LA Fashion: Call to Action
Relaunching Los Angeles Fashion Week…

Since IMG’s announcement to depart from the LA scene last year, the void for a centralized Fashion Week has been noticed by virtually everyone.  A new effort has been born under the direction of FashionWeekLA.com’s Jennifer Üner (aka the West Coast scene’s scheduling maven & founding organizer of The LA Fashion Awards) to reestablish LA Fashion Week’s rightful place on the world’s fashion stage.   A rooftop reception was held this week at the new Hotel Erwin in Venice Beach to start the conversation about LA Fashion Week events in October.  A number of LA’s most active industry insiders came together to not only hear what Üner had to say, but also to offer their collective input.
“For seven years we’ve been organizing and publishing the schedule, and we continue to see clear demand from major media and top retailers in coming to Los Angeles for Fashion Week. The departure of IMG and Smashbox from Fashion Week has not necessarily diminished interest in our designers or events,” according to Üner. “Just last week Vogue Australia indicated an interest in sending a team to cover it. This request came 2-3 months before any designer has announced an intention to show. Clearly the fashion houses need to start thinking about this now. And clearly we can do more to service that interest at FashionWeekLA.com, hence this call to action.”

Üner went one step further, and proposed a new model for fashion week that is less about a centralized venue and more about a central web hub to connect media, brands and buyers at events across the city. “The traditional NY model has never matched the creative energy or the array of market segments you find here. What if we went one step beyond, and let the geographic diversity of Los Angeles and range of designer visions drive the experience?”

It was a provocative question pondered by a crowd of LA fashion designers, retailers, runway show producers and industry heavyweights that included Jeff Rudes (J Brand), Doris Raymond (The Way We Wore), Nony Tochterman (Petro Zillia), Tarina Tarantino, Kristopher Enuke (Oligo Tissew), Nick Verreos (Nikolaki), Des Kohan, Darren Gold (Alpha), Alisa Loftin (Aero & Co), John Arguelles (Lloyd Klein & current FGI regional director), Kent Smith (Fashion District BID), Cate Mowell (The Contact List) & Ilse Metchek (California Fashion Association).

Fashion Week LA is slated for October 9-16, 2009.  Event producers are requested to submit plans in the next month to provide motivation for buyers and press to have sufficient time to make LA travel plans.
More details coming soon to FashionWeekLA.com & LAFashionAwards.com.
 
Follow the developments on Twitter @FashionWeekLA & @LAFashionAwards.

(Pictured at left are Alfonso Campos, Trina Tarantino & Nick Verreos)

-Meredith Garcia