The fashion show doesn’t go on
With one glaring exception, Los Angeles’ recent crazy-quilt fall calendar of fashion-focused activities unfolded pretty much as planned with a handful of smaller shows that included labels such as Skingraft and Anthony Franco, plus two larger events: Concept Los Angeles Fashion Week, which showcased a handful of designers downtown, and Los Angeles Fashion Weekend at Sunset Gower Studios in Hollywood.
But that lone wrinkle was a real doozy. The 11th-hour cancellation of World Coast Management’s long-planned Los Angeles Fashion Week — which had been scheduled to run Oct. 20 to 25 — caught the 14 participating designers (some slated to travel from Europe and Mexico) and the rest of the city’s fashion faithful by surprise.
Event organizer Susan Costa did not return repeated calls seeking comment, but a media alert sent from Costa’s e-mail address three days before the event’s scheduled start blamed the last-minute cancellation on the Los Angeles Fire Department’s refusal to sign off on a temporary-use permit for the downtown warehouse space WCM planned to use. A lack of any further detail kick-started rumors in the local fashion world, among them a conspiracy theory that forces within the mayor’s office had moved to quash a fashion week event that didn’t have the city’s official stamp of approval.
The truth is a bit more mundane and procedural, says Los Angeles Fire Department Capt. Philip Ayala. According to Ayala, the space in question is the subject of an investigation stemming from an unpermitted party in 2009, and “the Fire Department’s policy is not to allow any events or changes of use in a building that’s going through a legal procedure,” he said.
Local businessman Ben Neman, one of the East 16th Street property’s owners, was also quick to dispel rumors. “The Fire Department didn’t do this on purpose,” he said. “It was just a misunderstanding. There was something in their file from a year ago and they were just doing their job.” Neman said he was unaware of any potential permitting problems when he agreed to donate use of the space for Costa’s slate of runway shows, parties and trade-show style exhibits.
According to Ayala, Costa was informed that the LAFD would not sign off on a permit at that venue when she first contacted him two weeks before the scheduled event. “I even told her there were two other warehouses in the vicinity that would not be a problem,” Ayala said. “And I told her we would help fast-track any permits that she needed.”
He dismissed the notion that the fire department or the mayor’s office was somehow trying to derail the event. “Actually the mayor had someone in his office working on this, trying to help make it work, and someone from [city councilwoman] Jan Perry’s office contacted us too,” Ayala said. “But once we explained what the situation was, they understood. We all want to foster new businesses, but it needs to be legal and safe.”
“I wish [Costa] had told us earlier,” said Anh Volcek of La Jolla, one of the disenfranchised fashion designers who was set to debut her L’une Collection on Oct. 21 during the WCM week. The day before she had been scheduled to show, “I ended up calling everybody rich that I knew to ask for help,” she said.
Volcek and three other displaced designers showed instead on Oct. 23 at an event hastily organized by Fashion Los Angeles, a group that plans to enter the fashion week fray with its own event early in 2011. “Showing one model and a rack of clothes was less than ideal,” she said, “but I made the best of the situation. I’m glad I did it.”
And, even though she says she lost the opportunity to show her full collection, her $5,000 registration fee, two sample garments (valued at $700) and the cost of printing 400 show programs, she cautions against taking any greater meaning from the WCM event’s failure to launch.
One problem “shouldn’t taint the whole experience,” she said.
