L.A. Fashion Week Takes on International Flavor

This season’s Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week at Smashbox Studios is taking on a certain foreign flavor, much like Los Angeles itself.

For the latest round of Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week, several foreign fashion houses are joining the mix when the Fall ’06 collections are shown March 19–23 at SmashboxStudios in Culver City, Calif.

Designers are flying in from Italy, Australia, Canada, England and Hong Kong for a dose of publicity and the chance to have their creations splashed across the glossy pages of national fashion magazines.

Six of the 35 designers showing at Smashbox Studios are from outside the United States. They include Buffalo from Montreal, Agent Provocateur from London, Peter Lau from Hong Kong, Annie Lin from Australia and Valeria Marini from Italy. Last season, only one of the 29 designers showing their Spring ’06 collections were from outside the United States: Buffalo. Since the event first launched in 2003, there has been interest from only a few international labels and designers. The first lineup included London-based Ghost and Canadian designer Paul Hardy.

Fashion Week organizers said there’s no particular reason for the growing international interest, however. “It is the nature of our industry. It is a global, international business,” said Fern Mallis, vice president of IMG, which produces Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week at Smashbox Studios through its 7th on Sixth division.

“There are designers from all over the world who are looking at different opportunities and deciding where they want to show and which market makes sense to their collection,” she observed. “New York [Fashion Week] started off being about New York and American designers, and it has shifted to what New York is about, an international city. Los Angeles is an international city as well, particularly for the Latin American and Asian Pacific markets.”

Some of this foreign flavor comes from the fact that IMG, a sports and fashion marketing firm that also organizes Olympus Fashion Week in New York, has been expanding its fashion show focus to several overseas markets. IMG, known for pairing famous athletes with clothing brands, got deeper into the fashion industry when it acquired 7th on Sixth, headed by Mallis, in 2001. Seventh on Sixth was started in 1993 by the Council of Fashion Designers of America to give American designers a platform to show their fashions in one location at New York’s Bryant Park.

Currently IMG Fashion, a division of IMG, helps organize fashion weeks or fashion events in cities such as Milan, Moscow, Mexico City, Miami, London, Singapore, Melbourne, Sydney and Mumbai, India. It was planning a fashion week in Pakistan until last October’s earthquake there put those plans on hold.

Carlo Demichelis, a designer based in Mexico City, recently participated in Mexico Fashion Week, which IMG helps organize. Demichelis was scheduled to have a show at Mercedes- Benz Fashion Week on March 19 but had to cancel because he said he was having problems bringing his collection through U.S. customs. It was unclear whether he could reschedule his show. “Carlo was one of the shining stars last season when they did the Mexico City show,” said Henri Meyers of EM Productions, which is handling Demichelis’ publicity. “He got a huge response. IMG thought because L.A. is so close to Mexico City, this would be a good venue.”

Demichelis, talking from Mexico City where he has a store in the upscale shopping district called Polanco, said he doesn’t sell to any stores in Los Angeles right now even though he has been designing for 25 years. But he wants to expand. “The whole West Coast is a market that interests me,” Demichelis said.

Crossing over

Mallis said that as IMG organizes more fashion events around the world, more synergies will be created. “We will be working more closely [with local companies] as we go into more cities around the world,” Mallis confirmed.

For example, IMG is working with Lakme, a cosmetics company in India, to move the biannual Lakme India Fashion Week from New Delhi to Mumbai. It will now be called Lakme Fashion Week, a five-day event. The first Lakme Fashion Week in Mumbai is scheduled for March 28–April 1.

Mallis noted that Indian fashion designers who had shown in Mumbai might work with IMG to show in Australia, New York or Los Angeles in the future.

Unless IMG is familiar with a company’s collection, designers must submit a press kit and be approved by the producers. “We send out a pretty wide net,” Mallis said. “But there are plenty of people we have said no to or said this is inappropriate or is the wrong tenor of what we do.”

One of the international designers accepted to participate in the upcoming Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week was Chulo Pony, a Canadian label based in Vancouver. Kristina Howe, a company representative, said the designers applied for the show and were accepted. “We knew a couple of Canadian companies that participated in the show in the past, and they had a great experience,” she explained. “It is great exposure down there to the media and to buyers. It’s business as well as a fun fashion show.”