MELBOURNE: As the L'Oreal Melbourne Fashion Festival (LMFF) drew to a close yesterday, organisers were reporting an "exceptional response" to the consumer-driven event.
LMFF director Karen Webster said she had been pleasantly surprised by the "fantastic energy" of the festival, which had seen "more designers than ever" participating and a record low of negative feedback.
"In past events we've had individual designers say they'd wished something had gone differently in their parade and so on. But this year the designers seemed universally happy with how things went," she said, adding designers also reported "overwhelming" orders.
"I guess because there's been so much talk of the downturn, they were prepared for a tough ride, but in fact this year's festival has exceeded everyone's expectations."
Industry-oriented highlights of the week included the new Designer Forum – an export-savvy discussion between UK focused panelists Vogue UK fashion features editor Pippa Holt, Liberty London creative consultant Yasmin Sewell and Australian designer Megan Park.
"Obviously we've run the Herald Sun Marketing Breakfast – focusing on the marketing aspect of business, and the LMFF Business Seminar – targeted at senior managers and decision makers - for some time. But with the Designer Forum we wanted to create something that was tailor made for the fashion design community. We did research after the event and the feedback from designers was very positive. They may have got different things from the different speakers but overall the feeling was that combining a media representative, a high profile retailer and a designer as panelists worked well."
Webster rejected claims that attendance at the event was low.
"We had around 150 people in the room, many of them designers. When you consider that most designers are run off their feet doing other things during the festival I was pretty impressed with the turn out."
Meanwhile the quality and "colour" of this year's LMFF parades was noticeable, she said.
"I think many of the collections were marked by a sense of elegance, of dressing up and celebrating life. And with labels like Alice McCall and Romance Was Born there was also a sense of eccentric, avant-garde fashion. I think in tough times you often see really creative, edgy things happening. People start to think about really making a statement with fashion."
Initial data on the economic impact of LMFF 09 will be released in April, with the final report scheduled for June.