Los Angeles Fashion Week finds its center amid wildly varied shows
The most recent series of runway shows and presentations that make up fashion week here had something that’s been missing from Los Angeles Fashion Week for a long time — a de facto home base at the former L.A. Mart building downtown.
The L.A. Fashion Council (LAFC) put the place (now known as the Reef) on the LAFW map when it partnered with Maker City LA for a two-day showcase of new and emerging local brands held there Oct. 8 and 9. A few days later, Style Fashion Week, which had been planning to return to its tented parking garage roof at L.A. Live, pulled a last-minute switch and followed suit, decamping to a tented space in the parking lot of the same address.
At first blush that may not seem significant, but it’s one tiny step in the right direction toward a more unified, cohesive Los Angeles Fashion Week calendar.
But, as in past seasons, the designers showing their spring and summer 2015 collections here ranged wildly, from the debut collection of a recent Fashion Institute of Design and Marketing graduate to an over-the-top fashion extravaganza staged by the grand dame of Los Angeles designers. Among the noteworthy shows:
Sania Josiah, a promising young designer who won her berth in the LAFC lineup in a competition, used boldly patterned textiles that referenced her West African heritage (she was born in Liberia and grew up in Ghana) in a range of mixed-fabrication pieces in a thoroughly modern in silhouette. Her designs included jumpsuits, dresses, shirt dresses, shorts and midriff-baring crop tops, many paired with sheer black fabrics that included tulle, lace and athletic mesh.
Women’s label William Bradley, a recent transplant to the City of Angels, was another brand that made a notable debut at the LAFC shows. Designer Brad Parnell and partner Rodney Jones, inspired by Pablo Picasso’s “The Blind Man’s Meal,” crafted a range of skirts, trousers, shirtdresses and jackets riffing on the notions of traditional painter’s smocks and aprons. Some pieces bore a black-and-white digital pattern that was part Rorschach inkblot and part Morse code (Parnell calls the print “splatter”). Other pieces were printed with vertical smudges of pink and blue inspired by a painting technique called impasto in which paint is layered thickly onto a canvas. The standout piece was a sheer, white, ankle-length tulle overskirt layered over a white skirt that fell to mid-thigh and was festooned with several dozen tiny black feathers that seemed to shiver and quiver with each step, a design that Parnell said was inspired by the flicking strokes of an artist’s paintbrush.
Odylyne designer Stephanie Lampkin used the LAFC shows to debut Odylyne: the Ceremony, her new bridal line that marries her label’s signature Greco-Roman-goddess-meets-Bohemian silhouette to a range of lace, hand-dyed silk and tone-on-tone embroidered fabrics. Standouts there included the troika of gowns using a scallop-patterned lace and the subtle pink and pale blue tie-dyed effect on billowy dresses. The ceremonial feel of the collection was kicked up an additional notch thanks to a selection of ornate headdresses designed with frequent collaborator Kate Thompson (who also has her own label Amaroq).
Concept Los Angeles, which staged a one-evening, pared-down event Oct. 11 in a cavernous, unfinished space on La Brea, seemed to have squandered the previous season’s forward momentum. (Rule of thumb: It’s probably not a good sign when the shadow play at a venue’s entrance generates as much enthusiasm as the events inside.) But nonetheless there were a few bright spots.
One of those was Mathiasen, a local label now in its third season. Designer Matthew Mathiasen said his spring and summer 2015 collection of easygoing skirts, dresses and tops for women was inspired by the colors and topography of the desert. The result was a handful of casual color-blocked skirts, pants, shorts and crop-tops as well as a couple of more formal-looking blazers (one in blue and another in a desert orange) with white contrast-taped lapels and hem.
The second bright spot was Emily Daccarett, whose pre-show short film (a sinister riff on the humans- versus-toons tension of “Who Framed Roger Rabbit”) was far heavier stuff than the floral, flirty and flouncy (we mean that in a good way) collection that followed. Daccarett used a range of floral patterns across a collection of flare-legged jumpsuits; strapless, floor-length dresses: and sleeveless, midriff-baring tops. The patterns also were paired with solid colors in mixed fabrication skinny-legged trousers and skirts.
At the other end of the spectacle spectrum was L.A.-based designer Sue Wong who, after many seasons of staging her own shows independently, kicked off Style Fashion Week’s lineup with a marathon 37-minute-long, 76-look fashion-as-theater extravaganza.
Dubbed the “Fairies and Sirens” collection, Wong’s spring and summer 2015 offering was a range of over-the-top, out-of-this-world, exquisitely embellished, incredibly detailed dresses — catwalk confections that ranged from silky sheaths to multi-tiered organza capes in acres of embroidered silk, layered lace and a bounty of beadwork in designs that evoked all manner of flora, flying fauna and fish.
Most of the pieces that came down the runway were variations on Wong’s signature style — strapless Art Deco cocktail numbers, sheath dresses, diaphanous gowns and the like with various levels of embellishment. But she managed to cover some new ground too. One of the most unique was a white skirt that, from a distance, looked like a fish-scale or flower-petal pattern but upon closer examination turned out to be careful three-dimensional triangular folds of fabric that added an interesting element of volume.
Many looks in the show were accessorized by equally eye-catching headdresses and crowns, ranging in size from low-profile tiaras to feathered fascinators to bovine-appropriate horns and towering sprays of flowers. (Wong designed some of the headgear, other pieces were credited to Kicka Custom Design, Lisa Marinucci, Miss G Designs and Fiori Couture) Standouts included a huge white headdress that resembled a giant sea anemone, a bold pair of Minotaur horns dripping in silver chain detail, and a halo of pleated golden fans.
Before the show, Wong, who has been in business since 1984, accepted Style Fashion Week’s lifetime achievement award for womenswear.
When it comes to serving up Old Hollywood glamour in a way that satisfies the just-gotta-be-me demands of Generation Selfie, few can do it as deftly as Sue Wong did with this collection.
