Marc Jacobs and DKNY significantly cut down their guest list for fashion week, and Marc Jacobs even went so far as to - gasp! - cancel the after party.

No after party? That's reason enough to realize fashion weeks are greatly being affected by the economy.

DKNY cut its guest list from the usual 1,000 down to just 400. Four hundred people. That's it.

Marc Jacobs's list, normally 2,000, was cut to 700. Robert Duffy, Jacobs' business partner, also told papers there will only be "one or two celebrities." One or two celebrities at the Marc Jacobs show? At New York Fashion Week? That just seems so ... wrong. And did we mention no after party?

Okay, we understand the importance of cutting costs, but we can still mourn.

In addition, several publications are cutting back on sending editors to overseas fashion weeks. This year's fashion weeks all seem like they'll be a bit warped.

Amsterdam International Fashion Week 2009 will take place from January 24 to February 1, 2009, at Westengasfabriek. If you want to try a unique and different kind of fashion show, you should try out the International Fashion Week of Amsterdam. The AIFW has slowly become the recognized fashion week that stands for alternative and innovative ideas by taking inspiration from the city of Amsterdam and its very well-rounded talent pool of young people. The AIFW offers the most hip and modern catwalk shows, and in between the shows it has events, exhibits, lectures and parties scheduled. The event has gone from the previous three catwalk shows, just some years back, to the current 20 shows, and over 50 events were scheduled last year.

Previous catwalk shows at Amsterdam International Fashion Week have featured designers and lines such as; Daite by Tessa Koops, C'est Brilliant, EAH Non by Kim, Django Steenbakker, Blue Blood and many more. EAH! Got the nomination for being most daring. Eva Hanna, who is the face behind EAH!, did not grace the catwalk this time as she had in previous show but stayed behind the scenes and pulled off a show with great, new and innovative designs of summer dresses, sandals, beach wear, bags, shoes and jewelry.

Amsterdam International Fashion Week is sponsored by great companies such as Redken, Maybelline, Evian, Torres, Heineken and a great number of other sponsors whom have their own events and parties throughout the week. The 14th Frans Molenaar Award was given to Danny Cremers with the prize he also got awarded 10,000 euro, which he can use on his future couture shows.

Amsterdam International Fashion Week's motto is that fashion should be for everybody, so they created along with fashion week a program called "Downtown Programme," which can be attended by anyone. Highlights from the event were "Fashion in Film" at Kriterion and a bags exposition of Liesbeth Kaag that took place at the museum of bags and purses.

Amsterdam International Fashion Week takes place twice a year; it put Amsterdam on the map as a town of innovative fashion.

Written by lisa Kir

Miami Fashion Week will be held from March 19-22, 2009 at SOHO Studios in the Wynwood Art District of Miami. While those of us up the coast tend to think of New York as the fashion center of the United States, we can't forget that Miami is the gateway city for all of Latin America, and there are tons of fashion talent and fashionistas south of the border.

Miami Fashion Week was designed to cater to this enormous and growing market. It's the largest international fashion event in the United States with a focus on Central and South American designers and buyers, but the rest of the world is well-represented too, with fashion media and celebrities from such far-flung places as Afghanistan, Australia, Canada, the Caribbean, Eastern Europe, India, Italy, Pakistan, South Africa, Spain and the United Arab Emirates attending. (I wish they'd had it back when I was in ninth grade, it would have made an excellent topic for my World Cultures report!)

There's much more to Miami Fashion Week than just fashion shows. Events will include seminars on topics such as trends, retail and apparel law, a buyer's salon for clothing, a similar marketplace for jewelry and accessories and, as you would expect from Miami, lots and lots of really cool parties!

Miami Fashion Week is also sponsoring several contests. There's a Student Fashion Designer Competition open to any student currently enrolled in a college level fashion design, management or merchandising program in the U.S. who's able to produce one full outfit for the showcase, which includes shoes and accessories. There's also an Emerging Designer Competition for Florida designers who have been in business from between 2-5 years, have their clothes sold in at least one retail store and are able to produce a full collection. Deadline for entry in these competitions is January 15, 2009, and winners will be announced on February 2. Since Miami is a lifestyle as much as a place, they're also planning a competition for interior and furniture designers, though details on that one are sketchy at the moment. For more information on Miami Fashion Week, visit www.miamifashionweek.com.

For those of us who are bored already with traditional fashion weeks, London Swatch Alternative Fashion Week 2009 presents a good, well, alternative. This event will be held from April 21-25, 2009, at Spitalfields Traders Market (an upscale, elegant version of what we here in the U.S. call a flea market, which centers on fashion and home design items).

London Swatch Alternative Fashion Week is free and features runway shows daily from 1:15 to 2 p.m. Hot, young and up-and-coming designers will present their alternative, inventive designs directly to the public, the press and the fashion industry while competing for a Swatch Individual Designer Award or Swatch College Award in recognition of their originality, creativity or innovative use of designs and recycled textiles.

Twelve designers per day will show their designs to live jazz music, and the event is also an opportunity for new and upcoming models to show off their talent. Categories shown include women's wear, menswear, millinery, shoes, loungewear, lingerie, fetish gear and costuming. Designers who showed last year include Pretty Pervy, Rachel Hines, Richard Shoyemi and Victoria Harley. Jasper Garvida, a Project Catwalk (the UK's version of Project Runway) winner, is the most famous Alternative Fashion Week alumni. This 26-year-old major talent combines old-world elegance with modern sensibility to create collections that are truly worthy of rock royalty. One of the standout pieces from his past collections was a white, off-the-shoulder gown with a ruffled mermaid tail that managed to transcend all clichés except beauty. (I have never seen any garment that would enable you to make more of an entrance, and yet it still enhances the wearer rather than competing with her.) The young designer also showed a richly decadent, floral-patterned skirt paired with a combination corset/cardigan and patterned faux-fur jacket that looked insane in a brilliant way, like Edie Sedgwick raided her grandmother's closet to get dressed to go to the hospital after she burned down the Chelsea Hotel. I write about fashion constantly, and it makes you kind of jaded, but I can truly say that Jasper Garvida is the first designer I've seen in a long time for whom I would be willing to blow my rent money on some of his pieces, so why not go to Alternative Fashion Week 2009 and find the next major talent before he or she becomes out of reach?

If you really need to get away from it all in December and appliquéd Santa or reindeer sweaters don't satisfy your sense of style, why not plan a trip to a fashion show in Fiji? The first annual Fiji Fashion Week will be held at the fabulous Renaissance Fiji Beach Resort and Spa on Denarau Island in Nadi, Fiji, December 3-7. It will showcase Autumn/Winter 2009 fashions for the southern hemisphere — yeah, there's a whole half of the world that's not on the same schedule as Paris — through a two-day workshop for emerging designers, two nights of fashion shows and an exhibition day showcasing designs from both emerging and established Fiji brands and designers.

Designers featured at Fiji Fashion Week Winter '09 include Manafidji, Robert Kennedy, Wai Tui, Uprising Beach Resortwear, Value City, Hupfield Hoerder, Samu Cabe, Tali by Rajan Sami, Courtney Nicole & Arieta Tora, Ellie Nusbaum, Brittany Byrne, Craig Marlow, Carlos Semisi & William Sanday and Lisa Lee. The local fashion sensibility is definitely tropical, but surprisingly chic — no Hawaiian shirts or Bermuda shorts in sight. And lest you be in doubt about whether Fiji is really a hotbed of fashion or not, celebrities that have visited there recently include Britney Spears, Tori Spelling, Nicole Kidman, Madonna, Demi Moore, Pierce Brosnan, Russell Crowe, John Travolta and Mel Gibson.

The really interesting part of Fiji Fashion Week, though, is the attention given to further development of fashion talent through the workshops. Designers will be on hand to discuss all aspects of putting together a line, from designing a collection to marketing it to maximizing press coverage and sales from the perspective of fashion editors and stylists. Fashion weeks aren't usually as upfront about the commercial side of the business — I like to call them the world's most glamorous tradeshows — but in Fiji there's even a meet-and-greet exhibition between designers and buyers. Think about it, fashion designer wannabes. You could stand out there as a big fish in a small pond and live in one of the most beautiful places on earth. It sure beats Fashion Week Rochester, anyway!

The 7th annual Los Angeles Fashion Week will be taking place at Smashbox Studios in a couple of weeks, and the fashion show to see there will be Lana Fuchs Couture.

Lana Fuchs is the first Las Vegas designer to participate in L.A. Fashion Week, and it's about time, because Las Vegas is emerging as one of the shopping capitals of the world. As Fuchs says, "It's a huge honor to represent Las Vegas, and I hope that someday our city will become a part of this fabulous fashion tradition. Las Vegas has evolved into a mecca for fashion, frequented by world class tastemakers and influencers, and so, it is only natural that we host our very own Las Vegas Fashion Week." Fuchs will be showing more than 50 looks from her spring 2009 line on Tuesday, Oct. 14 at 4 p.m.

The theme of the collection is "Rhapsody In Bloom," and it will feature rich floral prints based on colors she saw in her travels, including Monet's gardens in France and vivid saris in Jaipur. "Rhapsody in Bloom" is anything but minimalist, with saturated colors joining the most luxurious fabrics (silk, chiffon and lace) with embellishments and embroidery, while maintaining the sophistication necessary for a big city market.

Fuchs' collection centers on ultra-feminine, elegant dresses in silhouettes that work from day to evening. Her designs are perfect for the Hollywood scene, and her one-of-a-kind, custom couture is very popular among women who have occasion to dress up. Lana Fuchs was born in Russia and resides in Las Vegas, both of which influences can be seen in her strong point of view, which pairs sexy silhouettes and a showbiz mentality with a view to the future. Her tag line is "understated devastation," but there's nothing understated about the effect her clothes have on the runway. In fact, I'd love to see her do the wardrobe for a movie, but it would have to feature a strong female lead with one foot in tradition and the other in the future. No simpering girlfriends need apply.

The biggest accessorizing trend on the runway at New York Fashion Week was pale skin and lack of accessories to make the clothes stand out! Interesting marketing trend for the designers (it's accessories where they make all their money), although it does make life easier for the girls and dressers backstage.

As for actual, as in you-can-go-to-the-mall-or-online-and-buy-them accessories, L'Wren Scott showed gloves and capelets and paired black and white clothes with red shoes...the look was very Meg White doing Marc Jacobs ads.

Ralph Lauren featured messenger bags, fedoras and low-slung belts over clothes that gave off an Indiana Jones meets Yves Saint Laurent vibe. Sabyasaschi and Stephen Burrows both paired their elegant clothes with long, thin earrings a la Edie Sedgwick. Burrows added multicolored metallic bangles and his hair was an accessory too - the collection was entitled "Afro Summer."

Rebecca Taylor went '60s-'70s in another manner, showing fringed handbags and headbands worn across the forehead. Yes, yet another rich hippie look, but a nice one. (Milly was similar but that one was not so nice.)

I normally love Zac Posen, but his clothes and accessories in this collection looked like the light fixtures at Mohegan Sun casino. The silver lipstick was a nice touch, though... must find out who did the makeup, as I wasn't backstage at that one.

Marc Jacobs (eponymous, not Marc by Marc Jacobs) featured Mary Poppins hats, elaborate metallic wrap belts, piles and piles of bangles and complicated handbags. That was only on one model, and no, I'm not kidding about that! In the Marc line he accessorized with ascot-like scarves, skinny belts, handbags and headbands, which looked relatively clean.

The one trend in accessories that really puzzled me, though, was the rampant presence of gladiator sandals. Designers, that trend is a few too many seasons old now, and it doesn't look good on anyone, even on your perfect models and the cool girls on the street.

Few of us can afford to fly to Paris to see the collections, but if you're interested in a quick fashion getaway to a foreign city with a true international sense of style, nothing could be easier than Toronto. L'Oreal Fashion Week Spring 2009 will take place from October 20-25, 2008 at the spectacularly stylish Nathan Phillips Square in downtown Toronto. Unlike New York Fashion Week, our neighbors to the north are a bit more egalitarian about fashion. Some of the shows are by invitation only, so this is one scene where, if it interests you, it's actually worth traveling to check out in person rather than viewing on Style.com.

The Fall 2008 Toronto Fashion Week included big names such as Alfred Sung, Diesel and Buffalo DAVID BITTON, but it also featured some of the most unusually named fashion lines I've ever heard: bustle, Damsels In This Dress and Playdead Cult, BODYBAG by Jude, and gsus sindustries. It kind of sounds more like an alternative music festival than a fashion week, but after being in Bryant Park for days, I was ready for a little irreverence and checked those lines out. The gsus line, which originated in the Netherlands as a skate shop in 1993 and moved through street wear into high fashion, impressed me the most; it featured red pleather pants and dresses, elaborate head wraps, some of the best cut jeans I've ever seen and, dare I say it, touches of acid-washed denim that managed to look completely modern due to their lines and construction.

Local line Preloved was another standout. Creative director Julia Grieve, a former model, constructs the remade clothing line out of vintage sweaters. One collection can require as many as 50,000 of them, and each new garment manages to retain the vintage flair while appearing totally up to date and assisting the environment. (The clothes used to construct Preloved would otherwise end up in landfills.) Preloved kind of reminds me of Toronto itself: clean, friendly and slightly cheeky.

The Paris Ready To Wear (Pret-a-Porter) fashion shows will be held from September 27 to October 5, and one of the most closely watched shows will be Yves Saint Laurent, taking place at the Grand Palais on October 2. Although Stefano Pilati has been designing for YSL since 2004, this will be his first Parisian collection out from under the shadow of Yves Saint Laurent himself, who died in June 2008.

New York Fashion Week was filled with tributes to YSL, who was known for his slouchy silhouette and elegant appropriation of menswear. Tom Ford, who designed the collection until 2004, ignored this meme in favor of the sexy siren look he perfected for Gucci, but his worldview was met with disfavor by the Yves Saint Laurent customer. Pilati, however, has stayed closer to the mandate he's been given.

His Autumn/Winter 2008 collection featured menswear-inspired separates in neutral monochrome, with subtle shots of color like cobalt blue and sunshine yellow to alleviate the seriousness of the look. The waist and hips were a major focal point, with high-waist pants accented by narrow belts, color blocking, or ingenious cutouts in their matching jackets. Skirts and pants both belled downwards to echo the cocoon shape of the coats, allowing Pilati to present sophisticated but flattering lines. Tactile but potentially dour fabrics such as flannel, velvet, leather and tweed were accessorized with punk rock dog collars, severe haircuts and black lipstick, as if the youngest daughter in an English manor had dressed in the dark, grabbing half of her own clothing and half of her mother's. My favorite look was a high-collared brown velvet jacket with prominent zippers mixed with an asymmetrical black leather zippered skirt. It sounds odd in the telling, but it was a collection you not only wanted to look at, you wanted to wear.

I believe Yves Saint Laurent would truly be proud of his namesake of a sort. After all, he got his start at 17 when he took over design duties for Christian Dior.

Hair and makeup trends at New York Fashion Week Spring 2009!

Makeup for spring 2009 will feature dark, exotic eyes paired with rosy or neutral cheeks and lips, and hair will be streamlined, if you can believe what I saw backstage this week at New York Fashion Week. The look, ideal customer and intent is obviously going to differ from fashion show to fashion show if you're looking at Abaeté, L'Wren Scott, Carolina Herrera and Betsey Johnson, but there were a couple of common threads running through all those shows that differed merely in the details.

The makeup mastermind at Abaeté was Jeannine Lobell for Stila, and she created a dramatic eye using a Smudge Pot (gel eyeliner) in charcoal gray. The eyeliner extended around the eye in all directions, include inward (it was applied to the inner rim), and was neither smoky nor sharp but was blended to fade out like the end of a song. Jeannine let the eyes stand out by pairing them with clean skin and just a hint of rosy lips.

Carolina Herrera is the first lady of fashion, and her makeup look was positively presidential, much like that at Abaeté but slightly more ladylike and subdued. The hair at her show was slicked back but slightly textured, as shown off inimitably by Agyness Deyn.

The hair at Abaeté was created by David Cruz of Redken and featured tight buns with dimensional shine created by the application of Electric Wax. It's an elegant look anyone could wear successfully at home, and for this I applaud him!

L'Wren Scott's eyes were more rocker chick, and her hair was bed-head, but contained Bed Head, all of which was fitting for Mick Jagger's main squeeze. But the true rock star of fashion week was Betsey Johnson, and she had a look all her own, created by Fulvia of Make Up Forever and Italo of Redken. Her makeup was pure Raggedy Ann, with long faux eyelashes on top and bottom, created with Aqua Eyes eyeliner. These were paired with very rosy cheeks and lips on white skin, a look I'm about to recreate with stuff I bought at Target. Hair was synthetic wigs in bright colors with lots of shine, cut into a sharp bob to bring the eyes into focus. My good friend Italo says you need a certain personality to carry off those colors, but anyone can wear the cut.

San Diego Fashion Week will take place for the first time ever this year from September 28 through October 3 under a West Coast "big tent" at the Sheraton San Diego Hotel and Marina. It is the first ever fashion show group with dual nationality, too, as it's jointly sponsored by the USA and Mexico at a prime location near the border. (I used to work for a publishing company with headquarters in the USA and Mexico so I can vouch personally that such joint ventures near borders equal great parties!)

Designers include Amillie, Fashion Overdose, Fuegorosa, Ivette Alaniz, Jeans for Justice, Lauren-Elaine Designs, Lust4Luxe, Lizz Russell, Made Jewelry, Nelli, Parris Harris, Sergio Alcala, Stacie May, Sugar Couture, Sweet Petites, Watch Me! By Petra O., and Ximena Valero. The designers are pretty much evenly split between US companies and Mexican companies, and each adds their own special flavor to the event. As you'd expect from a California fashion show, green is a major theme, with such lines as Charmone Shoes showing, who create couture-quality shoes out of cruelty-free, sustainable materials. Their tagline is "Charming shoes, in harmony with the earth" and Natalie Portman, a well-known animal rights supporter, is a huge fan of them. They're truly sexy and reasonably priced for a designer shoe as well (most styles run around $200).

The thing that really surprised me about Mexico when I visited back in the '90s was how glamorous it was. The shopping rivaled some of the best cities in the world, and the ladies who lunched set would have been equally at home on Park Avenue, Worth Avenue or Rodeo Drive. Jorge Corella, a San Diego native of Mexican descent, designs a line called Amida by Jorge Corella which features custom-made, top quality, figure flattering couture gowns in bold prints that are all one a kind. They skew young, so they'd be perfect as prom dressesbut I could also see those high-fashion ladies of Monterrey, Mexico buying them as Quinceaera (the sweet 15 party, which is a big cultural deal in Latin America) gowns for their little heiresses.

Sources:
www.fashionweeksd.com

Rock & Republic will be showing at Spring 2009 New York Fashion Week on September 6, 2008, and I hope to be there in person, as last year I watched their fashion show on a video screen in the lobby of the main tent at Bryant Park, due to a series of parking mishaps that left me locked out of the Carolina Herrera show, which was my A-list invitation for my very first Fashion Week ever. It turned out okay because immediately afterwards I got myself into Nanette Lepore without an invitation by sweet-talking Nanette's mother, but that's a story for another day.

Rock & Republic, the brainchild of CEO and creative director Michael Ball, is best known for their fit-oriented, sleekly modern denim, but they've branched out quite a bit, first into what I would call club wear, and now they're launching a cosmetics line just in time for fall. Side note to laypeople: the fashion shows - at least the RTW, couture works differently - are labeled 6 months in advance, so a fashion show that takes place in September 2008 is Spring 2009. Confusingly, however, cosmetics lines are labeled with the actual current date. So Rock & Republic's new Fall 2008 cosmetics line will debut at Spring 2009 Fashion Week, in September 2008. (And everyone wonders why I'm so easily confused - half my brain is taken up with stuff like this.)

The women's wear in Rock & Republic's Spring 2008 show featured a long, lean silhouette reminiscent of Bianca Jagger in her Studio 54 days. For those of us above a certain age, virtually anything called "modern" harks back to our childhood, but it was a gloriously glamorous era that I remember through a haze of nostalgia so I couldn't like it more. In some ways, the men's line was less appealing to me, because it harked back to John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever, but Michael Ball is currently collaborating with Julia Restoin-Roitfeld on Rock & Republic's first major ad campaign for the September magazines, which will be coming out in a couple of weeks, so expect amazing things from them in the very near future!

Why Miami Swim Fashion Week is worth attending, and why Rosa Cha is the highlight of the swim fashion shows.

The pickings for fashion shows in the United States are slim over the summer, but there's one event worth getting excited over (especially if you're slim yourself): Mercedes Benz Fashion Week Miami Swim. It may not have the suspense of a Marc Jacobs fashion show at New York Fashion Week (will the audience have to wait longer than two hours for the show to start?) or the drama of Viktor et Rolf at the Paris couture shows (will the key looks resemble hang gliders?), but I can't think of a more relaxing fashion show for mid-July.

Miami Swim Fashion Week will be July 18 through July 22 at the Raleigh Hotel, a super-chic South Beach boutique property with one of the world's most stunning pools. It kind of resembles a stylized pineapple with scrolls, but it defies explanation - go to their Web site http://www.raleighhotel.com and look for yourself. If you score an invite, you too can lounge around under black-and-white umbrellas drinking mojitos with South American millionaires while models walk by in the world's most stylish swimwear. Now that's my idea of a fashion show!

Designers showing at Miami Swim Fashion Week include ANK by Sabino, Ashley Paige, Badgley Mischka, Becca, Cia Maritima, Eduardo et Donna, Rosalia, Jacquelyne Love, Bella Mar Swim, Miss Bikini, Parke & Ronen and Jessica Simpson. I'm particularly curious about the latter, since if anyone can design a swimsuit that flatters large-busted women it should be her. However, the Miami Swim fashion show I'm most interested in is Rosa Cha.

Rosa Cha may sound like a chic Asian female designer, but the line was created by Brazilian male Amir Slama. No one does swimwear better than Brazilians (sorry, Jessica!), so this is the Miami Swim fashion show to watch for - and not just because it's held by the pool. There are many fashion industry people who don't even think of swim as true fashion (remember the "Project Runway" challenge where the designers were supposed to create costumes for female pro wrestlers and Ricky got blasted because his design "looked like a bathing suit"?), but Amir Slama knows how to create figure-flattering, super sexy looks that still have the look of a haute runway.

His most recent show (Spring 2008) featured Piet Mondrian-like embellishments on suits in subdued versions of colors of the moment like gray, taupe, blood red, cobalt blue and salmon. He may be single-handedly responsible for the current trend of the monokini (a one-piece swimsuit with large cutouts on the side to expose a lot of skin), and his creativity with cut is unparalleled. Some of his looks are daring, some are more traditional, but they're all head turning, especially when worn by models with actual curves. Come to think of it, I've done New York Fashion Week, both spring and fall, and I can live without the suspense and drama in exchange for all Miami Swim has to offer. Rosa Cha just may be my favorite fashion show of the year!

Sources:
www.raleighhotel.com