L.A. Makes It Big, After a Fashion
The Style cable network and Toronto’s FT-Fashion Television are ready to roll, buyers from the three Bs--Barneys New York, Bergdorf Goodman and Henri Bendel--have booked flights and local fashion designers from Santee Alley to Silver Lake are working around the clock casting runway models and finishing seams. It’s six days until the start of L.A. fashion week and the buzz is reaching a crescendo.
L.A. was once dismissed by the high-fashion hierarchy as nothing more than a mass market for knockoffs, junior clothing and surf wear. But lately, the city--a major apparel center--has been enjoying some much-needed R-E-S-P-E-C-T. The fashion industry thrives on what’s new and L.A. designers appear to be the flavor du jour, capturing the attention of a range of magazines from mainstream Newsweek to edgy Nylon.
Kim Hastreiter, editor of New York-based Paper magazine, was so enamored of the avant-garde scene after visiting last year, she hired a full-time L.A. correspondent. “The underground has really moved away from New York and into to San Francisco and L.A., where artists and fashion designers can still find inexpensive apartments, studios and stores,” she said.
But for all the attention, fashion week here is still nowhere near taking its place next to similar events in Hong Kong or Sao Paulo, much less New York, Milan and Paris. A large part of it has to do with politics--fashion politics, that is.
Without a formal organizational umbrella or a high-profile City Hall cheerleader, L.A.’s fashion week has become as fragmented as the city itself. The shows are planned by individual designers, coalitions and nonprofits at locations scattered throughout the city. Shows have been held at the kitschy Bigfoot Lodge in Atwater and at Union Station downtown. This season, a shuttered burlesque club will be reopen for a group show downtown. Another designer will unveil her spring collection at St. Vibiana’s Cathedral. The setup can be difficult for out-of-town buyers and press, especially since there is not a central source for information.
In the past, already-strapped designers have typically done their own scheduling and publicity. “Every single season, I’d have to call other designers myself to make sure we weren’t showing at the same time,” said Eduardo Lucero, who has been presenting his collections here since 1996. In April, Lucero’s show at his Beverly Boulevard boutique immediately followed a presentation in Atwater. “Some people were rushing, others couldn’t make it. It was a nightmare,” he said.
The shows do have a certain charm when compared with the slick productions in other cities. Friends and family often set up chairs and man the doors. But the presentations are homespun more out of necessity than design, and production values, including lights and models, often leave something to be desired.
Right now L.A., like London, is more of a jumping-off point for designers who move on to Paris or New York. Big names like BCBG and Richard Tyler left L.A. for New York long ago. Even Imitation of Christ, which had its debut at a Hollywood subway stop, went east.
In April, the Los Angeles Fashion Week Committee--comprising designers, publicists, educators and editors--began serious discussions about how to create a more cohesive fashion week. The challenge? To preserve the edginess and diversity of the shows while building fashion week into a headline event, complete with corporate sponsors.
Unfortunately, competition for the potentially lucrative fashion frontier has so far gotten in the way of real collaboration and progress. “You have a bunch of broads who smell opportunity, and each one is trying to carve out her own niche,” one female participant said on the condition of anonymity.
A few of the players:
CaliforniaMart: During the 1970s and ‘80s, the apparel showroom center organized fashion week in tents downtown. But when the California economy went south, the tents came down. CalMart lost occupancy and gained a stodgy reputation. Newly hired marketing director Karen Mamont has plenty of indie spirit (purple hair, tattoos, rockabilly clothes), but the wholesale center has had its own ups and downs with several new owners in the past few years.
The Coalition of Los Angeles Designers: an informal organization born in 1998 out of a friendship between two designers. Critics say the group, now a nonprofit, has a lot of heart, but not enough experience, though it stages its own shows. Still, CLAD scores points for creating an official L.A. fashion week calendar, distributed for the first time this season.
Lynne Franks, the British PR guru who created London Fashion Week and inspired the BBC series “Absolutely Fabulous,” also has her chakra in the ring. Franks, who lives part time in Venice (Calif.), has proposed “Fashion Fusion.” Named after her firm Globalfusion, the event would combine fashion, architecture and technology.
Fashion show producers Shannon Davidson and Megan Griffith have also been in on discussions. “For now, we’re laying low, waiting to see how the cards fall,” Griffith said.
Believing talks were at a standstill, fashion publicists Sara Stein and Margaret Schell, who own the public relations firm SPR, took action on their own this summer, securing sponsorship from Audi to take six designers to New York last month and back a show for them here.
“We wanted to show in New York because a lot of the press and buyers don’t come out to L.A.,” said designer Michelle Mason, one of the six. “Hopefully things will change in the near future. Until they do, we have no choice.”
Not everyone was so pleased. “I was a bit scared that they were abandoning L.A.,” said Lucero, who himself showed in New York once but is committed to L.A. “It’s taken a long time to build up this momentum, and it’s not time to drop the ball.”
Only two designers--Jared Gold and Alicia Lawhon--had a chance to show before the terrorist attacks ended New York’s fashion week. Audi will sponsor a group event next Friday at a former industrial space in Hollywood. Six designers, two of whom had not been a part of the original group slated to show in New York, plan to show on the same day under one roof in what appears to be one of the most cohesive events of the week. The coordinated setup has managed to attract TV coverage and a hotly anticipated out-of-town visitor.
Fern Mallis, who directs New York’s venerable shows, will be warming a front row seat at the L.A. shows for the first time next week, along with representatives from event marketing firm IMG, which purchased the rights to stage New York’s fashion week and represents talents such as Tiger Woods and model Gisele Bundchen.
Mallis characterized the visit as exploratory. “People are always interested in what’s different, and there’s always a need for new stories and new talent,” she said.
L.A. fashion factions may be at odds on how to proceed with the future of fashion week here, but they are unified on one point: The New York way is not necessarily the right way. “L.A. is not New York. It’s about entrepreneurship and free spirits. I don’t know if you can corral all those spirits under one tent,” said Barbara Kramer. The co-founder of the Designers and Agents trade show has participated in all the organizational meetings.
CLAD director Lee Trimble agrees. “What we have in L.A. is too different. Instead of trying to work our way into a popular crowd, it’s better to make our own crowd.”
