This February, Los Angeles will be getting a share of the Fashion Week excitement with more designers announcing they’ll be staging West Coast runway shows this winter. For years, L.A. has been largely overlooked on the high-fashion radar, but we have to think anybody who has ever attempted to run around New York City for the February shows, negotiating ice and slush in the upcoming season’s cutest stilettos, could probably have seen this trend coming.
Rebecca Minkoff is the latest designer to announce a Los Angeles show this February, according to Women’s Wear Daily. The “see-now-buy-now” show of items immediately available for sale (as opposed to a preview of what will go into production in the season to come, as was historically the standard at Fashion Week shows) will take place, fittingly, inside the Grove shopping mall. The designer will open a pop-up shop for the month and will be partnering with other brands to create a full-day experience for attendees of the February 4 event.
Los Angeles made sense for a show for multiple reasons, the company’s CEO told WWD, including the possibility of staging the event outdoors and a California theme running through the new collection, but also because Los Angeles, not New York, is the brand’s biggest market in terms of sales. The latter might be inspiration for other brands thinking of bringing the experience of their runway shows to the customers who are most likely to actually buy the items.
The schedules of fashionistas and influencers around the city are likely to be packed come February, as Minkoff’s show joins already-announced events from Tom Ford, Rachel Zoe and Tommy Hilfiger, which features the line’s collaboration with current L.A. It Girl Gigi Hadid, and is expected to draw crowds in the thousands to an open-air show in Venice. All of the shows fall in the first week of the month, giving West Coasters a bit of a preview before NYFW kicks off the following week.
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