Styles from Liliya Poustovit
Photo: Courtesy of D.C. Fashion Week
D.C. Fashion Week opens on Tuesday for its eighth edition, with four runways shows crisscrossing the city. Venues range from the Embassy of France to Howard University's Cramton Auditorium, with crowds varying from an exclusive 120-person guest list to a 1,000-person audience.
While no opening event is scheduled, the week kicks off on February 26 with Ukrainian designers such as Liliya Poustovit and Oksana Karavanska showing, appropriately, at the Embassy of the Ukraine in Georgetown. “Everyone will be very surprised with the level of talent,” Fashion Week director (and designer) Ean Williams said. “They are the equivalent of Vera Wang and Ralph Lauren in their country.”The Cramton Auditorium show on February 29 will feature designers from the African Student Association, while menswear collections will hit the catwalk at the Holiday Inn Capitol on March 1, including Washington-based Stella Bonds and Williams’s own Corjor International line.
The finale, on March 2, will be the international couture collections at the French embassy. Williams explained that the venue was chosen to complement the designers, from Italy’s Tony Joshua Sanna to Ireland’s Orla Havlin. “They are coming from all over, so we tried to find a place that works for everyone. We want it to remain very international,” he said. "Since France is home to so many high-end designers, we choose the embassy for the major event.”
Each venue will provide in-house catering, which in the case of the couture show means sampling from the embassy’s own team of chefs.
While no opening event is scheduled, the week kicks off on February 26 with Ukrainian designers such as Liliya Poustovit and Oksana Karavanska showing, appropriately, at the Embassy of the Ukraine in Georgetown. “Everyone will be very surprised with the level of talent,” Fashion Week director (and designer) Ean Williams said. “They are the equivalent of Vera Wang and Ralph Lauren in their country.”The Cramton Auditorium show on February 29 will feature designers from the African Student Association, while menswear collections will hit the catwalk at the Holiday Inn Capitol on March 1, including Washington-based Stella Bonds and Williams’s own Corjor International line.
The finale, on March 2, will be the international couture collections at the French embassy. Williams explained that the venue was chosen to complement the designers, from Italy’s Tony Joshua Sanna to Ireland’s Orla Havlin. “They are coming from all over, so we tried to find a place that works for everyone. We want it to remain very international,” he said. "Since France is home to so many high-end designers, we choose the embassy for the major event.”
Each venue will provide in-house catering, which in the case of the couture show means sampling from the embassy’s own team of chefs.
