AUSTIN, Texas — With Austin Fashion Week shows slated to start, a designer's showroom is a busy place to be. Austin fashion designer Linda Asaf and her team have been busy at work for the last few days.
"Sometimes I'll leave at 1:30 in the morning. Last night, I left at 10:30,” Asaf said.
Asaf got her start in New York City but is a Texan at heart.
"I just really missed it so much that I started wearing my cowboy boots and playing country and western music in Manhattan, and my friends would just tell me, 'It's time to go home,'” Asaf said.
Now home in Texas, she has a studio in the historic West End of Downtown Austin. She’s been involved in the Austin fashion scene for the past 22 years and was one of the founding board members of Austin Fashion Week when it started 15 years ago.
Now, she’s putting the finishing touches on her 6-piece capsule collection for her third year at Austin Fashion Week.
"A lot of these designs take many man-hours,” Asaf said. “A lot, a lot, a lot ... Fine fabrics that you have to have many years of experience with and knowing how to deal with them and sew them right and everything."
Asaf gets her fabrics from a couture textile show in Paris and New York. These intricate fabrics have to be handled with precise skill so they aren't damaged.
“Some of these fabrics are basically a lost art, so to speak because they are beautiful, intricate, lightweight brocades that are iridescent," Asaf said. "They go from bronze and emerald to cobalt blue, depending on the way the angle of it.”
Asaf said this year's collection for Austin Fashion Week is a mix between pop art and classics.
“How I describe it is pop art meets lost art, between the pops of color and then the beautiful couture fabrics that are just exquisite," Asaf said.
She calls her collection “Glory”.
"'Glory,' in that it's time for us to celebrate fashion and to celebrate having fashion shows and events again and seeing everybody," Asaf said.
Asaf said a lot has changed in Austin in the fashion scene over the past few years.
“When I first started, people wouldn’t come to my party unless they could wear their Teva sandals,” Asaf joked. “Nothing wrong with Teva sandals, I have some. But things are changing.”
She said she feels the support for designers and entrepreneurs in Austin more than ever now.
“In Austin, people are so supportive of entrepreneurs. I've gotten so much support, and I think that people just want to help you," Asaf said.
Asaf’s collection will be in the 15 For 15 show on Saturday, April 22, at 8 p.m.