California Apparel News

This past year, Los Angeles designer Kevan Hall has been jetting around the world for a number of new fashion projects that are taking him to Europe and beyond.

Hall is flying to the Fiji Islands to be the only U.S. designer participating in Fiji Fashion Week, an event being held Oct. 1–5 in the capital city of Suva, where 13 international designers as well as local designers will show their lines.

Hall was invited to present his “Signature” collection there several years ago but couldn’t fit the event into his schedule. This year, some time opened up. “I’m really excited about being able to present my Spring 2014 collection there,” said the designer inside his atelier on Beverly Boulevard. “The Spring collection is inspired by flowers.”

Hall is employing the blues and lavenders found in hydrangeas into his prints as well as bright yellows from marigolds and the deeper orange/reds seen in geraniums. “It fits in well with Fiji,” Hall said.

About 25 to 30 looks will be on the runway—half day dresses and cocktail dresses and the other half evening gowns with Hall’s well-known, red-carpet feel. Day dresses have a slim, linear look with the hem falling a few inches below the knee. Cocktail dresses have a fluid and soft silhouette for a romantic feel.

Earlier this year, the former Halston designer created a diffusion line called Inspiration, which consists of separates that take their creative cue from Hall’s travels and from his list of places he would like to visit.

Currently, the line is being sold on home-shopping networks in Europe. In March, during his first stint with QVC in London, the designer quickly sold 3,000 tops, skirts and pants whose looks were influenced by Africa. Original prints included ethnic batiks, tribal geometrics, tie-dyes and blurred ikats. An animal print morphed from a zebra print to a leopard print.

In September, Hall was in Rome with a translator to present his Inspiration line on HSE24, an Italian home-shopping network. Then it was off to London for a QVC presentation again.

Hall, who often was on the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week runway when it was a regular event in Los Angeles between 2002 and 2008, is returning to London in November to show a collection that will look to Russia for a bohemian, peasant feel using paisleys and folk-like prints. There will also be faux-fur accessories.

The TV-based shopping opportunity came about when Hall formed a partnership with a Korean-American company that has offices in New York and Commerce, Calif. Everything is manufactured in China.

“We come up with the concept and the creative, and they put the production together,” Hall said. “I am free to design.”

When not traveling to foreign countries, Hall is busy holding trunk shows at the specialty stores around the country that stock his high-end “Signature” collection, made primarily in Hall’s Los Angeles studio.