The beautiful Walt Disney Concert Hall, home to the LA Philharmonic. Los Angeles Fashion Week is actually taking place across the street–on top of the parking lot structure for this building.
Each year for the past two years, we’ve had to look each Spring and Fall at New York Fashion Week, London Fashion Week, and Paris Fashion Week and think, “OK, so we missed it again this season.” After the latest blow-out between Mercedes Benz Fashion Week and IMG pulling out at Smashbox Studios, and the competition between the downtown fashionista scene vs. “Westside,” the entire concept crumbled. It was a sad sad thing for the industry in LA, not only because inhabitants of LA tend to lead fashion trends in general, and we have a burgeoning denim industry, not to mention an entire block of fashion “Marts” and showrooms, leading fashion designers, celeb-designers, musician-designers, key retailers and boutiques, and several fashion schools, but because it was a blow to the city’s collective ego.
However, this may change. According to Apparel News, a newly organized group of producers and fashion industry players have created “Fashion Los Angeles” with plans, according to their press conference on September 15, to host a proper Los Angeles Fashion Week starting February 1-7, 2011 on top of the enormous garage across the street from the Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown LA. The plans include creating a Bryant Park-like set of tents to create a Fashion Village.
As if this wasn’t exciting enough, Fashion Los Angeles went on to say that they would be hosting 2 Fashion Weeks (Spring and Fall) for the next 5 years in this location.
The catch however is who’s going to pay? The Fashion Village is estimated to cost $5 million alone. And while the city of LA is endorsing the event, it is not ponying-up any money. Like many cities in California, we’re broke.
The plan is to bring in sponsorships ranging from $25,000 to $500,000 or more, to be a part of LA Fashion Week. Rumors have it that another car company is poised to take the title sponsorship.
65 designers will be participating in the upcoming Los Angeles Fashion Week, to be announced in October.