A fashion body based in Singapore is planning to launch a brand new fashion week in Dubai by November next year.
Frank Cintamani, the founder of FIDe Fashion Week and the Asian Couture Federation (ACF), has told tabloid! his organisation is looking at bringing an event dedicated to couture designers to the UAE.
“We’ve been exploring this for the last 10 months, and have been in discussion with government agencies and ministries, and are hoping to kickstart it by November of 2015,” Cintamani said.
“We will be presenting couture designers from France, Italy and from across Asia.”
To push this cause, the ACF has announced the formation of a Middle East and North Africa Couture Council (MCC), which will be responsible for recognising and supporting the best couture talents across the region.
The ACF was founded in 2012 to give designers across Asia the platform to showcase and develop their talents.
FIDe Fashion Week organises fashion events, including a couture week, recognised by La Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture, the renowned French body that governs fashion.
It held the first couture week outside of Paris in 2011. The Dubai event will be an extension of the FIDe Fashion Week World Tour, with other city stops planned.
“Dubai presents itself as a very ideal market for haute couture designers,” said Cintamani. “The Middle East has always been a good source for designers and Dubai seems to be the place where all these things congregate.”
Cintamani added he was not worried about existing fashion week-style events in the UAE.
“If you look at the fashion week platform, there are more than 25 fashion weeks. Fashion Forward in Dubai, for instance, is mostly a ready-to-wear platform. It has a DNA which is working well for them. Ours is entirely different. Traditionally it’s only France and Italy who do [what we do].”
The ACF is federated across 10 Asian coutries with more than 16 couture designers registered. It was founded “to promote, position and inspire the rest of the fashion industry in Asia,” said Cintamani.
“We’ve seen this huge exodus of designers leaving Asia. That’s because we lacked the formal organisation and body to represent them. We are fragmented and it was difficult to push the Asian agenda,” he added. “We are here to say that that no longer needs to happen. That’s why we are trying to present them on an international platform.”
