California Apparel News

Two Los Angeles–based fashion organizations have joined forces to create a program that will support business development within the fashion community’s Black population. The California Fashion Foundation and the Black Design Collective announced in late July the launch of a partnership that includes a schedule of seminars that will support fashion-business building for Black designers, creatives, retail professionals and manufacturers.

Seminars will center on the exploration of “The Business of the Business of Consumer Product Development, Including Fashion, Footwear & Accessories.” The seminars will seek to answer important questions including “What’s next for your career?” and “How to move forward or become an entrepreneur?” During the seminars, industry-expert speakers will cover crucial components of fashion branding, such as how to create a brand and understand the target customer, fashion law, Internet sales and technology, leveraging social media for a fashion business, and financial considerations every fashion-business owner should ponder.

The first seminar to be hosted via Zoom is on Aug. 18 at 10 a.m. PST and is titled “Consumer Product Development…Current Business Realities.” Attendees will hear input from Ilse Metchek, president and founder of the California Fashion Association—the parent organization of the philanthropic California Fashion Foundation—and TJ Walker, a co-founder of the Black Design Collective and Los Angeles–heritage clothing brand Cross Colours. In a statement made in July, the California Fashion Foundation and Black Design Collective looked forward to promoting more inclusion within the fashion industry.

“The goal of this program is to give creative people of color the support necessary to build viable businesses,” the statement said. “In our Instagram-staged world, fashion appropriates multi-cultural styles from people of color; they bring the ‘cool’ factor. To facilitate their inclusion to the executive sessions where design, marketing and advertising decisions are made, access to relevant and current business-to-business information must be made available.”

During the inaugural event, Metchek and Walker will cover topics including business realities, the voice of disruption, fashion’s cultural differences, the new entrepreneur and next steps. While admission to the event is complimentary for Black Design Collective members, a $20 fee applies for nonmembers.

*This story has been updated to include event registration information.