Fashion Week Mexico is spreading to key Mexican cities Guadalajara and Monterrey amid efforts to promote the country’s emerging designers and grow its business.
The platform, which organizes biannual Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Mexico in sprawling Mexico City, is about to host Guadalajara Fashion Weekend on Friday and Saturday.
The event will see roughly 1,000 people descend to Mexico’s second-largest city to view runway shows by established designers Julia Y Renata and newer talents Alexia Ulibarri and Benito Santos. The event, which drew 1,600 visitors to its maiden edition in 2014, will include a guided visit to the city’s key tourist sights including the Lafayette and La Americana quarters featuring Art Deco-inspired buildings by famous architect Luis Barragán.
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“Our goal is to promote our national fashion,” Fashion Week general director Beatriz Calles said, adding that Fashion Week has grown enough to move into other cities. “When we reached 15 editions, we realized it would be good to start coming out to the other main fashion cities.”
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Sponsors also benefit, with Heineken bankrolling Guadalajara and Mercedes-Benz sponsoring the Monterrey weekend, which took place May 9 to 11 in Mexico’s third-largest metropolis. That event, which showcased designs by Alejandro Carlin, Pineda Covalin, Alexia Ulibarri and Angel Sanchez, drew 1,200 people.
Meanwhile, Calles said MBFWMx continues to draw buyers from France, Germany and the U.K. to shop Mexican design.
The competing platform Nook is also making strides, observers said. In that effort, four of the country’s young talents — Carla Fernandez, Julia Y Renata, Jakampot and Vero Diaz — will fly to London Sept. 15 to attend a Mexican Embassy promotion event. Calles hopes the designers will network with the likes of Selfridges and other department stores. But she conceded Mexican design is still largely undiscovered. “Any buyer interested in Mexican design is one we have to focus on. I don’t mind if it’s a small boutique point of sale because this will allow our designers to have better opportunities.”
One such opportunity came last year when French buyer Michael Hadida sought to bring eight top talents to a Paris Fashion Week showroom. But after export lobby Promexico tightened its budget amid slumping oil prices, the project was called off, prompting fresh criticism of the government’s lacking commitment to the budding fashion sector.
Promexico later found a way to take a few designers — though hardly any from Hadida’s group — to a Paris showroom, Calles said. That effort failed to connect them with a select group of fashion coaches and buyers.
That said, Mexican designer labels are finding enough cash to open stores at home and abroad.
Pink Magnolia recently opened her first shop in Masaryk high street in the swanky Polanco district, coming on the heels of similar debuts by Lorena Saravia and Sandra Weil. Magnolia, Weil and Gianfranco Reni have also recently installed corners in Saks Fifth Avenue in Mexico, joining Saravia and Alejandro Carlin.
Trista, a duo increasingly billed as Mexico’s most successful design label, has plans to expand beyond Japan and into Switzerland while Macario Jimenez is growing in Spain, Calles said.
Meanwhile, MBFWMx’s Compra Moda pavilion continues to grow and has now been present in four editions, allowing mainly accessories designers to sell to roughly 15,000 people attending each edition.