Blog

The organizations were started about five or six years ago with the goal of creating awareness of the emerging local fashion community. We did this by providing a directory of resources (designers, stylists, boutiques, models and more) available to the fashion trade and the public. We hoped that by making networking easier and drawing attention to the local talent that we would eventually attract manufacturers, contractors, buyers and reps. Arizona had hundreds of designers, but lacked the resources needed to make it an actual industry. Our directory was very popular to the public and the local industry. We gained the trust and respect of our colleagues and attracted thousands of people to our website locally and world wide. We also coordinated many large fashion shows like our annual LabelHorde Fashion Ball in which over 60 designers would showcase their work each year!

Unfortunately, we had to close our doors this past summer. The majority of the work it took to keep it going was done by my business partner, Rhonda Zayas and I on a voluntary basis and we simply couldn’t afford to donate our time anymore. In addition, we were unable to obtain our original goal of attracting manufacturers, sales reps and wholesale fabric houses to the valley. Because of this lack of industry resources, local designers don’t have access to the resources they need to mass produce their garments and sell them in duplicate quantities. Instead, we have a community of designers who make one-of-a-kinds and wearable art as opposed to creating coordinates that are produced in duplicate with wholesale fabrics and sold through sales reps at trade shows as it is done in the real fashion cities. This obstacle has created an image of local designers as being more craft driven rather than industry driven and as a result, they are not taken seriously.

However, we are proud of what we have accomplished. We are proud of the buzz that we created in the local industry and are seeing the results of our efforts come to fruition in the form of the growing number of emerging local designers, events like Scottsdale and Phoenix Fashion Weeks, and the number of boutiques carrying local designer’s work

Today, there was an article in the Arizona Republic about Scottsdale Fashion Week and Phoenix Fashion Week in which I was quoted. I have had a lot of people call and email me to thank me for my honesty and realistic point that I made. But, I wanted to take this opportunity to clarify my point further because my quote sounded a little out of context and made it seem like I was unsupportive of the Fashion Weeks. The reason I want to clarify is because I once had an article written about me in the New Times that was negative about my efforts to put AZ on the fashion map and it hurt my feelings. All I wanted to do was help other local designers and I was being criticized for everything I was doing. I don't want to hurt anyone else's feelings with my comments in the paper because I know what it is like to donate all of my time to helping other people out only to get criticized for it, so that is why I am writing this. I don't want someone else to feel that way because of what I said in today's paper.

Phoenix designer Angela Johnson knows that struggle well. She co-founded LabelHorde Fashion, an organization that attempted to unite and promote a fashion community in the valley, but shut it down in June. She had always been hopeful that a fashion scene would develop, she said. "But after five years of working on it and not seeing much happen in that direction, I'm not as optimistic as I used to be," she said. "I don't know if it's ever going to happen."

Basically, I have always been a huge supporter of the local fashion scene. I worked to provide a directory of fashion professionals for 5 years with LabelHorde/Arizona Fashion Foundation. But, we could never raise enough money to keep it going because we didn't have the same kind of financial backing that both of these Fashion Weeks are getting. BUT, my point is that if you decide to use the title "Fashion Week" in order to gain financial support and sponsors for your event or movement... you need to deliver what an actual Fashion Week delivers....Which means....

1. If you call it Fashion Week it needs to include industry people only and not be open to the public.

2. it needs to include designers who can mass produce and fill orders...who have line sheets to show buyers, etc...

3. It needs to guarantee a large number of buyers and press in attendance and it needs to provide a list of the buyers to the participating designers in order to justify a large participation fee from the designers.

4. It should only include Arizona based designers showcasing their new season's lines. If you are simply putting on a show showing clothing straight out of a boutique or department store, it shouldn't be called Fashion Week. It should be called Retail Week or something along those lines.

If the creators of either Fashion Week have these things worked out for next year and want to reach over 200+ local designers, they should come to me and I would be happy to help. I love being a part of local fashion, but I can only support a fashion week if it is truly a fashion week. I didn't use the term Fashion Week in anything I was doing with my organization LabelHorde/Arizona Fashion Foundation because I felt that it wasn't right to do so unless I could deliver everything a Fashion Week really is. I only wish I could have had the financial support that these Fashion Weeks have for the shows and programs that LabelHorde/AFF provided for the local industry. It was honest, grass roots and run by the actual local designers. I'd love to team up with either Fashion Week to see what we could do about getting local designers involved in Fashion Week.

I have been asked by so many people/publications/designers etc... what my experience has been with working in the Arizona Fashion Industry. Today, I was interviewed about this for about the 50th time....literally. So, I'm just going to copy and paste what I answered in the interview here in this blog so that everyone can read the answer. It's tough to re write it every time. So, here goes....

Basically, I was already working in the fashion industry in L.A. for years when I had to drop everything and move back to my home city of Scottsdale for family reasons. I had worked for X-Large and X-Girl in L.A. and also had my own line called Monkywench which I mass produced in L.A. I handled the design, production and sales and had two business partners and one assistant. When I moved back here, I closed monkeywench because there were no wholesale resources or manufacturing resources in Arizona for me to use to continue producing my line. In L.A. you can go downtown to the garment district and buy fabric for wholesale and find seamstresses and pattern makers and graders/markers/cutters (who size and cut the patterns for mass production) all right there in one place. So, I was downtown a few times a week manufacturing my clothing. But there isn't anything like that in Arizona. In fact, I've only found one real contractor here and no real wholesale fabric houses or any of the other resources needed to produce a line. When I moved back here, I met a lot of other designers who were displaced from big fashion cities and had to discontinue doing what they loved to do and take jobs doing something else since they couldn't design. Well, actually, they COULD design...but COULDN'T produce those designs in quantity. That's the difference between having a clothing line in a place like Arizona vs. having one in a place like L.A. or NY. As a designer, you can "design" as many things as you want and sew up a sample or two, or three or even ten. But, you can't do much more from there. There aren't any places to go to mass produce your designs here. And so, most local designers are forced to make clothing lines more of a hobby instead of an actual business that they can financially depend on for income. Most local designers make one of a kinds or very small runs of their items. This can be a business if it's done right...but it takes a lot of time, knowledge and persistence to succeed at this. This is what I've been doing in Arizona for years. And I've seen so many designers try to do this, but end up quitting after a few monthes or years because of financial reasons. It really takes a big commitment of time to succeed and that means that you can't work another full time job. And without being able to do that, you run out of money fast. So, it's hard to be able to stay in the business long enough to see a profit. I still work part time as a Fashion Design and Fashion Illustrator to be able to make enough money to live off of. My line, although profitable, doesn't make enough to sustain a good living.