lines we carry in the store, including Karen Zambos, Smoke & Mirrors and Noir,” Tochterman said. “We put together a show of what we have on the floor now—to give the customer that instant gratification of trying it on after the show.quot;

Tochterman also worked with several other retailers in the area, including Benefit on West Third Street, which did the makeup, and Estilo Salon on Beverly Boulevard, which did the hair. Sigerson Morrison, also on West Third, loaned shoes for the show. (Sigerson Morrison was also having its own event that night on West Third.) Third Street’s Kiss My Bundt Bakery provided pastries, and Partida Tequila provided tequila for the fresh berry margaritas. (“Those margaritas were the bestest ever,” Tochterman said.)

“It was very successful and brought a lot of people,” Tochterman said. “It was a great experiment and a learning experience.”

The designer and retailer said she plans to try the concept again in the future—but not during fashion week.

“We thought it was after fashion week—I didn’t realize it was fashion month,” she said. “Our objective was to sell merchandise. We’re not gearing this to the fashion trade; it’s geared to the consumers—and they’re here all year.”