The distance from Paris to Los Angeles is 5,657 miles. For a young fashion label, it can feel longer. The language changes, the buyers change, the delivery calendar changes, and the dress that looked persuasive in a photograph becomes a customs form, a sample bag and a string of unanswered emails. Fashion Forwards built its business in that distance. Its proposition was not to make the dress. It was to make the dress legible in a new market.
Founded in 2002, the company described itself as a fashion communications business with a head office in Paris and a working base in Los Angeles. By 2014, its American address was Suite B525 at the California Market Center, the enormous downtown building where brands and retail buyers meet during market weeks. This detail matters. In fashion, an address can be a distribution strategy.
The showroom was not a room. It was a switchboard.
A conventional public-relations agency tries to produce attention. A conventional sales agency tries to produce orders. Fashion Forwards joined those outcomes together. Its advertised services ran from merchandising and strategic distribution to brand development, marketing, public relations, events and product advice. A former showroom worker described the daily version: analyzing store sales, speaking with buyers, handling orders from overseas designers, tracking inventory and preparing samples for stylists.
That last task is where the model becomes interesting. A garment pulled for a magazine shoot is not yet a sale. A buyer appointment is not yet cultural relevance. But place both inside the same network and each can reinforce the other. Editorial visibility gives a retailer a reason to listen; retail availability gives publicity somewhere to land. Fashion Forwards sold the connective tissue.
“It’s important for buyers and press to see the product, to touch the material. You can’t just look at a lookbook.”Emmanuelle Rienda, founder of showroom partner Le Frenchlab
In March 2014, Le Frenchlab shared its 2,000-square-foot fifth-floor space with Fashion Forwards. The Fashion Forwards side represented Faubourg Du Temple, Olena Dats, Kathryn Hynes, Mossée, By Lys and Shoes Closet. These were not six versions of the same bet. They were different labels from a continent that American buyers often flatten into the single word “European.” The showroom’s job was to preserve the distinction while removing the friction.
Then someone made the trade show feel like France
Showrooms are useful but visually unpromising: racks, order sheets, fluorescent light. So Fashion Forwards and Le Frenchlab turned their 2014 introduction into FRE(n)SH, a Los Angeles Fashion Week showcase staged with Splash PR Agency and support from the French Consulate. Emerging designers appeared beside French food, drinks, music and a crowd assembled from fashion and local French-American business.
The event solved a problem that marketing plans tend to describe badly. An unfamiliar label does not merely lack awareness; it lacks context. Put a new French collection on a lonely rack and it is inventory. Put it inside a social scene with other designers, partners and cultural cues and it becomes part of a movement. FRE(n)SH made discovery feel less like a sales call and more like being admitted to a room worth remembering.
Fashion Forwards kept using that blended vocabulary. It sponsored a West Hollywood benefit event in 2014. In 2016, owner Alexandra Tuil was involved in a French-cultural after-party for the COLCOA film festival, where dancers wore her designs. The product moved through event, performance and press rather than sitting politely in one category.
The glamorous photograph had an operations department
The later story of Serbian designer Zvonko Marković shows the machine at work. Serbia Fashion Week reached an agreement with Global Diffusion Inc., doing business as Fashion Forwards, to give Marković a presence in Los Angeles. In October 2016, Kylie Jenner wore one of his dresses to a Halloween party. Weeks later, Ashanti wore another Marković look at a Hollywood event.
Celebrity dressing is often narrated as magic: the star “discovers” a designer; the image appears; the internet reacts. The useful part is everything outside the crop. A representative must have the sample in town, know the stylist, respond at inconvenient speed, manage the loan and return, and understand which piece can survive the occasion. The photograph is the visible millisecond of a much longer process.
Fashion Forwards made the Atlantic feel one clothing rack wide.
Other clients illuminate the range. Greek designer Christos Costarellos said his ready-to-wear collection would be presented at the showroom in 2014. Romanian designer Clara Rotescu later described Fashion Forwards as her Los Angeles PR partner and credited the arrangement with editorial appearances. A fashion shoot featuring OTT Dubai clothing thanked Fashion Forwards LA for facilitating access. The customer was the designer; the user was also the buyer, editor, photographer or stylist who needed a local person to find the right garment now.
What another small brand can actually copy
The easy imitation is to throw a party. The harder and more valuable imitation is to compress the path between attention and transaction. Fashion Forwards placed samples, buyer conversations, press work and order handling inside one relationship. That reduced the number of handoffs where a small overseas label could disappear.
The portable parts of the playbook
- Choose a physical base where the market already gathers, not merely a photogenic address.
- Pair brands that share a buyer but retain a distinct point of view.
- Treat sample tracking and order follow-through as seriously as publicity.
- Build events around a credible cultural idea, then invite the commercial audience into it.
- Make one local representative accountable for the journey from introduction to response.
This model depends on density. It works when buyers still visit a market, stylists need physical samples, the representative has trusted relationships, and the garments can be supplied after interest arrives. Without those conditions, a multi-service showroom becomes an expensive room full of beautiful things. It also asks for judgment: too many unrelated labels blur together; too few opportunities make the fixed cost of local representation difficult to justify.
Fashion Forwards occupied a specific place in the market. It was smaller than a global distributor, broader than a press office and more commercial than an event producer. For an international designer, that ambiguity was the product. The agency could speak to a retailer on Monday, prepare a stylist pull on Tuesday and turn the same collection into a fashion-week scene by Sunday.
The company’s mission was to create mutually beneficial global relationships between designers and retailers. The phrasing is corporate; the mechanism was refreshingly concrete. Put the garment close enough to touch. Put a responsible person next to it. Then make sure the phone is answered when somebody important wants the dress.