There’s no true lead event in L.A., but BOXeight and LA Style Weekend are planning functions — if you can get in. Also: Gen Art, Project Ethos, Concept occasions.
Ever since the five-year partnership between events producer IMG and Smashbox Studios ended in October 2008, LA Style Week has languished without a lead event. Groups of each stripe have rushed in to fill the void, culminating in last fall’s fashion month, which nearly spanned October.
Five months later, the style feast has turned to famine, and most from the groups that have staged runway events in past seasons have dropped off the calendar — such as the organizers of Downtown Los Angeles Fashion Week.
That leaves just two holdovers from last fall, BOXeight, which plans to reprise last season’s hybrid photo shoot/presentation format for a handful of designers at its downtown studio room, and Los Angeles Fashion Weekend, which returns to Sunset Gower Studios. Both events are scheduled for Friday via Sunday and are open only to media, buyers and invited guests, having a couple of exceptions. There are nightly “after parties” at BOXeight, and on Saturday, a Green Initiative Humanitarian Fashion Show is part of L.A. Fashion Weekend.
After just one season collaborating with Rock Media, Gen Art, a not-for-profit incubator of up-and-coming talent, returns as a solo act. It plans to host 20 of its L.A.-area custom alumni in a poolside occasion on the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel on Tuesday from 7 to 10 p.m. The occasion is open to the public.
Rather than present full collections, every designer is expected to showcase a single fall 2010 look “on a live model or muse.” As of press time, the list of designers included the likes of Jared Gold, Jeffrey Sebelia, Louis Verdad and Rami Kashou.
Also open towards the public is going to be Project Ethos, an event that ambitiously promises to deliver “L.A. Style 1 week in 1 night,” having a 10-designer runway display headlined by two “Project Runway” alumni (Gordana Gehlhausen and Jesus Estrada), bookended by musical performances and surrounded by art installations. It is scheduled for March 19 at the Music Box @ Fonda, 6126 Hollywood Blvd.
Whilst no doubt of awareness to the city’s fashion community at large, none from the Los Angeles Style Week occasions — save for L.A. Fashion Weekend — are organized with an eye toward business and publicity in the manner of New York and European style weeks.
But that could all change on the eleventh hour, thanks to a concept which is nevertheless taking shape — dubbed Idea. As of press time, downtown activist Brady Westwater, designer/photographer Mike Vensel (the man behind the short-lived Kitten Style 1 week of the couple of years back) and also the management of Spring Arts Tower (the former Citizen’s Bank space), are offering 8,000 square feet of lately renovated space at 453 S. Spring St. to lines left in the lurch when other events fell through.
Numerous of the details are nevertheless in flux, according to Westwater. “Right now we’re within the phase of reaching out to designers to see what their needs are,” he said Monday, noting that there has been sufficient interest to book 3 nights of designer runway shows and presentations — currently March 22 to 24. Westwater mentioned the group has the option to expand a couple of days on either side of that, based on awareness.
Though it is as well early to tell precisely how Idea will translate into reality, the idea of disenfranchised designers banding with each other to show their collections to purchasers, media and invited guests on a shoestring spending budget in underutilized downtown commercial space amid folding chairs, surrounded by plastic drink cups and also the blare of the cobbled-together sound system isn’t difficult to picture.
In the end, this is precisely what Los Angeles Style Week looked like nearly a decade ago.
