Los Angeles Fashion Week Spring/Summer 2016: What It looked Like!

All Photos by Billy Bennight for The Los Angeles Beat

There were a flurry of Fashion Shows throughout LA over the last couple of weeks with various productions being offered in different locations exhibiting mostly local designers with their lines. It was a stunning week of various fashion directions birthed primarily in Los Angeles. My coverage is primarily of the Arts Hearts Fashion, LA Fashion Week and Metropolis Fashion Week. A wide variety of sensibilities were offered at these shows that varied from minimalist or casual/bohemian to the most lush and detailed exacting work. Since this is an overview I’m not going to offer daily accounting of details, but rather offer a showcase the looks the designers I covered in a photo gallery in the body of this article.

Sue Wong kicked off LA’s nearly 2 weeks of fashion shows with her sumptuous line called Alchemy and Masquerade Spring/Summer 2016 for Art Hearts Fashion at the Taglyan Cultural Complex. The following night after Sue Wong’s presentation Art Hearts Fashion had a special Betsey Johnson 50th anniversary installation with 6 looks that span Betsey’s career. The remaining part of the evening featured designers lines by Vis A Vis, Responsive Textiles, Dan Richters and Lolly Clothing. It all proved to be a daunting schedule for me to attend all the fashion shows, on a nightly bases, offered during the week. I made the best of it and the fruits of my efforts I lay before you or rather below this write up.

The LA Fashion Week opening party at Union Station was the following night with a little fashion tease offered from designer Yohei Ohno, with his minimalist approach of clean lines and fine details, before the opening night’s party elements took over for drinks, Hors d’oeuvre and style freaks socializing. The next 2 nights at Union Station held a variety of the LA Fashion Week offerings. There was a dance of different styles by Mulierr, Salo Shayo and Namilia at Union Station. Namilia offered a fascinating exception in approach to design. Namilia offered the most silicious and sexually charged line of anything I saw during all of LA Fashion Week. Namilia used appliqué styled erect penises and/or patterns of penises and testicles for tops, bottoms, dresses and body suits. Then there was the body conscious translucent latex styles offered with oddly themed 3 dimensional inflatables fully filling the Catwalk. It added a lot of “Bang” to that night’s offerings!

Photo Gallery After The Break

The 3rd annual Metropolis Fashion Week closing party presented by Century West BMW was the last night I attended a fashion event with a cat walk and the fierce kittens were out in force! The closing party was held at the Warner Bros. Studio lot in Burbank. “The Fifty Shades of Pink” collection honoring breast cancer survivors charity was an Avant-Garde Costumes collection; the Haute Couture red carpet fashions was a lavish event held to showcase 3 main costume designers. Lady Gaga’s touring costume designer Perry Meek, Paulina Rubio’s costume designer Inoe Vargas and Taylor Swift’s costume designer Mireille Dagher were featured. The other designers featured were Marika Soderlund-Robison, Diego Medel, Julie Danforth and Sophie Chang. There were elements to some of the fashions offered at the Metropolitan Fashion Week that are more exclusive to costume design professionals: like a heavy interfacing along the hem of the evening gowns to help weight down and stabilize the hem of the dress as it sweeps across the red carpet. Also, the workmanship and the design elements of the garments presented had a details I didn’t see in the lines presented at the other fashions shows, with the exception of Sue Wong’s line. The production was exceptional and only rivaled by Art Hearts Fashion Weeks efforts. It was a night of beautiful seductive fashions that were excellently hand crafted and tailored wardrobe choices.

Shawn and Claire Buitendorp Stars and Winners of VH1’s Twinning

I ended LA Fashion Week at the Standard, where I ran into the Shawn and Claire Buitendorp, of Shock and Awww Fashion, hot off of winning the VH1 reality program Twinning. The twins are deep into fashion and while we stood in line to enjoy LA Fashion Weeks roof top closing party I asked their thoughts on what they had seen during LA’s fashion week. Shawn started off and Claire chimed in: “I found that the demographic of people at the Taglyan Center versus Union Station was quite different! Union Station had more of an eclectic edgy more youthful urban vibe, where as, at the Taglyan there was more of a refined, sometime overly dressed, sophisticated atmosphere. We enjoyed that dichotomy!” The LA Fashion Week closing party ended my coverage of LA Fashion Week with an open bar and lots of young attractive people.