Phoenix Fashion Week is at it again for another year, starting with one of our favorite events: the emerging designer contest (remember how cool last year was? Read the story here). This year, it was held at the Toni & Guy Academy in Scottsdale. Walking in, we were submerged with designers and media, quite the place to be that night!
So what exactly is the emerging designer competition? Well, every year the Phoenix Fashion Week team travels to eight different cities to find the best emerging designers. They handpick 12 designers to enter the competition to not only compete for an awesome grand prize, but to take their business and designing skills to the next level.
This year accessory designers are getting in on the fun. Special guest, Louis from Bad Water Brewing,
made an appearance to tell the crowd more about the competition. During his speech he mentioned the amazing prize he’s giving the winner of the accessory designer competition. Bad Water Brewing is asking each designer to design one accessory inspired by Bad Water Brewing something edgy and unique. The winning design will then be produced and sold by Bad Water Brewing. Talk about an incredible opportunity for these accessory designers to showcase their talent.
One of our favorite accessory designers from last year, Melis Accessories, is back for another year!
As we took our seats, we could feel the excitement in the air. The crowd was eager to see who these designers were and what they had to offer! Starting out the show was Katya Leoncio from Las Vegas Nevada, showing her swimwear line, Dolcessa (remember the brand from our preview story? Read it here) . Strutting a fushia swimsuit, the model was confident and showed off the risqué and beautiful part of fashion. Definitely one of our personal favorites! Another favorite of ours was Michelle Herbert from Los Angels, California. Her model wore a fitted lace floor length dress with oversized ruffles at the bottom. The front was crisscross showing quite a bit of skin on top, which was both sexy and beautiful.
And of course, you can’t go wrong with a grey and black fitted jumpsuit just like the one Jennifer Krischer designer of Linden, created. She constructed an interesting two piece grey jumpsuit with black accents to give the look some edginess. It was overall a piece to remember, and another favorite of the night.
We saw quite the show at the emerging designer announcement. Every designer brought something unique and different to the table. We saw everything from men’s streetwear to extravagant dresses. And after just seeing this little preview, we know this year’s competition will be tough for the designers and interesting for the crowd as we anticipate who will be the winner in October.
A particularly special moment of the evening was when previous emerging designers got to give a piece of advice to the newbies. Last year’s winner, Bri Seeley and Jeanne Hankerson of SJ Couture shared what help them get to the top to the top of the competition. “Everything is a test,” Bri shared with the new contestants. “Branding is everything,” Jeanne shared.
A question and answer portion finished up the night. The crowd got to ask the new designers several questions about a variety of topics including what makes their line stand out, how they come up with original ideas, and what type of woman they design for.
Overall this show was an excellent preview of the talent and new fashions they will be showing this fall. Keep your eye out fashionistas, the best new designers will be taking over the runway soon! But, if you just can’t wait to see more, follow these emerging designers on Twitter!
Madison Brown in Michelle Herbert
Proverbs by Efua ~ @proverbsbyefua
Michele Hebert ~ @mhebertfashion
Medium Apparel ~ @mediumapparel
Herbert Victoria ~ @hvictoria00
