Fashionable times
Vancouver Fashion Week is poised to showcase the latest collections of almost 60 designers
N ow entering its 13th year, Vancouver Fashion Week is enjoying its biggest season yet with nearly 60 designers from across Canada and around the globe showing their collections on runways this month.
While local designs are always a key component of Vancouver Fashion Week, for founder and producer Jamal Abdourahman, it’s the roster of international designers that he’s especially excited about.
The way he sees it, international presence is critical if you want the attention of buyers and the fashion media.
“We had over 700 articles from the media, international and local (last year),” says Abdourahman.
“Imagine in 2009, we had probably six or five articles.”
From Beijing to London, there will be at least 18 designers coming from abroad to show autumn/winter 2013/2014 looks at Vancouver Fashion Week, which will be held March 19 to 24 at the Chinese Cultural Centre.
It’s a long way from the Vancouver event’s leanest years in 2006 and 2007, when only four designers participated.
“We had very low years in 2006, ’07, only two days, only four designers and not even one article,” Abdourahman says candidly. “And I refused to quit because I believed in the project so much that quitting was not an option.”
Abdourahman credits those tough years as being “the biggest help we got.”
They forced him to ask the question: “How can we make a show that brings in international media presence? Because designers get branding from that exposure, they get business. So the only way we could do that was by bringing in international designers.”
Abdourahman started leafing through magazines to get inspired by the world of high fashion.
While the run ways of Paris, Milan and London are reserved for the world’s top designers, Abdourahman decided to cultivate a quality fashion week by looking for emerging talent at design competitions. He searched “from Berlin to Copenhagen, Oslo to Sao Paulo” and invited the winners of various fashion competitions to show their work in Vancouver.
The formula appears to be working. Many designers who applied to show at VFW had to be turned away this year and 150 fashion media have already registered to attend.
Designers who will be showing at Vancouver Fashion Week include Beijing-based designer Liu Lu, a Parson’s graduate who designs under the brand Luvon by Liu Lu and whose designs have been embraced by Chinese celebrities and fashion magazines.
Lila Nova, who’s based in Athens, will be bringing a feminine and playful sensibility to Vancouver, while Jacob Kimmie, who hails from South Africa by way of London, will be bringing an edgier style to the runways.
Local designers include Shelley Klassen of Blushing Boutique, plus eight students from LaSalle College.
To kick off Vancouver Fashion Week, longtime Vancouver boutique Boboli will hold a runway show on March 19.
Looking forward, Abdourahman says he still has a lot of work to do. “(Turning) Vancouver into a hot spot for the next generation of influential designers, that’s what I want to achieve,” he says.