For the past three years, San Francisco Fashion Week has uniquely united the city’s growing contingent of up-and-coming and established local fashion designers under an official one-of-a-kind platform that brings fashion to the forefront of San Francisco’s culture. It is an up-close and personal look at the city’s fashion influencers with a series of fashion shows, industry workshops, and shopping boutique featuring a range of jewelry, accessories and apparel from the hottest designers.

The dates are August 23-27. Anyone can attend, it’s open to the general public. However, if you are a buyer or a stylist (and can prove it with credentials) email Jason Balgas. General admission is $46. I’ve never been to an official fashion show so I don’t know what they cost. That seems like a lot to me.

On their site, you can find a detailed itinerary of the event and a list of workshops that will be held concurrently with the event. If you’re in the bay area, I’d think you might be interested in some of these classes. Miracle has been to SF Fashion Week before and says the classes are good. However, she gives negative points to the organizers of the event because she was not notified of it this year , and she thinks they should market the show to the people who’ve already been, before they market it to new people (like me). Before I digressed, my point was that you may want to attend some classes, many look quite interesting.

The SFFW site also lists all participating designers with bios and links to their work. Some of these people are really good, I enjoyed looking through their styles. At least I think they’re good, but then, I really don’t know that much about fashion anymore because it seems the definition has become diluted. What excites me about fashion is how differently shaped, complex and unique the patterns pieces would look. The weirder and more difficult the pattern, the more I like it. If it’s basically a rectangular tube with holes cut out for a neck and arms, I don’t call that fashion. There’s no trick to that. Anyway, some of these designers do some tricky stuff. Too bad none of them entered my carnival of couture of technical complexity.

Speaking of, I’m disappointed in how few COC entries I got. With all the people out there using couture sewing methods -with superior skills to those of us in RTW- you’d think they’d take advantage of an opportunity to show it. Send ’em in if you’ve got ’em, Friday is the last day.