Thursday, 12 March 2015 00:00
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By Shehana Dain
The much anticipated HSBC Colombo Fashion Week will unveil its three-day extravaganza today, promising to bring opulent fashion designs to Sri Lankan fashion enthusiasts.
Shaping a fresh experience which moves away from the traditional runway, a fashion village will be created at Hilton Colombo. Fashion designers and consumers are expected to shape CFW into a B2B platform to execute the commercial motive of the fashion industry.
This season CFW showcases the latest collections of renowned local and international fashion talent on the runway at the main shows, which will continue over three days, from 12 to 14 March. Seven international designers, who have been featured in several fashion weeks across the world, have been invited to participate in the Spring/Summer 2015 Show.
Twenty local designers have been carefully selected by the CFW Designer Selection Panel through an anonymous evaluation process and will also showcase their newest collections. The panel, comprising a group of Asia’s most experienced designers – Bibi Russell, Rizwan Beyg, Prasad Bidapa and Yoland Aluwihare - have provided local designers with integral feedback as well as guidance on creating lookbooks for their collections.
One of the local highlights this year is undoubtedly Peronie Nadine Stefel, who entered the fashion industry through CFW by winning the first Bright Spark show.
This year Stefel by Peronie will reveal its first collection under the label at the HSBC CFW Spring/Summer 2015 Show. She will introduce new ancient craft techniques to her work. Being a mixed culture designer helps her to appreciate rich artistry and inspires her to learn from other cultures around the world.
She is a great example of how CFW helps designers grow and provides them with a platform to achieve their goals and dreams.
Bibi Russel is showing her collection once again at Colombo Fashion Week, which she considers to be her favourite fashion week. This time she will add a sense of novelty to the show with her new collection, which features incredible products from Rajasthan in India. Her collection this year is inspired by Mahatma Gandhi and pays homage to him and the incredible craftspeople of Rajasthan.
Local designers are set to woo the crowd and go push accepted local boundaries.
HSBC CFW will wrap up its weeklong series of events with two glamorous themed after-parties on 13 and 14 March.
Bringing in a new dimension to its focus on merging fashion and lifestyle, CFW will partner with TNL Radio for ‘Music Designed’, an initiative that unearths music talent and mentors DJs and musicians to perform and curate music for fashion. This year will also see the participation of fashion bloggers who will be trained by an expert to cover runway shows and other CFW events in order to achieve more visibility and engagement across all social media platforms..
