Sri Lanka - The designer brief for the 2009 Colombo Fashion Week is ready and out. The brief, which focuses on the 2009/10 seasons, is also for the international and regional designers who are participating in the event.

CFW 2008 was an experiment to align all designers to a common brief. This successful experiment has led to a more formal brief, developed by the technical committee. The brief focuses on 2009/10 season, which is in line with the international and regional design focus.

The objective behind the brief is for Sri Lankan designers to design their work, based on what the retail buyers expect to stock in their retail environment and hence will be the start of a business for Sri Lankan designers.

Globally designers design six collections in total out of which three are major collections and the remaining are  smaller collections. The markets and retail spaces revolve around this pattern although there are countries where seasonality is minimal. For example tropical countries, where the bigger design story revolves around summer. 

"It is high time the Sri Lankan designers make a strong effort to attract retail buyers and convert their collections into competitive commercial pieces," says the Chief Organizer, Ajai Singh. "We have to challenge ourselves and graduate to the next level. There are sacrifices and heart burns, then again, how many things come easy in life," says Singh.

In a stipulated time post the briefing the designers will present sketches to the technical committee comprising of members from Sri Lanka, India and Bangladesh. Based on merit the designers will be given a slot at the Colombo Fashion Week. In 2009, there will be 20 fashion shows, from 18 to the 21 of February, along with seminars and workshop with the important regional fashion designers.

Last year's Colombo Fashion Week took steps towards uplifting the Sri Lankan fashion design industry by encouraging and guiding three young designers to unveil their label at the show. The talented designers worked very closely with the technical committee of the Colombo Fashion Week to develop their collections for Colombo Fashion Week 2008

The local designers, who featured their collections, were well received by the audience as well as international media. Fahad, whose Middle Finger collection was among the favourites last year, was recently invited to India by interested retail buyers.