SAN FRANCISCO — Bloomingdale’s women’s fashion director Stephanie Solomon picked up on a distinctive vibe from Bay Area designers and their customers when she arrived for San Francisco’s fashion week, now in its third year.
“People who live here are loyal to their own,” Solomon said. “It’s all about wanting to support your own insider designer. That’s wonderful.”
As she scouted design talent that is largely unknown outside the Bay Area, Solomon created buzz in the close-knit fashion community, where designers often sell to the public from their showrooms and get their starts in local boutiques.
Besides Bloomingdale’s, which opens its first San Francisco store this month, local shops sent representatives to the event, which allows consumers to check out San Francisco fashion talent on the runway, said fashion week producer and founder Erika Gessin, 29.
A total of 3,500 people attended fashion week, from Aug. 23 to 27, in the atrium of the Galleria at the San Francisco Design Center.
The event even appeared to help designers who didn’t participate, such as Susan Hengst.
Brigid Flood, director of sales at the House of Hengst, which sells fashions such as plaid mini Totsi dresses for fall, said when she heard Solomon wanted to stop by the showroom, “I thought, ‘She is coming down to the Mission?'” Flood was referring to the House of Hengst’s bohemian neighborhood dotted with independent fashion shops, home furnishings stores and bookstores.
Hengst, who has a studio in Greenwich Village in Manhattan, sells to 28 stores, including a half-dozen in the Bay Area. Solomon asked Hengst to send samples to Bloomingdale’s buyers, and made the same request of Kelly Barry after visiting her showroom in the hip Hayes Valley district. The designer, known as Kelly B., showed her sporty organic cotton ready-to-wear line for the first time at fashion week.
Solomon also gave a nod to Colleen Quen, whose designs are as fanciful as they are modern. Quen has cultivated a loyal base of customers among art patrons. Last year, Quen was a finalist for Fashion Group International’s Rising Star Award for women’s wear and ready-to-wear.
Quen’s spring “Compassion” collection led off fashion week’s first night with a sleeveless cocktail dress gracefully shaped like a heart and made from silk dyed by textile artist Joscelyn Himes from nearby Berkeley. Quen used the Japanese Shibori method with wire to create a striated deep red pattern.
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Solomon invited Quen to hold a trunk show at the new Bloomingdale’s, and said the designer was one of several she met with a “rebellious” streak — a do-your-own-thing sensibility.”
“There’s no regular system in the fashion community here … You don’t have to feel you’re in a box or out of the box,” said Quen, who shares her atelier in an old commercial laundry with her husband, modern furniture designer Rick Lee.
“It’s not so cutthroat here,” said designer Erin Mahoney, who showed her spring collection of vintage-inspired dresses sold at local shops. Mahoney also has placed her clothes in three boutiques, in Milan, Venice and Paris.
“There’s not a commercial fashion design environment in San Francisco,” said Mahoney, whose day dresses sell at retail for about $250. “I have to travel to get to the commercial environment … I want to be part of the community here and I appreciate [that] fashion week wants to make a scene here, though I don’t think San Francisco will ever be a fashion design capital.”
The event got overall high marks from the 18 participating designers. Aside from seasonal fashion shows by Gen Art highlighting up-and-coming talent, there’s nothing similar in the area.
Cari Borja, a designer from Oakland, said participating was “a good way to get my show down.” Borja has a local following for her brightly colored, cut-on-the-bias ruffled sportswear and eveningwear.
San Francisco designers have gotten attention from department stores before, but on a limited basis compared with their counterparts in Los Angeles, New York and Europe.
Designer Lily Samii’s evening and mother-of-the-bride gowns are at Saks Fifth Avenue in Union Square, where Samii has her own salon. Samii is a veteran of the local fashion scene and showed her fall collection at fashion week. “Every time I do these shows, I come across some incredible emerging talent,” Samii said.
“I’m bringing home a lot of ideas,” said Solomon, including one to create a “Golden Girls” boutique of San Francisco designers to celebrate the new Bloomingdale’s.