Style Fashion Week makes last-minute venue change to the Reef

Just four days before the first footfall was scheduled to hit the runway at Style Fashion Week, its organizers abruptly announced a venue change — swapping L.A. Live’s event deck for the Reef (the former LA Mart building) on South Broadway.

Style Fashion Week had staged its five-day slate of fashion shows and presentations in the tented parking garage space abutting the 110 Freeway for the last two seasons after a several-year Los Angeles Fashion Week run at the former St. Vibiana’s cathedral and, as recently as Friday, Oct. 10, its website — and the invitations of at least one participating designer (Sue Wong who is set to stage her spring and summer 2015 show on opening night) – indicated that the event would be taking place there a third time.

But by early Saturday morning, the listed venue was “Style Fashion Week Tent – The Reef, 1933 S. Broadway,” a location that may be familiar to anyone who attended the Los Angeles Fashion Council shows and presentations staged there at the beginning of L.A. Fashion Week just a few days earlier.

When asked about the last-minute venue change, a Style Fashion Week spokesman emailed the following response:

“We made the switch because we felt it was time to push past the growing restrictions that continued to be put on from the previous location. As we continue to grow and expand we want to make sure we keep true to our brand and continue to create with freedom and integrity.

We’ve found an ideal spot in the garment district / fashion center of the city and could not pass up the opportunity to break away, expand and build a venue from the ground up, with the freedom to advance in the best interest of STYLE Fashion Week and all clients and designers associated.”

The timing of the move — so close to the start of the event — caused more than a few arched eyebrows in the L.A. Fashion Week flock and caused speculation that the group had somehow run afoul of venue owner AEG. A spokesman for that company said that was not the case.

“We are not aware of the reasons why,” said AEG’s vice president of communications Michael Roth. “I do know that we had sent them a contract to sign and were waiting for them to send it back when they announced they had chosen to have their event elsewhere.”

Roth said that, to his knowledge, the Style Fashion Week folks were on good terms — financial and otherwise — with AEG.

“We think it’s a good event, we wish them very well and we hope that they’ll consider us in the future,” he said.

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