Lao Fashion for a Global Audience

The Lao Fashion Week is promoting Lao fashion to an international audience. The most prestigious international fashion event in Laos is being held at the Crowne Plaza Hotel, Vientiane between September 10 to 14 2018, and features over 50 designers’ collections. The 2018 edition of the Lao Fashion Week marks the 5^th anniversary of the Lao Fashion Week establishment to promote the home-grown and international fashion brands. The Lao Fashion Week also encourages budding local fashion designers to showcase and pursue their creativity via the Lao Young Designers Project, a non-profit program that nurtures young Lao talents.

Typically, fashion week happens twice a year but the Lao Fashion Week only happens once a year. Perhaps the two reasons are as follows: 

1. The fashion scene in Laos is relatively small and young compared to the fashion capitals like Milan and New York for the fashion week to happen twice a year.

2. Because the climate of Laos is a tropical monsoon climate, local and regional fashion designers tend to only design clothes for a single season, reducing the need to showcase seasonal clothes.

I believe the small but slowly expanding middle class in Laos provides the local fashion scene and in turn the Lao Fashion Week room for expansion as increases in disposable income among this class would surely lead to the growth of the consumer and services sectors. Also, using the Lao Fashion Week to promote Lao fashion to an international audience showcases underrepresented groups, increasing diversity in the global fashion scene. One of Lao’s top exports to U.S. is apparel; I would expect the Lao government taking an increased interest in supporting the Lao Fashion Week as part of its economic integration into ASEAN and export-led development in the near future.

Source: kpl.gov.la/En/Detail.aspx?id=38822