California Apparel News

Just a few months before Los Angeles Fashion Week is scheduled to run in October, Kelsi Smith, one of the week’s prominent producers, announced on her Facebook page that she should would not produce runway shows for Los Angeles Fashion Week again.

Her company, Los Angeles Fashion Council, will continue to serve emerging designers with marketing, public relations and production functions. However, the runway division of LAFC will not be associated with LAFW.

Smith’s LAFC runway shows started in 2012 and ran for three years and seven seasons. Taking the LAFC stage were emerging Los Angeles brands such as Jen Awad, Odylyne, Stella Proseyn, ISM Mode and Linden CA. The shows took place at venues such as Carondelet House, near downtown Los Angeles, and The Reef, formerly the LA Mart. Local and national fashion press and bloggers typically attended and wrote about the shows.

Smith complained that retail buyers rarely attend fashion week shows. It was also hard to cover expenses. (She said after producing the LAFC runway shows and presentations during LA Fashion Weeks, she is $50,000 in debt.) Smith said she also believes that the model of fashion weeks is in crisis.

“Even New York is struggling to be relevant,” Smith said of New York Fashion Week, where the world’s most-prominent fashion houses spend fortunes to produce runway shows. She noted that the fashion-show model is being challenged by the Internet. “What purpose does it serve when we can see fashion shows at any time?”

While fashion weeks and runway shows are being challenged by a changing media landscape, she does believe there can be a future for fashion weeks.

“I support regional fashion weeks as long as they know what they are doing and why they are doing it,” she said. “We no longer knew what we were doing at LA Fashion Week.”

Despite Smith’s exit, the upcoming LA Fashion Week is expected to have a full schedule of runway shows ranging from high-end collections to emerging brands, as well as veteran show producers and new players. Expect to see events from Style Fashion Week, Concept and Art Hearts Fashion. A production company called Los Angeles Fashion Week will produce its first runway shows for the event at Union Station in downtown Los Angeles Oct. 6–11, said Lauren Trainer, a media associate for the production company.

Mike Vensel, the producer of Concept, collaborated with Smith on fashion week projects. Vensel said he believes that the week’s shows will go on without missing a beat.

“Fashion week will continue to evolve as it always has. There are new players that are getting involved, and there are people who are bowing out,” Vensel said.

Jen Awad, whose namesake Jen Awad brand took the LAFC stage for the Spring/Summer 2013 season, said that Los Angeles has been on the radar screen for more high-end fashion houses since Tom Ford produced his Fall 2015 runway show in Los Angeles during the Oscars weekend. But Los Angeles has got to get its act together.

“There is a lot of focus coming out here. But we would need to put all of the shows under one roof instead of having shows go on in different spots,” Awad said of the criticism that LA Fashion Week shows are too spread out in the Los Angeles metro area.