LA Fashion Week at the Petersen Automotive Museum, which returns April 1, looks forward to an even better future with new owner N4XT Experiences.
The global technology and events company Launched in 2022 by former Fenty creative director Ciarra Pardo, Spring Place chairman and co-founder Imad Izemrane, and entertainment and finance veterans Marcus Ticotin, Keith Abell and Jackie Trebilcock bought the event for an undisclosed sum.
“With the support of the N4XT Experiences team, we believe LAFW is on the verge of becoming a major global fashion week as Los Angeles continues its evolution into a fashion powerhouse,” said Arthur Chipman, who produced the combination of season and preview. seasonal multi-day parades every October and April since 2018 at the Petersen Automotive Museum among vintage cars and on its expansive roof terrace.
New stakeholders are banking on technology, off-runway events and fashion designers to recharge Los Angeles Fashion Week, which has a long and messy history.
Over the past two decades, from independent style shows by local designers staged in far-flung locales, to the coordinated effort at Smashbox Studios under a five-year partnership with IMG that ended in 2008, LA has never had the credibility of New York, London, Milan or Paris, or international assistance.
There have been legal disputes over who can call itself Los Angeles Fashion Week, multiple producers and events, even a Vegan Fashion Week, and all have been consumer-focused rather than industry-focused affairs, with a boozy night with sponsors apparently as the number one target.
This has continued even as big-name designers Tom Ford, Moschino, Dior, Saint Laurent and Gucci have taken advantage of the city’s sunshine and celebrity-filled landscape to stage their own unique shows in recent years. The latest hometown hero, Mike Amiri, will perform in Los Angeles on February 8.
The only local event that has had considerable staying power in recent years is Chipman’s, which has been held elsewhere since 2010. (It even trademarked the name LA Fashion Week in 2015.) At Petersen, he has hosted shows by Greg Lauren (which had by far the largest celebrity attendance last October with Usher and Chance the Rapper in its front row), Gypsy Sport, Porsche Design, Superdry and Oliver Tolentino, among others. others, with sponsors such as Stella Artois, Essentia Water and Redkin.
Pardo, who spent 17 years working with Rihanna, Savage and Fenty, is well positioned to rebrand the event at the museum. Also, Spring Place, part of the Spring Group that organizes New York Fashion Week and the Tribeca Film Festival, will host Los Angeles Fashion Week-related events and experiences at its members-only club in Beverly Hills.
“Being a transplant from Los Angeles via New York, I have seen the rebirth. I have been here for 18 years and I am convinced that what has happened in food, art, music and cinema will happen in fashion,” Pardo said in an exclusive interview. “The [L.A. Fashion Week] the platform has been there, but it has not been used to its best capacity. There is tons of potential and a lot of great brands. LA has been a pioneer in streetwear, with the Fairfax district, and there are a lot of great things that have come out of here that haven’t had a say,” he said, declining to reveal the involvement of the brand’s sponsors or designers, but sharing that he would be reaching out to his contacts, including Chris Gibbs, owner of streetwear mecca Union, and perhaps Rihanna.
“To this day, Rihanna is a close friend and I am so proud of everything we did together. We built it from the ground up,” she said, noting that she worked on the launch of Savage and Fenty, from the Fenty Puma show broadcast live in Paris to the Amazon Prime Savage x Fenty extravaganzas.
She is looking to bring some of the magic of entertainment, live streaming and shopping to Los Angeles Fashion Week. “Full respect for the CFDA [Council of Fashion Designers of America]but creating more freedom through technology will be at the top of my personal list,” Pardo said.
“There is nothing that can compete with New York, London, Milan and Paris, but the opportunity here is to engage technology, beauty and emerging brands. There is also a big exclamation mark around sustainability.”
The programming that IMG and CFDA have created around New York Fashion Week has also been an inspiration. “With all the past Los Angeles Fashion Weeks, there has been no fireside chat and education,” she said, noting that Spring Place will serve as a venue for activations, dinners, experiences and talks.
She envisions a fashion week that is unique to Los Angeles, and focused on both the consumer and the industry, but acknowledges there is room to improve the professionalism of the shows, including the notoriously later start times of more than one week. hour, for example.
“Where the world and the metaverse and digital gaming and sales and online retail e-commerce are leading, it does more to support the consumer side,” he said of the fashion week’s raison d’être. “We have to stop and think about how we are communicating through programming, how we are communicating about sustainability. I hope to feel a difference in April, but the intention is to create more of a balance, for people to meet great brands, have a great experience at Petersen and get an education.”
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Source: wwd.com