Runways to renown
Dimitris Dassios
Makis Tselios
Corina Vladescu
Aslanis
Aslanis
THE CASUAL observer could be forgiven for comparing Athens’ fashion scene to the proverbial bus: you wait six months - and then six events come along at once.
Between March 19 and March 28, Athenian fashion followers were treated to an unprecedented array of catwalk displays, clothing bazaars, fashion presentations and even the opening of a costume exhibition in the capital.
Fashion fever set in with a temperature-raising cut-price sale of designer clothing from such deities as Marc Jacobs, Phillip Lim and Diane von Furstenberg, from import group Rakas.
It then moved seamlessly into the Athens Xclusive Designers Week, with four evenings of catwalk presentations by international and Greek designers. The next day, March 24, saw Ozon magazine’s 4FashionShake screening, as well as the relaunch of Bettina, a landmark fashion boutique in Kolonaki.
Then, on March 25-28, autumn/winter 2010 wardrobe proposals were paraded on the catwalk during Fashion Week Athens at Technopolis. Meanwhile, the Benaki Museum’s Pireos Street annexe opened its “To Dress” exhibition of clothing from the 18th to 21st centuries, including pieces by Mariano Fortuny, Christian Dior and Jean Desses, as well as works by 32 contemporary Greek designers.
This spring marked five years of Athens’ fashion week (formerly known as Athens Collections and now as Fashion Week Athens), and three years since the first Athens Xclusive Designers Week (AXDW).
Going global
During that period, the capital’s fashion-lovers have enjoyed catwalk displays by world-renowned designers the calibre of Jean-Charles de Castelbajac, Marithe and Francois Girbaud, and Vivienne Westwood, while Greek designers have been chivvied into an international schedule of promotion and production. As a result, they’ve been encouraged in editing and styling, benefiting from the critique of visiting fashion experts and, in several cases, being picked up by international buyers to embellish the shelves of boutiques from Paris to Tokyo, Milan to New York.
The existence of a fashion week has succeeded in putting Athens on the fashion map, says Andonis Kioukas of Q Productions, which organises Fashion Week Athens.
“Before fashion week, very few designers here - except for Yiorgos Eleftheriades, who has been doing this for the last 18 years - had a presence abroad, and many of them were even unknown here in Greece.”
Not any more.
“There are at least five designers who wouldn’t have existed - or at least not as they are now - were it not for fashion week, and I include myself,” designer Christos Costarellos, former president of the Hellenic Fashion Designers’ Association (HFD), told the Athens News. “Before Athens fashion week’s launch in 2005, I was mainly selling wedding dresses and perhaps two or three pieces from each collection.”
Networking
Through fashion week, though, he’s met influential buyers. “Last year, I was represented in 19 shops globally,” Costarellos said. “This year that number has risen to 25 shops. Now, my clothes hang next to Valentino’s. Despite the crisis, it’s been my most successful season, in terms of sales, so far.”
Under its banner of “Exporting Greek Fashion Globally”, and the support of the tourism ministry, Athens Xclusive Designers Week also strives to establish positive contacts between local designers and international buyers.
“Our aim is the extroversion of Greek fashion - we are interested in Greek designers who already work abroad as well as Greek designers who could do so,” AXDW organiser Tonia Fouseki said. “Each season we are stronger, we have a larger presence of Greek and international buyers.”
AXDW is linked with fashion weeks in other cities such as Moscow, Miami, Monaco and Nicosia, offering Greek designers more opportunities to show their collections abroad, Fouseki added.
Fashion Week Athens had previously focused on French-based business, but this season 33 reporters and buyers from Eastern Europe were invited. The finance ministry, under the auspices of which the event took place, has promised to cover these visitors’ costs.
Approving of the initiative, designer Angelos Bratis pointed out that the current financial climate calls for energy and ideas.
“We have to change and adapt,” Bratis said. “For example, my collections usually feature lots of dresses, but this season I focused on jackets, which are more wearable. The hope is that, despite the difficulties, shops will place orders. We have to work harder to show them something that they cannot resist: to overcome the crisis of desire.”
Split at the seams
The sheer number of events taking place in Athens simultaneously underlined the increasing division of the local fashion scene. Quite apart from the semi-rivalry between Fashion Week Athens and AXDW (they often coincide, and no designer shows at both), the HFD has split off from Fashion Week Athens - an event that was formerly the association members’ showcase for their work, while some designers are even quitting the HFD.
“Greek fashion is being held back by lack of institution, a lack of interest in what’s happening beyond the borders, but most of all egotism among the designers themselves,” said fashion blogger, designer and artist Filep Motwary, who, with his design partner Maria Mastori, took part at both the Ozon event and Fashion Week Athens with a film of their collection called Sarka: 23 July 1677.
“The really interesting fashion scene is underground now,” Motwary said. “It is a scene set by people who are riding their own horses by choice.”
Motwary and Mastori left the HFD in 2009. Motwary said he lost faith in the association because there were “too many voices”. Costarellos, while remaining a member of the HFD, resigned as president earlier this year and did not take part in this season’s Fashion Week Athens.
But other designers are back on schedule. Bratis, who did a party/presentation last season instead of taking part in Fashion Week Athens, is one example. “I felt that there was a gap: my clients wanted to see my clothes being worn, on the catwalk,” he said.
Costarellos hopes that, one day, Fashion Week Athens, Athens Xclusive Designers Week and the association can all be united, along with high-street brands, international designers and the local industry in one dynamic fashion week, pooling sponsorship and state funds.
“It should be easy to combine them, and it would be a much stronger event,” he said. “Unfortunately, we don’t have that philosophy of cooperation.”
Bratis, however, sees it differently.
“To be honest, I like the anarchic situation,” he said. “That’s what Athens is like, each of us protesting about the other. In fact, I’d like to have the fashion shows on the streets or the rooftops - that’s even more Athenian.”
No comments:
Post a Comment