Yesterday I was the lucky one, I went backstage with the Academy of Art University ‘s crew. This year, 6 designers  presented their womenswear collections from their fashion, knitwear, technical, and textile design programs.

My favorite was Sabah Mansoor’s collection, she used felted merino wool, felted alpaca wool, mohair and some amazing crystals. The jewel details added to her black and charcoal collection looked really GREAT.

Katy Perry must be kissing more than girls lately seeing as though she landed herself in the spotlight of Milan Fashion Week with Dolce & Gabbana. Apparently she is too good for Mercedes Fashion Week and Fashion Indie Week Brooklyn seeing as though she won’t be participating. She totally sold out on Fashion Indie and her friends at New York Couture by not performing at, what may be the largest event during Fashion Week, the New York Couture fashion show at Mansion! Now since we heard she flaked out on us, we have decided to replace her with a ton of other performers that you won’t want to miss so be sure to come. Until then can we please try to de-throne Katy from the number one song on the charts, lets be honest we’re all over that song. 

A recent article done by the Imagist tals about how the shopping tendancies of people in a withering economy like the one we are in might result in a lack of young designers at Fashion Week. Hopefully this won’t be the case and from what they had to say on the situation you may be able to help. Here’s a short exerpt from the article.

TI had an interesting conversation at dinner last night with a retailer who disclosed that the economic tough times were having a strange effect on her business. Not only is it a matter of people buying less, it seems when her customers made a buy they waited for the end-of-season sale AND then proceeded to walk past all those young designers to buy the most obvious brand names in sight. Balenciaga, Prada, Lanvin…all the obvious names in handbags, shoes (and sunglasses, see today’s NY Times Style Section) were still moving. But as for the Proenza Schoulers, Phillip Lim 3.1′s , Erin Fetherston’s? Resistance . “Does that mean you’re going to jettison all the kids,” I asked. “They’ll be the first to go,” she nodded sadly. In fact her hiss to me was that a whole flock of the young and hyped would NOT be showing in September and even if they could scrape a collection together, we’d be more likely to see “intimate presentations” , instead of full-on fashion shows. – Imagist

After reading that it is clearly on the shoulders of you Indies to get out there and spend all you have on our favorite young designers!

For the full article by the Imagist click here!