LA FASHION WEEK.COM

Downtown LA Fashion Walk Aug. 20

Based on the success of the Downtown LA Art Walk, plans are apparently underway for a fashion-oriented version, reports the Racked LA blog.

The event -- still in the planning stages -- is scheduled for the evening of Aug. 20, and involves some 20 boutiques clustered along Main and Spring streets and Broadway in downtown Los Angeles, which will hold as of yet unspecified events and observe later hours.

Spearheading the effort is our favorite behatted friend of downtown Los Angeles fashion, Brady Westwater (who has also been involved with BOXeight Fashion Week). He provides additional information at his own blog, LA Cowboy.

-- Adam Tschorn

Many Were the Fashion Weeks, It's Hard to Know Them All

The heat and the stagnant economy hasn’t stopped a few power-wielders in L.A.’s fashion industry from rushing to fill the void left by IMG’s pullout last year. In fact, so many start-ups have announced intentions to put on multi-designer shows that fashion “week” will extend from October 9 through the end of the month. Plenty of shows will be open to the ticket-buying public, and FashionWeekLA is the online source for dates and details.

The L.A. Fashion Awards is back on its feet after a brief hiatus due to lack of sponsorship. Fashion week’s only awards event, which honors Angeleno companies and individuals for creativity, fashion performance (sales!), and marketing, will happen October 15. What has traditionally been a boozed-up gossip session for designers, retailers, manufacturers, and press to rehash the shows at the end of fashion week will this year be more like a mid-event pit-stop.

Downtown L.A. Fashion Week will use the Geffen Contemporary museum space October 13 to 15, bringing shows to the neighborhood many in fashion prefer: the Fashion District. BoxEIGHT will be back with more catwalk presentations; we hope this year the ambitious, if unorganized, group will downplay the nightclub aspects (like eardrum-splitting music levels) of their shows and put the focus more on the clothing. The Gallery L.A. will also return, and L.A. Muse will make its debut.

Preceding all this—by more than a month—is a trade show that an outfit called Carre Rouge says it will bring to the Staples Center September 5 - 7. Since there’s no exhibitor list yet, only vague claims to major-name European designer participation--and the organizers are hiding behind a questionable shield of anonymity--I am not holding my breath on this one.

Rock Fashion Week, which will happen Oct. 28 - 31, will make Paramount Studios the destination for a host of shows. Despite its weird dates, this one looks promising if only because KPR, which used to serve as IMG’s local PR team, is behind it.

Does the city even have enough designers to fill all the show slots? Judging from the spate of designer-led store openings, from Echo Park’s Tavin (whose clothing is pictured) to Innovative Baby, in Marina del Rey, which makes its own collection called Kicky Pants, there is no shortage of labels. The question is whether the designers will have the money and desire to put on shows.

Fashion fans who need a runway fix before fall can attend Gold vs. Petker, a show of designer Jared Gold’s collaboration with artist Joshua Petker, July 30 at Social Hollywood.

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Originally posted by Laurie Pike on "The Chic Leak Blog,"  at LAMag.com