Models strut down the runway at the 2012 Spring/Summer Seoul Fashion Week at the Setec convention hall in southern Seoul last September. The 2012 Fall/Winter collection is scheduled for early April.
When the Seoul Metropolitan Government shut down the Seoul Fashion Center on Jan. 3, speculation swirled among industry insiders that the biannual Seoul Fashion Week, which the fashion center had been in charge of running, would no longer be held.
Following a week charged with rumors and heated exchanges, the city government announced that it will pick through an open tender a private enterprise to take full responsibility of the fashion week, starting with the upcoming 2012 fall/winter collection in early April.
The date has been pushed back a week compared to previous years in order to avoid an overlap with the 2012 Seoul Nuclear Security Summit, scheduled for March 26-27.
The privately run fashion week will model after leading overseas collections such as the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week of New York, according to Ma Chae-sook, director of cultural industry at the city government. The measure is for the sake of “efficiency and competitiveness,” she added.
Marking its 12th year in 2012, the Seoul Fashion Week has had a complex hierarchy of operators. The Seoul Fashion Center is under the Seoul Business Agency, an umbrella organization of the Seoul Metropolitan Government. But the Seoul Fashion Center was not the direct operator of the fashion week. It employed a private agency to actually do the field work, and selected agencies differed from season to season.
The government’s decision to abolish the 12-year-old Seoul Fashion Center came after three executives of the Seoul Business Agency, charged with embezzlement and sexual harassment, stepped down in November. Lawmakers during the regular audit last year said they were shocked to find so many corruption cases at the agency with particular regard to the fashion industry.
The bidding process for a new operator for the fashion week is currently underway, set to be finalized by next week.
“Any private company is eligible to apply for the fashion week bidding,” Ma said. “It could be Cheil Industries, Cheil Worldwide or an apparel exporter. And we see a lot of fashion-related firms enormously interested in the deal.”
The fashion week is also set to diversify its venue from the current Setec convention hall in Daechi-dong, southern Seoul, to several spots in the central part of the city. Seoul Square, Old Seoul Station, ancient palaces and Bukchon, a hanok (traditional Korean house) village, are among the candidates now being discussed, Ma said.
Along with the fashion week’s new blueprint, the city government, which has shifted its focus to welfare with the election of new Mayor Park Won-soon in November, said it will slash the annual budget allocated to 11 fashion-related projects by 2.2 billion won ($1.97 million) from last year to 8.6 billion won this year. The budget for the two fashion weeks is set at 3.8 billion won.
Mayor Park declared earlier in November that the city will mainly assign the capital’s 2012 budget to welfare, safety and job creation, which is aimed at “not wasting the citizens’ taxes and saving money from projects that are deemed not urgent or necessary.”
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