Dear Pennies & Pens,
It’s Pen here reporting from Charleston Fashion Week. My apologies for not doing any blogging for the first day but by the time I got to my hotel and settled in, it was too late to check into the fashion week so I missed the first day’s festivities. However, I did discover a possible model for my business partner’s company Cacha Management which you guys hopefully know is a model, artist, musician management company and one half of The Network (our joint venture). The other half is Pen Productions, my digital marketing & PR agency. Enough of the shameless promotion, onto the fashion shows!
Since the main purpose of Charleston Fashion Week is the emerging designer competition, I’ll be focusing on the emerging designers showing throughout the fashion week. For tonight, Stephanie Mejia, Mary Labberton, Anjelika Krishna, and Cody Sai Adler McAllister showed their latest collections. Each of these designers brings a fresh perspective to the table and for most it was their first fashion show. It’s always exciting to see young designers because they have some cool & unique to bring to the table, something no one has ever seen.
First up was Stephanie Mejia who stated during the press conference that she was inspired by grunge and Courtney Love. She went onto say that her collection was all about defiance and had restricted silhouettes. Stephanie believes in telling a story or narrative through a collection and so her collection was about telling a story through statement pieces. Stephanie definitely achieved this goal because pieces like a creme wool sweater that was deconstructed, off-the-shoulder and yet still bagging definitely caught my eye. Then there was another jacket that was half fur and was also deconstructed. It’s obvious that Stephanie is influenced by high fashion & avant garde art. I personally adored this collection and I really think Stephanie has a chance to make it big in this industry.
Next up was Mary Labberton. Mary has an upbeat personality that really shined through during the press conference. She was great at answering questions and had some interesting things to say about fashion & design. However, her collection could use some polish. There were definitely must-have outfits, such a gold skirt with intricate embroidery & detail, caramel top with a mink scarf. Also there was a stunning nude colored dress with black mink wrapped around the top. The model was the perfect casting move as well. But, the collection needed some fine tuning, I don’t know something was missing. I can’t figure out what but something definitely wasn’t there.
The third designer was Anjelika Krishna who designs sustainable or eco-friendly clothing. In the press conference, she stated that she is heavily influenced by Stella McCartney. Anjelika had a beautiful color palette, she did a dress in this bright orangish red color and it was fabulous. However, the dress didn’t seem to fit the model’s bust so I’m not sure if that’s a design problem or fitting issue. It was unfortunate because it would’ve been a nice piece. The best items in her collection were the white dresses. These were pretty cool, some were draped and they played on asymmetry so that was nice.
Last up, we had the night’s winner, Cody Sai Adler McAllister. FYI: Each night a designer is chosen as a finalist to move onto Saturday when the final winner of the emerging designer competition will be announced. Cody showed an amazing collection. It wasn’t the most original I’ve seen but it was so well put together. The outfits reminded me of downtown New York and the hair was big as were the heels. In essence, Cody Sai’s collection gave you the whole look. When you present a collection it’s important that you show the audience how to style or wear the clothes otherwise no one will want to buy them. Cody is actually based in New York so it makes sense that his inspiration comes from there and his NYC collection stole the hearts of the people and judges since he won the people’s choice award & moved on as a finalist to Saturday.
Overall, Charleston is pretty cool and this fashion week definitely has some potential to grow and become even bigger. The fact that it’s all about emerging designers and located in a historic city is definitely a plus. In essence, stay tuned for more posts and follow me on Twitter (@LoudPen) for live tweeting action!
And there it is. The Fashion & Style of the Pen…de la Pen.
