(Photo:MarieProm)This year, for the first time, Oxford Fashion Week is taking place twice and kicking off its second week of 2014 fashion with a dazzling array of shows and catwalks, models and designers all collaborating to bring you the most ambitious schedule to date, concluding at Oxford University Museum of Natural History with its final show Birds of Paradise.

OFW director Carl Anglim explains. “Designers love to feature as part of Oxford Fashion Week and didn’t understand why they could only show off their collections once a year, and not more often. We didn’t understand either so have decided to do it twice. So instead of why, the question for us was why not?” While you can still expect the Lingerie Show, the High Street Collections, Independent Collections and Couture Show, the Birds of Paradise Show is a new addition to the line-up and takes full advantage of its surroundings.

A black-tie reception will be held amidst the dinosaurs and their friends at Oxford University Museum of Natural History on a glittering Saturday night extravaganza, before guests are led into the wings for the runway show, where the models, chosen from the recent Oxford castings, will walk the entirety of the museum, showcasing the clothes of top designers from all over the world.

“We have wanted to work with Oxford University Museum of Natural History for a long time and this show tied in so perfectly with the museum itself, it was the perfect collaboration, Carl adds. “Plus the recent overhaul of the museum and a new lighting system, as well as the ability to move some of the aisles and exhibits, meant it was the perfect space and the biggest area we’ve ever had to work with.

“The Birds of Paradise collection is housed in the museum itself of course although we will provide our own version on the night,”he smiles.

The black tie event will close a week of lavish sets, venues, clothes and catwalks in what looks to be its best line-up ever, starting on Monday and featuring five separate shows and concepts.

Oxford Fashion Week was founded in 2009 and has featured more than 440 designers from 17 countries, audiences of 10,000 and designers including Matthew Williamson, Alexander McQueen and Valentin Yudashkin, as well as the contemporary Ara Jo and Yvonne Lau, plus male supermodel David Gandy. Numerous OFW models have also gone on to launch high-profile modelling careers off the back of their debuts: Ash Longshaw, Cara Kealy, Josh Holden-Taylor, Ollie Callaghan and Fiona Callaghan all being signed to modelling agencies following their appearances at OFW in March 2014.Read more at:MarieProm cheap prom dresses

(Photo:MarieProm UK)The words “Fashion Week” might stir up images of the Big Apple and Bryant Park, but for those on Park Avenue, they hit a bit closer to home.

The fifth annual Luma Fashion Fete will take place Oct. 30 from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m., and this year’s theme is “Day of the Dead.”

The Winter Park restaurant Luma on Park will host the luxury fashion experience, produced by Jane Layne Events. The event includes two high-end fashion shows, live entertainment, dancing, gourmet food and hand-crafted cocktails.

The fashion shows will be styled by Tammara Kohler, stylist and owner of Fused Fashion, and models will walk down the runway in high-fashion, gothic-inspired designs.

Luma Fashion Fete was created as a way to advocate local brands and designers within the Central Florida community.

“We want Winter Park to have a thriving community,” Kohler said. “It’s so easy to overlook the up-and-coming, but working with the locals and supporting locals — supporting the grassroots — there’s a lot of ingenuity there.”

Rachel Mizrahi, vice president of events for Jane Layne Events, said the event sells out every year.

“All the trendsetters of Central Florida will be there,” Mizrahi said.

Luma Fashion Fete coincides with Park Avenue Fashion Week, which began Oct. 25 and lasts for seven days with trunk shows, parties and exclusive sales that all lead up to a runway show on Nov. 1.

“People wait for this all year. We want to kick off a really stellar weekend of fashion, celebration and beauty,” Mizrahi said.

One goal of Park Avenue Fashion Week is to seek out up-and-coming designers and college students aspiring to be designers to compete in a Project Runway-style competition. The five finalists present their work on the runway in the finale show on Nov. 1.

This is the eighth year of Park Avenue Fashion Week and Michelle Marks, the Park Avenue Fashion Week coordinator and owner of Shel Marks PR & Events, said her goal is to show people what Park Avenue has to offer.

“I want to bring the community and people on the outside in to see the boutiques, bars, hotels and restaurants and gain awareness of Park Avenue,” Marks said.

UCF alumna Analys Sanchez is also on board as the Shel Marks PR & Events social media strategist and project lead for Park Avenue Fashion Week. Sanchez graduated in August 2014 with a bachelor’s degree in public relations and advertising.

“Being able to be a part of this is a dream come true, both career-wise and personally,” Sanchez said. “This is the largest and most challenging project I’ve worked on, but I saw areas where it could be improved, and I am confident and excited to be working on this and be challenged on a new level.”

Morgan McGee, a senior event and hospitality management major, is a lead intern for Shel Marks PR & Events, and works alongside Sanchez as a social media strategist and project lead for Park Avenue Fashion Week.

After interning with Shel Marks PR & Events over the summer, McGee was asked to be the lead intern for Park Avenue Fashion Week.

“I am hoping to get out more team-building and event experience,” McGee said. “We do a lot of events and each one is different and exciting, but this one will be different for me due to the sheer size, so this will be a great event to add to my portfolio.”

McGee said it’s her responsibility to make sure guests have a memorable experience.

“It is important to me because this job and this Fashion Week is something people look forward to every year, and to be a part of the team that puts this show on is exciting,” McGee said.Read more at:marieprom.co.uk Prom Dresses

When Steve J & Yoni P’s Seoul Fashion Week show on Oct. 20 surprised many in the star-studded front row and packed auditorium with its combination of romantic colors and playful graffiti prints.

“I think Steve J & Yoni P fits the mood of what is going on in Korea, between high street fashion and luxury,” said Danny Stienen, a buyer from Antonioli in Milan.

It is difficult to be both sexy and feminine at the same time, added Stienen.

“But I think this year’s womenswear collections, along with Steve J & Yoni P’s, are able to present both characteristics and define luxury street style,” he said.

(Photo:marieprom.co.uk)Seoul Fashion Week, in its 15th year, ended its six days of spring-summer glamor Wednesday at Seoul’s newest venue, Dongdaemun Design Plaza. The week included 85 fashion shows, and was attended by more than 60,000 fashionistas, models and buyers, as well as K-pop fans hoping to catch a glimpse of their idols.

SFW rolls out the carpet a little later than other major international fashion weeks, such as New York, Milan, Paris and London, so buyers often arrive with limited budgets. But international buyers said they were planning to spend more money in Seoul than in previous years after watching the shows.

“K-pop and Hallyu play a big part for people in Hong Kong and Asia to like K-fashion,” said Tony Lee, merchandising manager of Hong Kong’s Harvey Nichols.

“Korean clothes comprise 6 percent of the total purchase we make and it is likely to increase,” said Lee, who is on his seventh visit to SFW.

“There are unique patterns that don’t exist in Europe,” said Steinen. “I think that these kinds of special styles and logos can break into the European fashion market.”

In response to the worldwide “Normcore” trend for unpretentious and inconspicuous clothing, Seoul’s womenswear is wearable and practical, but adds layers of romantic and funky style for a more luxurious look.

Designer Park Seung-gun of pushButton, known for his whimsical and creative designs, presented a lovely collection inspired by a photograph of Mexican painter Frida Kahlo, wearing a simple white shirt and wide denim pants with a cigarette in one hand.

(Photo:marieprom.co.uk/grey-silver-prom-dresses)The collection highlighted simple and practical style, while adding delicate spring color palette of baby pink, sky blue and saddle brown for a ladylike touch. Soft textures, including silk taffeta, emphasized the collection’s funky romantic style, with playful, flared skirts and cocoon silhouette outerwear.

Steve J & Yoni P’s collection lived up to the hype, set on the theme “Modernistic Renaissance,” through prints based on ancient plants and statues used in the collection’s signature items, layered wrapped-skirts and skirt-inspired belts.

Soft romantic colors like baby pink, lemon yellow and royal blue blended well with the overall theme of the collection, painting a widely romantic and fun spring collection.

Low Classic, under the helm of designer Lee Myung-sin, continued its witty and classic design displaying a practical line, in tune with the collection’s theme “American Dream.” The models sauntered down the runway with short orange hair in unison, reminding of rusty-haired Mila Jovovich in the 1997 film “The Fifth Element.”

The collection added a funky, bright touch to its knitwear and comfortable easygoing silhouettes.

Designer Gee Choon-hee’s Miss Gee Collection marked the last day of fashion week. The collection was dominated by toned down achromatic colors with flashes of blue and yellow for emphasis, balanced with minimal clean-cut lines and simple silhouettes.

“This year’s Seoul collection was impressive,” Tony Lee added after the show. “A mix of fun and avant garde style can become a niche market for Korean designers.”

(Photo:MarieProm)The fashion world has its fair share of eccentrics. But the late British stylist Isabella Blow was much more than the woman who wore kooky hats. Fashion Blows, an ambitious exhibition examining her life and style through her over-the-top wardrobe, is currently open at The Room at The Bay on Queen St. until Nov. 1.

Blow, who committed suicide in 2007, was a renowned fashion editor who was patron and champion to a stable of envelope-pushing designers, including the late Alexander McQueen and milliner Philip Treacy. She was also noted for discovering the “aristo” models Stella Tennant and Sophie Dahl.

Blow’s longtime friend, the artist Daphne Guinness, swooped in and purchased the lot when her wardrobe was to be put up for sale at auction at Christie’s in London in 2010. Guinness created the Isabella Blow Foundation in support of emerging fashion talent, as well as to promote mental wellness in the industry. From Blow’s deep and dramatic archives arose an exhibit called Fashion Galore last winter at London’s Somerset House.

Guinness came to Toronto in support of the opening of this second exhibit. “The clothes are an embodiment of Isabella’s life’s work. The collection is iconic in that it embodies an extraordinary time in fashion. The various outfits are life chapters in her memoirs. Issie collected by intuition. She couldn’t have cared less about trends.”

The exhibit in Toronto has a different name because it is not simply a travelling replica. Curator Abigail Slone, the digital editor for Hudson’s Bay, went back into those fabled Blow archives to select 55 pieces (including 15 hats) to show a different perspective on the collection, and the woman. There are pieces from McQueen and Treacy (as well as footage from the 2008 collection they presented together in Blow’s honour), Deborah Milner, Dior and Galliano.

“Her life was so huge, and there was so much to play with in the archive,” says Slone, who called on Toronto designer Jeremy Laing and stylist Nolan Bryant for advice on the project. There are Fashion Television interviews with Blow running on a loop, as well as wallpaper-sized photos of Blow wearing her finery in the real world.

Guinness is herself a fashion icon, known for her two-toned blond and black hair (and a collaboration with MAC cosmetics), and the Toronto exhibit also features some special pieces from her own archives, with more emphasis on rare McQueen.

Guinness’s grand gesture was reminiscent of Blow’s own largesse when she purchased all of McQueen’s 1992 graduate show, an avant-garde spectacle called Jack the Ripper Stalks His Victims. The difference is that Blow collected clothing on a stylist’s salary (despite an aristocratic background and marriage, she was not a wealthy woman). That McQueen collection was basically bought on layaway. Of the decades’ worth of such stretch investments she went through at the archives, Slone says, “I mean, they are not cheap. She was a stylist, so it’s not like she was rolling in dough.”

Slone also notes that Blow had a particularly decadent habit of collecting items in more than one colour. “She collected in multiples. If she loved a skirt, she loved it three times.” Slone points to the opening dress in the exhibit, a pale green Galliano. “I mean, it is sort of nothing special. Not like the grander leather and lace and fur pieces. But it is about the intricacy of tailoring. And more importantly, she would wear it washing dishes.”

Perhaps that is the bravest thing you can do in fashion: not save your best clothes for special occasions. Most people who buy dresses with five zeroes tend to keep them wrapped up in museum-like safety.

Says Guinness: “Isabella’s creative courage was fearless. Isabella wore her clothes hard. They weren’t merely decorative.”Read more here:MarieProm evening dresses

For the first time and for one night only, popular Spanish brands Sfera, Suiteblanco and Uno de 50 debut their fall-winter collections on the Philippine Fashion Week runway on Oct. 24, 9 p.m. at the SMX Convention Center.

(Photo:marieprom.co.uk formal dresses)All three brands have come to Manila in partnership with SM Retail, and their participation in Philippine Fashion Week will give Manila’s stylish set the rare opportunity to view their latest collection, which are also on the racks of their stores worldwide.

“The arrival of Sfera, Suiteblanco and Uno de 50 in the Philippines is the signal of making Filipinos to ‘think Global and act Local,’” says Philippine Fashion Week executive producer/director Joey Espino. Having imported quality goods available to the market at very affordable price points will make Filipinos updated with the rest of the world.”

(Photo:marieprom.co.uk cheap prom dresses)Sfera, which is owned by The El Corte Ingles Group, Spain’s largest department store chain, recently opened its first store in Asia at SM Makati. In the Sfera fall/winter collection khaki pays tribute to spring with butterfly prints, Green is a throwback to the ’60s, Red portrays your inner strength with a combination of speckled black and a touch of red, bright Blues accentuate black and white. Gray features a more formal look using knitted fabrics, bulky wools, and tight skirts.

Suiteblanco will showcase its prize-winning, trend-led key pieces — Rock N’ Roll Denim, Safari Standout, that highlight animal prints, the timeless Black & White Binary, and East-Meets-West Eclecticism, a rigmarole of festive prints and aboriginal styles.

Spanish brand Uno de 50’s collection is all about Connection, the environment’s influence on human beings. The collection amazes with new daring designs with flashes of Swarovski Crystals, as well as a miof leather and especially shaped metals, all handcrafted in Spain.

Catch this rare fashion moment and get the first dibs on fashion-forward merchandise right after the show.