Emma Stone, Katy Perry and a baby goat help showcase emerging fashion designers
Emma Stone, Katy Perry and Kristen Stewart in the front row and baby goats, diner waitresses and tippy-toed ballet dancers on the runway Wednesday afternoon made for a memorable West Coast showcase for the designers in the running for the 2016 CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund Award.
Presented by Kate Spade New York and held, as it has been in past years, at the Chateau Marmont in West Hollywood, the Wednesday event presented the handiwork of this year’s 10 Fashion Fund finalists to an audience of fashion-industry notables (Rodarte’s Kate and Laura Mulleavy, Irene Neuwirth, Jennifer Meyer, Scott Sternberg, Greg Chait, J.C. Obando and George Esquivel, among them) and celebrity guests including Ciara, Demi Moore, Nicole Richie, January Jones, Maria Sharapova and Rosie Huntington-Whiteley.
Unlike past years, though, the clothes, footwear and accessories were presented in a single, seamless, high-energy, fashion-tribe “happening” kicked off by a New Orleans-style jazz band (sporting sunnies by finalist Stirling Barrett’s Krewe du Optic label) and ended with a hula-hooper and a cheery volley of soap bubbles (courtesy of models wearing wares from finalists Beckett Fogg and Piotrek Panszczyk’s Area label).
In between was a parade that included fierce and futuristic robot women (courtesy of finalist Adam Selman), old-school diner waitresses carrying silver platters full of footwear (Chloe Gosselin), pajama-partying pillow fighters (wearing a range of striped sleepwear by Morgan Curtis’ Morgan Lane label) and flower-crowned prairie fairies in flowing dresses (clothes by Brock Collection’s Laura Vassar Brock and Kristopher Brock), one of whom cradled a bleating baby goat (provenance unknown) in her arms.
Rounding out the fashion circus were a posse of street-wise graffiti artists (clad in Chris Stamp’s hometown Stampd line), who broke out cans of spray paint to scrawl the letters C-F-D-A across the backs of jackets; the Hiplet dance troupe’s ballet dancers (wearing Ji Oh), who took their fringe-framed catwalk turn en pointe; ’50s-era big-haired bad girls sporting mismatched loafers (from L.A.-based footwear designers Marjan and Maryam Malakpour’s Newbark collection); and mandolin-carrying hippie dudes in bold, chevron-patterned hoodies (from Joshua Cooper and Laurence Chandler’s Rochambeau label).
“I feel relieved,” Stampd’s Chris Stamp told us at the Wednesday event. “We had an Instagram challenge last night. We have this [fashion show] and then a dinner tonight, and that’s it until Nov. 7.”
That’s the date of the gala dinner in New York City, at which a winner (who will receive a monetary prize of $400,000 as well as business mentoring services) and two runners-up (who will take home $150,000 each) are set to be revealed.
Stamp’s mother, Susan, a fixture at many of the brand’s events (we last saw her at a Hollywood Hills house party celebrating Stampd’s latest Puma collaboration), was experiencing a very different emotion at the Chateau Marmont. “I only have one child,” she told us. “And I really feel like I’ve won the lottery.”
Launched in 2003 by the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) and Vogue magazine, the Fashion Fund program was created to foster emerging American design talent. Last year saw a rare three-way win, with Jonathan Simkhai, Gypsy Sport’s Rio Uribe and Brother Vellies’ Aurora James sharing the top honor. Previous winners include Paul Andrew (in 2014), Public School’s Dao-Yi Chow and Maxwell Osborne (2013) and L.A.’s own Chait, who took the prize in 2012 for the Elder Statesman cashmere label.
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