Dubai Fashion Week Cancelled

Dubai The biannual Dubai Fashion Week (DFW) has been cancelled for the second time in a row, XPRESS can reveal.

An e-mail sent to XPRESS on Wednesday, October 3, by the fashion manager of the event’s marketing company, Capital Marketing FZ LLC, said: “Please note that DFW is cancelled for November 2012.” Although originally planned as an extravagant event scheduled for this month, organisers have failed to deliver.

In another e-mail sent to XPRESS, Simon Lock, the Creative Director of DFW, wrote, “The organisers of DFW wish to inform the industry that post last year’s edition, the necessary alliances are still taking shape in preparation for the reintroduction of the event in 2013. The organisers wish to restate their commitment to only producing a world class event and will be making further announcements in the new year.”

Shortage of funds

The last fashion week the city witnessed was in October 2011. The next scheduled event for last April was cancelled due to a shortage of funds. In various media reports, Lock, the Australia Fashion Week bigwig, who had been asked to spearhead the Dubai event, stated, “Since the last event in October [2011], we’ve been in discussion with the Dubai Government about funding moving forward and those discussions have taken longer than anticipated. They weren’t finalised in time for us to be able to produce the April event to a level that I felt the industry would be happy with. Designers, media, buyers would all be disgruntled — everyone would be completely critical of the situation and the opportunity to go forward would be lessened.”

At the time, however, Lock had promised fashionistas a spectacular event in October.

Despite meeting with Dubai government officials earlier this year, and stating to the press his intention “to make sure the October fashion week makes the headlines for all the right reasons”, the event has once again fizzled. Originally scheduled to rival international fashion weeks such as London, Paris, New York and Milan, the Dubai Fashion Week has run into myriad problems since its launch in 2006.

Designers and modelling agencies and other companies involved in last April’s fashion showcase received an e-mail just prior to the event from Lock, informing them of the changes.

“I want to personally assure this decision was not taken lightly by the DFW management. In the end, we just weren’t prepared to present an event that wasn’t the best we could possibly make it,” said Lock in the e-mail, adding that new dates for the event were being worked on.

“Last season the event was presented under the patronage of the government and we have been in fruitful discussion with them about their long-term support for the event.

“Unfortunately, this planning process has taken longer than we would have hoped and without it being finalised we are not in a position to be able to fully underwrite the event through designer and commercial sponsor participation,” stated the e-mail.

In an interview with XPRESS last year, Lock, who founded the Australian Fashion Week and turned it into an international event before going on to work his magic across Asia, most notably on the Singapore Fashion Festival, acknowledged with a wink that he was Dubai Fashion Week’s only hope for change.

“I am aware that DFW — up till this point — has been fairly disappointing. We need to bring in people who have experience in establishing fashion weeks. That’s where I come in,” he said.

That was over a year ago. Today, the future of DFW seems bleak. With no shows for over a year, and with future events undecided, it is unclear whether the event will continue as originally planned.