Colombo ties up with Dubai Fashion Week

Colombo Fashion Week took another step a planned tie-up with Dubai Fashion Week. This is an important development to project Sri Lanka’s fashion design to the international arena.

This adds to the Colombo Fashion Week and its proven ability of becoming one of the most important fashion weeks in the region.

The fashion week in Dubai has a large number of registered buyers and this is an important opportunity for any designer to showcase his collections for retail potential, a press release states.

“After a strong showing last year and the time spent on building infrastructure we had several enquiries, but then we did not want to jump on the first one available. We looked at it from the point of view of our current positioning of our designers and the industry and thinking long term.

Dubai is an important fashion market in the Middle East and we want our designers retailing there. It’s a great honour and a big step, for us to take it forward and the designers to take it beyond,” said Founder and Organiser, Colombo Fashion Week Ajal vir Singh.

The tie up involves one selected designer from Colombo Fashion Week to showcase his collection in the Dubai counterpart and Dubai doing the same. This would also involve mutual promotions for the two fashion weeks in Colombo and Dubai. This will also be a great new avenue for marketing Sri Lankan tourism through a creative industry.

“While India is the focus due to the size of the market and potential, other markets are also important to open up for our designers and Dubai is of great importance and opens doors to the greater region.” said Singh.

The Colombo Fashion Week organizing committee, which announced its 2009 show, is on a five-year plan to uplift the fashion design industry of Sri Lanka through the interaction and exposure of local designers with important markets. This also involves preparing Sri Lankan designers for retailing in key markets in the region.

The first designer to experience this assistance was Darshi Keerthisena of Buddhi Batiks with the technical committee promoting and exposing the label to key buyers in India after her premier show at CFW2007 Singh said.