Back from the first ever Mediter­ranean Cruise Cou­ture Line pre­sen­ta­tion Lau­ren Elaine, greets us to a start of sum­mer with the debut of her Black Label SWIM Col­lec­tion at La Vida Hol­ly­wood. With La Vida’s tran­quil essence of South­ern Spain set­ting the atmos­phere guest with cham­pagne at hand, stir from their social­iz­ing in awe as beau­ti­fully tanned mod­els present the first sneak peek into Lau­ren Elaine’s 70’s inspired cou­ture biki­nis, del­i­cate resort wear and swim cover-​​ups flaunt­ing a gen­er­ous help­ing of skin and unique swimwear. The audience’s eyes were glued to the can­dle lit run­way brush­ing off the light­ning effects by the media pit. Cap­ping the evening off with a meet-​​and-​​greet with the designer her­self. Yet again, Lau­ren Elaine suc­cess­fully cap­ti­vates the audi­ence and fash­ion world alike.

Pho­tog­ra­phy & cov­er­age cour­tesy of Emer­ald Chic’s West Coast Team: Chris­t­ian Lewis, Codee Maves, & Sean Peterson.

LA Rocks Fash­ion Week’s pre­sen­ta­tion of Lau­ren Elaine’s Fall 2010 Black Label col­lec­tion stood on it’s own amongst the glitz and glam of the famed Sun­set Strip. Held at The Key Club known for host­ing some of rocks finest acts, was the per­fect set­ting for Lauren’s “Lit­tle Red Rid­ing Hood” inspired col­lec­tion. The red car­pet was teem­ing with a vari­ety of young Hol­ly­wood “In Crowd”, many of whom donned fash­ion wear pro­vided by Lau­ren Elaine.

Record­ing Artist/​Actress Kayslee Collins kicked off the event backed by an edgy but homo­ge­neous rock/​punk band, the set being high­lighted by a punk rock ren­di­tion of Lady Ga Ga’s “Bad Romance”.The crowd was fully warmed up when Lauren’s pre­sen­ta­tion began with a bril­liant array of gowns and dresses which lead up to the “sur­prise” ending…A stun­ning “Lit­tle Red Rid­ing Hood” gown, the model flanked by Harley the “Wolf” (a Siber­ian Husky) as they glided down the run­way to David Bowie’s “Putting Out the Fire (with Gaso­line). The crowd was thrilled and stood up as the gor­geous Lau­ren Elaine met at the stage’s end with “Lit­tle Red Rid­ing Hood” and the “Wolf”.
Next up was the head­lin­ing music act “Dar­ling Stilet­tos”, who served up a scorch­ing set of 80’s style metal, fueled by wild gyra­tions and a more than gen­er­ous help­ing of sex appeal. Cap­ping off the evening was the dark visu­als of “Stella Rossa” who’s haunt­ing key­board sounds and bizarre the­atrics were rem­i­nis­cent of an H.P. Love­craft story. A really great act.

Check out our video cov­er­age, hot pics, and shots from the red carpet!

Some­times pic­tures just don’t do it. Thank­fully, our TV crew cap­tured some video footage of the Direc­tives West fash­ion show. You can see our pre­vi­ous post for more info and pics from the event. It was fab!

Located in old down­town Los Ange­les at the Spring Arts Tower, Smash Box’s Con­cept LA was pre­sented in a room which had the ambiance of a 1940’s bank.

Con­cept LA boasted a wide vari­ety of design­ers and new up and com­ing Los Ange­les fash­ion design and con­cept. The myr­iad of mood and music into which each designer con­tributed a piece of them­selves, show­cased the more gut level fash­ion that presently thrives in the LA area.

Punc­tu­ated by the set­ting, designer Jen Awad’s self described ver­sion of a “post apoc­a­lyp­tic” vision of the 40’s and 50’s brought into the “now using mod­ern mate­ri­als” was a big hit with crowd and media alike. Her inspired uti­liza­tion of the clas­sic” form and sil­hou­ette of a woman”  and com­ple­ment­ing selec­tion of back­ground music that brought the focus to her design line, Jen paraded her array of 40’s — 50’s influ­enced and “acci­den­tally 80’s mix” designs down the run­way to an enthu­si­as­tic crowd. Jen Awad is one the LA stand-​​out design­ers to keep an eye out for.

Pho­tos cour­tesy of our LA Fash­ion Cor­re­spon­dence Team: Chris­t­ian Lewis — Producer

With a focus to high­light con­tem­po­rary design in the LA fash­ion scene, Direc­tives West, a fash­ion mer­chan­dis­ing and trend con­sult­ing firm, launched the FIRST​.LA  a run­way show ded­i­cated to show­cas­ing LA’s emerg­ing design­ers. Care­fully hand­picked, the show con­sisted of design­ers such as Fluxus, Jonesy, Dolan, Col­lec­tive Con­cepts, Urban Behav­ior, Vin­tage Rev­o­lu­tion, and sev­eral more.

The aus­tere envi­ron­ment cre­ated by James Camp­bell at Pent­house #11 Design space was a def­i­nitely pro­fes­sional pre­sen­ta­tion. The show boasted a long list of design­ers hand picked by Direc­tives West from the pool of con­tem­po­rary L.A. Fash­ion design­ers and lines. The room was per­me­ated with a main stream feel that was craftily orga­nized and exe­cuted. The lines included women’s wear, junior fash­ions, acces­sories includ­ing men’s and children’s wear. tak­ing heed to casual west coast fashion.

Our LA Cor­re­spon­dence team, along with host, Johanna Till­man, had the plea­sure of inter­view­ing Janine Blain, the VP/​GMM of Direc­tives West. Stay tuned for the video footage very soon! In the mean time, check out the awe­some pics from the show! Cour­tesy of our Emer­ald Chic’s LA Team: Chris­t­ian Lewis, Pro­ducer; Sean Peter­son; and Codee Maves.

“Indi­vid­u­al­ity meets col­lab­o­ra­tion” was the theme of the night, accord­ing to Project Ethos’ Exec­u­tive Direc­tor, Jason Peskin. 10 dif­fer­ent design­ers debuted their col­lec­tions for yet another red car­pet event dur­ing LA Fash­ion Week. Two design­ers, includ­ing for­mer Project Run­way con­tes­tants, Gor­dana Gehlhausen (GOGA by Gor­dana) and Jesus Estrada
(Haus of Estrada) were among the group of emerg­ing design­ers who show­cased their artis­tic tal­ents on stage at The Music Box, in Hol­ly­wood, which has been recently ren­o­vated and part­nered with Project Ethos for their grand re-​​opening event.

The antic­i­pated and ener­getic event was kicked off by R&B/POP act “Bruno Mars”. High­lighted by a styl­ized ver­sion of Michael Jackson’s “Dirty Diana”.   The deep toned gritty music cho­sen by the design­ers com­ple­mented the dark atmos­phere cre­ated by the antique the­atre. Project Ethos really put it together com­bin­ing art, fash­ion and music por­tray­ing the ulti­mate Hol­ly­wood vibe…

Other design­ers and lines also included: Rochelle Corino (Rum­ple­munkeh), Maria Per­alta (Devi­ous Damzels), Rachael Feigel­son (Love Child), Michelle Liu (EMEL), Shant Der Ashodian (ARKA Cloth­ing), Omatu Gottschlich and San­dra Sturm (Fulani), Mar­i­alia Pacitto (Mar­i­alia), and Seth Nob­mann (Seth Welling­ton).

Artists, painters, graphic design­ers, and pho­tog­ra­phers also gath­ered at The Music Box to show­case their tal­ents and art­work dur­ing an evening of fash­ion, art, music and philanthropy.…altogether, this made for a fab­u­lous mix of energy, momen­tum and excitement.

Thanks again to our won­der­ful Emer­ald Chic LA team:

Chris­t­ian Lewis — Producer

Sean Peter­son — Co-​​Producer

Codee Maves — Project Coördinator

Johanna Till­man — Co-​​Host

There’s some­thing to be said for LA fash­ion. It’s not your typ­i­cal run-​​of-​​the-​​mill style, but it def­i­nitely has some­thing that’s uniquely LA about it all. Dur­ing this season’s LAFW, our team has already seen some out­ra­geous designs and out of the ordi­nary aes­thet­ics. One par­tic­u­lar show spun off the Alice and Won­der­land theme, incor­po­rated into a myr­iad of saran wrap in a way I prob­a­bly would have never ven­tured to think of. Such was the case for the Alice Mad Hat­ter Party held at the newly restored Spring Arts Tower which inte­grated a space-​​aged theme into the fan­tasy world of Alice in Won­der­land. A cul­mi­na­tion of var­i­ous hat design­ers showed their fall 2010 col­lec­tions in hopes of spark­ing some inter­est in hat designs, the millinery craft and fashion.

Anita Hop­kins, the fea­tured designer of the first ever Milliners event dur­ing Los Ange­les Fash­ion Week, orga­nized by The Milliners Guild of South­ern Cal­i­for­nia. Por­tray­ing her vision uti­liz­ing plas­tic wrap as a mate­r­ial for both hats and cloth­ing… Anita stunned the crowd with both con­cept and cre­ativ­ity, using spacey atmos­pheric music cou­pled with out­ra­geous min­i­mal­ist designs, evoked out of this world imag­i­na­tion… a real crowd pleaser.  

Pho­tos cour­tesy of Emer­ald Chic’s Fash­ion Cor­re­spon­dents: Chris­t­ian Lewis, Sean Peter­son, & Codee Maves