A week in L.A. is a bad fit

There was fashion. Too much fashion, in fact. (And too much bad fashion.) What there wasn’t enough of was time in the day.

And that was utterly predictable.

If you stage a week devoted to runway shows and force people to schlep back and forth between downtown Los Angeles and a competing venue in Culver City (never mind during a transit strike), you will pretty much end up with the mess that was the second “organized” L.A. Fashion Week.

“It’s difficult enough to have spread-out shows in Paris,” said Scott Tepper, fashion director of New York’s Henri Bendel. “But in a city like Los Angeles that is a total car culture, it’s a lot to ask journalists and buyers. I would be able to see a lot more if they could consolidate into one venue or at least two closer venues.”

Tobey Tucker, the fashion editor of InStyle magazine, who was also visiting from New York, agreed: “Last season, I tried to drive myself around and ended up missing a lot of shows because of it. This time, I had a driver who knew what he’s doing, but he did get in an accident with a cop car.”

Designers also had complaints. “One of the most difficult things has been competition for models,” said Frankie B.’s Daniella Clarke, who showed downtown. “I had two pull out the night before my show. It’s become like a bidding war.”

Two venues end up “hurting all of us,” said Petro Zillia’s Nony Tochterman. “I just wish we could all get along.”

Although the shows -- about 60 over six days through Friday -- drew dozens of buyers and stylists, about 200 members of the media, and God only knows how many Ugg-booted hangers on, the excitement seemed to wane as the week dragged on.

Attendance was disappointing at the Downtown Standard, where front rows had to be filled in when the celebrities and stylists for whom the seats were reserved were no-shows. Fern Mallis, the New York-based organizer of the Mercedes-Benz Shows L.A. at the Standard, said the empty seats concerned her, although she didn’t attribute them to competition from Smashbox, which piggybacked on the Mercedes-Benz event. “I’ve been told because of the fires and the strikes, people have otherwise diverted their attention,” she said.

To help fill seats next season, she said she needs to work harder at reaching out to stylists, who are L.A.’s de facto fashion editors, bringing new designers and ideas to the public through celebrities. (It was Madonna stylist Arianne Phillips who discovered the much-buzzed-about designer Louis Verdad.)

“Or maybe some of the spaces have to be smaller for some shows,” Mallis said. The Standard had three separate runways, with seating for 166, 350 and 600. At some shows, half the seats were empty.

Meanwhile, at Smashbox Studios, a cavernous location with two runways and room for about 1,200 in the main tent and 400 in a smaller one, the problem wasn’t lack of attendance, it was lack of crowd control; word had gotten out that it was a party scene. Indeed, at the Susan Holmes show on Thursday, Scott Weiland performed with members of Guns N’ Roses, including Holmes’ husband, bassist Duff McKagan.

Rock & Republic denim designer Andrea Bernholtz was angry that her Wednesday night show was delayed for three hours because of a visit from the fire marshal. When the show finally did start, models nearly fell as they slipped on a runway slicked with beer, thanks to a liberal free- drinks policy.

She said she’s not sure if she’ll show at Smashbox again. “We’ll see what they offer us next time,” Bernholtz said.

“We’re going to have to have a different system of checking people in,” Davis Factor, Smashbox’s organizer, said Monday. “This is a learning process.”

As for the quality of the clothes in both venues, reviews were mixed.

“For my market, I’ve seen some cute stuff,” said Linnea Olson, an editor of Elle Girl magazine, which targets teens.

Michael Roberts, fashion editor of the New Yorker, attended a handful of shows. He said he saw “a lot of clothes, but not a lot of design.”

Tepper, the Bendel buyer, disagreed. California is known for denim and casual sportswear aimed at a youthful consumer, he said. “There’s nothing wrong with seeing a bit of that on the runways. It would have been out of place in Paris and Milan, annoying even. But in L.A., that’s what designers are great at.”

However, he added, “It’s not like you don’t have a luxurious element mixed in.” He cited the more polished collections of designers such as Richard Tyler, Verdad and Pegah Anvarian.

The consensus of the show-weary fashion flock: If L.A. Fashion Week is to have a future -- and fall shows are slated for April -- the competing venues are going to have to work together or risk driving people away.

“In some cases, competition is good,” Mallis said. “But I don’t think the competition is helping the industry here. We always said we were coming out to do several days of shows. We never anticipated that someone else would be overlapping shows on the other side of town. Had they announced back then, they could have owned it, and we probably never would have come out.”

Now that she’s here, however, she plans to come back. “We’re in this forever,” she said. “We have no exit strategy.”

Factor said he and his brother, Dean, are willing to work with Mallis next season to avoid the confusion that dogged last week’s shows. “We can make it so the days don’t compete, or they can have shows in the daytime, and we can go at night,” he said. “It’s much better if we work together.”