California Apparel News

After six years in downtown Los Angeles, Style Fashion Week is moving its runways to West Hollywood, Calif., said Veronica Welch Kerzner, founder and chief executive officer of the fashion-show producer.

The glitzy runway series is moving to the Pacific Design Center compound in West Hollywood March 15–20.

In the past, the 1.6 million-square-foot compound has been the address of showrooms and major events such as the Elton John AIDS Foundation’s Academy Awards party. Style Fashion Week forecasts more than 20,000 attendees will visit its runway shows, where designers such as Hale Bob and Malan Breton will unveil new seasons for their collections.

“We wanted to be loyal to downtown,” Kerzner said. “But we’ve outgrown what we could do downtown.”

She declined to state how rent for the West Hollywood space was or how it would compare to Style Fashion Week’s previous digs, The Reef, formerly called the LA Mart, just south of Los Angeles’ Fashion District.

However, location was a major consideration, Kerzner said. “There was a lot of feedback from people who weren’t able to make it downtown,” she said. “There’s so much traffic to get downtown.”

Style Fashion Week has produced in a variety of downtown spots including LA Live, Vibiana and a tent compound outside The Reef.

Another fashion week event is moving from downtown. The LA Fashion Week runway shows, previously held at Union Station, are moving to Columbia Square in Hollywood. Events are being held March 13 as well as March 17–20. Another group, Fashion Week LA, continues to hold its shows and seminars at Union Station March 13–14.

Art Hearts Fashion Week is holding its shows March 13–18 at the Taglyan Complex in Hollywood.

In the past few seasons, downtown Los Angeles has been a popular choice for runway events as the neighborhood’s cachet has grown as a hot spot for dining and nightclubbing.

Los Angeles Fashion Week never had a traditional home and has traditionally moved around. Until 2008, LA Fashion Week was centered at Smashbox Studios in Culver City, Calif., just outside of downtown Los Angeles. When IMG announced that it would no longer host Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week in Los Angeles, different show producers put together fashion week events in different Los Angeles neighborhoods such as Mid-Wilshire, Silver Lake and Hollywood.

Mike Vensel, a veteran LA Fashion Week producer who produced the Concept LA shows, said choosing a location is tough. “There’s a trade-off,” he said. ”When you produce downtown, you lose some of the Westside people. You can’t please everybody,” he said.

He also noted that too much is made of location. “If you do a strong show and have strong designers, people will go to the show,” he said. Vensel is a designer and a producer of the Concept series of runway shows. Concept is currently on hiatus.