California Apparel News

Los Angeles Fashion Week formally kicked off last night with shows from designers Ina Soltani and Tatyana at Style Fashion Week at LA Live.

As runway shows start rolling out, LAFW producers and watchers should also count on familiar complaints about Los Angeles' fashion week to start rolling in. For more than 10-years of LAFW history, criticisms have stubbornly stuck the showcase of Los Angeles fashions.

To spare the fashion press, let’s get public radio to give a rundown of LAFW’s problems. In 2012, a segment called “Fashion Week Season: Is LA’s Week Relevant?”ran on The Madeleine Brand Show which formerly ran on KPCC (89.3 FM.). While fair-minded, the segment dished out a few bruisers.

Fashion students interviewed for the segment did not have LAFW on their radar screens. It implied that the public didn’t seem to care about it. The segment also noted that no star designers with a primary residence in the Los Angeles area produce runway shows at LAFW. Then there was this coup de grȃce from Pulitzer award winning fashion reporter Robin Givhan.

The established designers with deep pockets go to New York’s Fashion Week because fashion press and luxury department store buyers, such as Neiman Marcus Chief Executive Officer Jim Gold, are there.

"And you might luck out and get Jim Gold sitting in your front row, but Jim Gold is not going to L.A.," said Givhan matter-of-factly.

Ouch.”

That was the segment’s reporter writing ouch, but we cried ouch too.

A lot of people have been thinking about how to improve LAFW. We talked to veteran fashion show producers, designers and fashion industry people on how to tend to LAFW’s ailments and what’s going to bring out LAFW’s best. Kelsi Smith, Marco Morante and Michelle Dalton Tyree had some good ideas.

Smith is the producer of the Los Angeles Fashion Council, which will be running its Los Angeles Collections presentations on March 11-12 and a market on March 16-19 at the Academy Award Clothes showroom building.

Smith said that everybody needs to ratchet down their expectations of LAFW and not expect that it to compete with New York Fashion Week. “I have a lot of experience with other fashion weeks, and L.A. is not doing it completely wrong,” she said.

“Go to New York to see established designers,” she said. “Go to L.A. to see emerging designers. Los Angeles needs to be the destination for emerging designers. It is where you see them before they graduate to New York. That is our niche in the market.”

Michelle Dalton Tyree has covered past LAFWs as a reporter for Women’s Wear Daily and currently as founder and editor-in-chief of Fashion Trends Daily. But when she ran a high fashion boutique in Los Angeles a few years ago, she didn’t go to LAFW. Instead she met with designers at private events.

To get the attention of retailers and designers, LAFW needs to go beyond the efforts of the independent producers currently running the events, she said. City government and entertainment industry titans should give more support to LAFW.

“Big money needs to pour in,” Dalton Tyree said.”Major money, that is the secret sauce that we’re missing here.”

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti has been a supporter of LAFW. He attended the opening of Style Week on March 9 and gave proclamations to the LAFW producers of Style Week, but there is no city financial support for the week. However, city officials will meet with executives from Style Fashion week to consider how to build relationships with the mayor's entertainment industry contacts and the LA Fashion Market, which is scheduled five times annually in the city's fashion district, according to a statement from the mayor's office.

Marco Morante of Los Angeles-based label Marco Marco said that one problem with LAFW was that the shows were, well, boring. “You really have to put something out there if you want people to notice,” he said.

In his runway show last season at StyleFashion Week, he had drag queens, muscle men and dudes in heels and beards showing off the Marco Marco label’s underwear collection. Lindsay Lohan was in the audience to catch his event.

“You don’t have to put on a circus,” he assured. “But runway shows typically are an opportunity to showcase your clothing in a performance manner. If you are using the runway as a catalog, you’re wasting our time and everybody else’s. Fashions shows should transport you emotionally and visually.”