The City of Brotherly Love and Sisterly Affection will make its most assured attempt to be the center of the fashion world when it hosts Philadelphia Fashion Week, an inside peek into what’s stylistically in store for the rest of 2009 and early 2010. The event will feature more than a dozen runway shows, pop-up boutiques and live entertainment through Oct. 10.
Charlie Smith, the event’s openly gay production manager and artistic director, said this edition is going to be the largest of its kind for the city.
“We’ve been working on Philadelphia Fashion Week for a year now so it’s really wonderful to see it come to fruition,” he said. “There have been attempts by other people in the past, but this is the first Philadelphia Fashion Week that has been recognized and embraced by a wide array of designers. The sheer size of it has been a challenge and a wonderful growing experience for all of us. It’s the largest fashion event ever to come to Philadelphia and much larger than any production that I’ve produced. So we were really very conscious in how we saw the event taking place and developing.”
Smith added that he and the other organizers, including creative director Michael Anderer and executive director Kristie Bergey, structured the show to be about Philadelphia.
“It’s not as though we’ve taken New York’s fashion week and implanted it in Philadelphia,” he said. “We’ve really built the event to give back by supporting the schools, by it being a sustainable green event and by pushing local retail. We really feel a need in the city for the fashion and the cultural exposure that we’re providing, and we hope and believe that the city is going to respond to it for a really long time.”
Of course there are sure to be some eye-catching designs at Philadelphia Fashion Week, and Smith said there is as much a “wow” factor to the student shows.
“We are showcasing 17 designers and, being involved in it for the past year, I have a lot of excitement for each of the designers,” he said. “We really enjoyed Strangefruit, Melani von Alexandria, and Marina Moscow is so colorful and couture. There’s some really edgy designers like GAR-DE participating and Wrath Arcane. During the fittings, I was really impressed by the students. We’ve seen some magnificent talents who will proudly represent the future of fashion from Philadelphia. I’m a fan of pretty much all of it. There is a really thriving scene here and it’s really growing. Philadelphia has such an eclectic and diverse culture. It really has a varied style of its own.”
When it comes to some of the big-name designers, Smith said show organizers didn’t get everyone they wanted to participate in this year’s fashion week. Even so, the buzz around the show has generated some big-name interest for 2010, which, of course, he could not reveal.
“We already have a positive response for next year,” he said. “There are some amazing designers that have already signed up. Philadelphia has a reputation in some crowds that it may not be as fashionable as New York. What I hope Philadelphia Fashion Week will do is experience all the different styles of fashion from the fashion we’re providing this year with the independent designers and the couture designers, but also the recognizable names.”
Philadelphia Fashion Week runs 4-10 p.m. through Oct. 10 at 23rd Street Armory, 22 S. 23rd St. For more information, visit www.philadelphiafashionweek.org or call (215) 564-1488.
Larry Nichols can be reached at [email protected].