London Fashion Week
The best thing about London Fashion Week, apart from the free cronuts, is the people watching. Even if you're not a fashionista (like my husband who was helping me during the show) you can't help but appreciate the diversity of people and style walking by. You've got the glistening bronze contoured skin of the bloggers, the perfectly messy ponytails of the stylists (why can't my hair to that?) and the buyers in their Comme des Garcons and Vetements. I'm still a bit new to the game so I can't recognize all the major fashion players by name, but there's one you can't miss--Tomoko Inuzuka of Beams. Her style is eclectic, definitely eccentric and one that you can't help but rubberneck when she walks by. Candace Fragis from Farfetch looked stunning as usual. Linda Fargo from Bergdorf was as elegant as she was sophisticated.
As it was our first LFW, we didn't know exactly what to expect. We were hoping for the best and expecting a modest turnout at worst. It ended up not being what we'd hoped for, but a successful show nonetheless. Most of what I heard about the show proved true. It is more a show for press and PR--not so much for making sales. What a shame because what we need is to sell! But, with good pr/press, sales should follow. Most people I talked with said buyers come to LFW to scope out the collections, then end up doing their buying in Paris after all the shows are done. I GUESS this makes sense because by the end of the fashion week craze, they know which collections they want to put their budgets towards. There's no point in doing all your buying during London fashion week when you still have the whole rest of the month to see collections in Milan and Paris.
So, onward and upwards for us. Based off everything we heard, we managed to nail a Paris showroom for Paris Fashion Week next week. It's an experiment for us as it's our first time partnering with a showroom, but our fingers are crossed for good results!
LFW was a blast by the way. We met a ton of amazing people both visitors and fellow exhibitors. I'd say the visitors were mostly a mix of bloggers, stylists, press, a few buyers scattered here and there, and a handful of non-industry related fashion enthusiasts who just wanted to be a part of the buzz. We'll probably do a few collaborations with bloggers and stores that we met in the coming weeks so super pumped about that.
One of the most amazing things we took away from LFW was being able to share the space with some of the more established, well known brands. Eudon Choi was just a few spaces down from me. Someone like him whose been doing his collection for over 10 years and won many awards, I would have imagined has a whole team and showroom doing his sales/PR. But, he was manning his stand just like everyone else. It was quite humbling. We are all just designers, entrepreneurs, creators trying to succeed.