Walk into a swanky hotel lobby and you feel it before you can explain it. Put on an outfit that makes you stand taller. Step into a space that helps you breathe easier.
Eric Weiss, president of the nonprofit Design Forward Alliance, has been asked to define design more times than he can count. He always lands on the same answer.
“Design is what makes everything cool,” Weiss said.
The cool factor will be on display across San Diego County starting Tuesday as San Diego Design Week returns for its sixth year with about 75 tours, talks, workshops and showcases organized by the DFA.
Each day will focus on a different design theme — multimedia, digital, spaces, fashion or health and well-being — with programming at an anchor location. The broader design community also will host events throughout the county through Sept. 20.
Weiss said typical attendance is usually 7,000 over the course of the week, drawn from design students, tech workers, fashion enthusiasts and what organizers call the “design curious.”
This year marks the first time fashion and costume design will have its own dedicated track at Design Week, organized by board member Olga Cecilia Sanchez, a retail buyer, business developer and the designer behind the label “Eclectique Mode.”
The main fashion track is Sept. 17, at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego in La Jolla, with an exhibit featuring work by local designers and students from Palomar College and Mesa College, the last two schools in San Diego County with fashion design and merchandising programs.
Rather than a traditional runway show, Sanchez built the day around exhibits where designers can explain their process.
“We want to be able to showcase the designer or the students, and they can talk about their work and inspiration behind it,” she said.
The day also includes discussions on Isaac Mizrahi, a preview of the unreleased documentary about English fashion designer Zandra Rhodes and a Dazzle Lab, where attendees can bring blank items to zhuzh with rhinestones and stencils.
Leading up to the MCASD event, Sanchez arranged a rare, ticketed tour of the San Diego History Center’s clothing archive in Balboa Park, which holds more than 77,000 items, including pieces from Rhodes and Bob Mackie. It is not normally open to the public.
“This tour is an exciting way to build a bridge between San Diego’s fashion history and what is happening in the present,” Sanchez said.
Other fashion track activities include free tours of the La Jolla Playhouse costume department and an Uptown sewing collective.
Sanchez said the goal is to create experiences that connect students, designers and the larger community.
“I want to create memories like I have from when I was in fashion school,” she said. “I want to give back to the amazing community that supported me.”
Design Week’s reach extends into San Diego’s hospitality scene through Jennifer Findley, an art consultant for Oram Hotels, which owns One Ameria Plaza and The Guild and Granger hotels downtown. Findley is a San Diego native and founder of JFiN Collective.
“One of my goals is to see what I can do to showcase and really toot my little horn, as much as I can, about what San Diego has to offer,” Findley said.
Findley has spent the past several years helping build an art and design identity for the hotels that pays homage to San Diego culture, including an artist-in-residence collaboration with UC San Diego and two exhibitions featuring regional artists.
“Our goal is that the design, art and hospitality work together to create an environment that feels very uplifting, but also authentic to the community,” Findley said.
On Sept. 19, The Guild and JFiN Collective will host “The Art of Design,” an evening reception and exhibition in a building whose history is itself part of the design story. The former Army-Navy YMCA’s recently reimagined interiors preserve the building’s historic architecture while incorporating what’s relevant today.
“It’s not just a party,” she said. “It’s thinking about how every element, from the chair to the cocktail glass, to the food, to the plate, to the fashion that’s worn that night, comes together to create a perfect work of art. Everything connects so everything is intentional.”
Findley sees Design Week as a way for San Diegans to recognize the creativity already happening around them.
“San Diego is not a second city. It’s a place that has its own narrative, its own story to tell, its own future and that future is pretty bright,” Findley said.
Weiss said the payoff comes when the doors finally open after a year of planning.
“It’s pretty amazing,” he said. “It’s six days, it’s all over the city, it’s all over the county.”
But the most rewarding part, Weiss said, is what happens when people from different corners of the creative community come together.
“We’re all in the same space, same principles, but to see them applied in totally different domains. It gives me the chills,” he said.
A schedule of Design Week events, most of which are free, is available at: www.sddesignweek.org.
