Kuala Lumpur Fashion Week

November 28th, 2006 • Related • Filed Under

What’s the latest buzz in Kuala Lumpur… fashion… fashion week, in our endeavours to be a fashion capital, Kuala Lumpur has yet again succeeded in holding an excellent Kuala Lumpur Fashion Week. It started with fashion shows on the 11th November at Times Square followed by a gala fashion show entitled The Red Gala, where 48 designers showcased their collections with some of the designs worn by local celebrities like singer Fauziah Latiff for Kapas, singer Nurul for Calvin Thoo, international model Mary Lourdes for her husband Bernard Chandran to name a few. The fashion week culminated in the The Heineken Show on 14th November 2006 and then the closing show on 15th November 2006.
Daytime activities besides shows were talks by Mr Peter Lum on “How To dress For a Career Woman”… and a Fashion Forum hosted by Xandria Ooi.

emmagem was able to cover a couple of sessions of fashion shows and must say it was a great delight to view the collections by some of Malaysia’s very best designers. There seems to be a coming of age of sorts. Creativity was in abundance and we are glad to see that this year’s fashion week, wowed some foreign buyers which we hope will result in some future sales for these designers as compared to last year. It has been a constant source of pain that the attempt to marry foreign buyers to local designers has not been too successful thus far.

Last year, organizers’ claimed that the local designers are not ready for the export market which is why they did not market and emphasize the fashion week as a buying venue but rather more of a showcase of talents which whilst the idea and intention is good nevertheless spells nought to most designers craving a spot at international sales and stardom as opposed to the very successful London Fashion Week or closer to home the Mumbai Fashion Week. Naturally, we hope that this year’s organizers will see the importance of fashion weeks and the market success such acknowledgements can bring especially to up and coming designers.

Malaysia’s fashion talents seem more successful the minute they get out of the country look at Zang Toi and some designers have to come back to Malaysia for KL Fashion week to be recognized in their very own “tanah air” (motherland). More serious cases of “brain drain”, which really lead us to ask the question, what is the government not doing or seeing about this failure to retain talents and not able to grow and expand talents that are in existent. Is it political manouver of powers that be or is there such a lack of governing in this fashion industry, an industry that contributes almost RM3billion to the GDP such that it is subjected to the whimsies of the more imaginative and self serving but alas to the misfortune and death of laissez faire, fair economy and talents.

But definitely the organizer’s like Star and main sponsor like L’oreal should be lauded for their efforts at the continuous efforts to bring forth the new designers of Malaysia and may this year’s show with the involvement of MODA headed by new president, Miss Gillian Hung see the beginnings of better tidings for the local fashion scene.

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