Nov
22
Get ready my fellow fashionistas, LA’s Fall Fashion Week is less than two weeks away! With that being said, you better start dusting off those Manolo’s and be sure to hold the whipped cream on your caramel macchiatos, because dressing to the nines is an absolute must when it comes to Fashion in LA.
Fashion Week LA began in 2002 by an eclectic group of designers, editors, agents, and other market-makers, whose passion and dedication for fashion is what keeps Los Angeles marketplace the very best of the best.
If you want to be in the know about today’s hottest trends and designs, check out our fab guide to hitting up all the glamour hot spots during this Fall Fashion Week.
Zoe Saldana.
Gen Art, the emerging-talent incubator and one-time key player in local efforts to craft a cohesive fashion week calendar that halted operations 17 months ago has announced an ambitious return to the L.A. runway circuit.
Hosted by actress Zoe Saldana, Gen Art’s once-familiar Fresh Faces in Fashion show is scheduled to close out Style Fashion Week L.A.’s sophomore run at the former Cathedral of St. Vibiana in downtown Los Angeles on Oct. 22.
The announced lineup includes women’s wear designers 71 Stanton, Dear Creatures, Funktional, Odylyne* and Stand and Deliver, swimwear line We Are Handsome and menswear label Chambers. As is Gen Art’s traditional format, the event will also include an installation featuring accessory labels, including Iman Toloui, Plomo, Sticks & Stones and TomTom.
Unlike most fashion week events, which are open only to buyers, media and invited guests, the general public can attend — for a price. Tickets to Fresh Faces in Fashion, which cost from $60 to $85, can be purchased through the group’s website.
Gen Art, which also focuses on supporting emerging talent in the art, music and film worlds, reemerged on the fashion scene last month with an East Coast edition of its Fresh Faces show during New York Fashion Week. The group, founded in 1994 and which counted designers Eduardo Lucero, Rami Kashou, Louis Verdad and Katy Rodriguez among its alumni, suddenly halted operations in May 2010 after an ill-fated merger with another group followed by the collapse of a corporate partnership that had been in the works.
Now reborn as a subsidiary of publishing company Sandow Media, Gen Art appears to be in it for the long haul, announcing its intention to hold “Fresh Faces in Fashion” events in September and October of 2012 in New York and Los Angeles, respectively (supported by Moroccanoil, the recently announced “exclusive hair partner,” which will be assisting the designers in creating their runway looks, naturally).
The return of Gen Art may be the most high-profile Los Angeles Fashion Week news, but it’s certainly not the only news. Below are some of the fashion and style events on tap for the next several weeks.
Designer Anna Cohen is a pioneer of Portland’s fashion industry, which has been heralded on the glossy pages of national magazines and the catwalk on “Project Runway.”
With a prestigious New York education and experience from fashion work in Italy, Cohen’s company and its earth-friendly designs soared like the yellow canary that became her signature. Yet within three years — and not long after gracing the cover of Women’s Wear Daily — she shuttered her business.
The 2008 collapse came even as orders piled in and before most shoppers were even aware that a recession had taken hold. Yet the struggles she faced hold true today, even as metro-area designers are generating national buzz and luring tourists to town:
No real infrastructure.
With little in the way of manufacturing capabilities, textile offerings or production consultants, bankers or investors versed in the fashion business, designers are struggling to make clothes at affordable prices and often burn out attempting to fit fashion around a day job.
Or, they leave. Three of the six local designers featured on TV’s “Project Runway” competition have left Portland for hot spots such as New York, where it’s relatively easier to do the job.