10th BCEFW Draws 4,000 Fashion Visitors

An audience of 2,000 for the main event saw collections from classic styles to streetwear with two Polish and seven Ukrainian designers represented alongside the Hungarian brands. Nearly 30 side events highlighted the Budapest fashion scene all over the city, drawing almost 4,000 visitors in total.

Organized by the Hungarian Fashion & Design Agency, BCEFW ran from August 29 to September 4, and included roundtable discussions, workshops, fashion shows, and even a yoga class, while designers offered unique discounts in their showrooms. For many years now, the event has been the number one meeting point for a broad audience that includes regional buyers, designers, influencers, and media.

The BCEFW’s highlight each season is the two- day fashion show, which this year saw a support team of almost 600 people. Some designers imagined spring with traditional floral patterns and lively colors, while others were already celebrating summer with outfits inspired by travels to the East. Elegant pieces were not lacking either, whether it be sequined suits or satin evening gowns.

While there was understandable interest in the Ukrainian shows, the Polish designers also had great success, the Hungarian Fashion & Design Agency said.

Central Europe’s most prominent fashion gathering attracted both Hungarian celebrities and foreign experts, including the editors of the Italian L’Officiel, the British Forbes, the New York-based The Cut, and the Ukrainian Vogue. Front row guests included international influencers like India’s Farhana Bodi and the French stylist to the stars, Loicka Grace.

The event’s online audience was also significant, with the catwalk shows live on the agency’s Facebook and TikTok platforms. The most viewed show on the latter attracted more than 66,000 people. BCEFW’s social media content reached over 600,000 users in two days.

Fashion Capital

One of the strategic goals of the Hungarian Fashion & Design Agency, founded in 2018, is to turn Budapest into the region’s fashion capital as well as an attractive destination for travelers interested in fashion and design looking for products from the Hungarian creative industries.

Besides the promotional and commercial aspects, the event served a good cause again this year; the HFDA offers the amount received from ticket sales, which it put at almost HUF 2.3 million, to the Hungarian Interchurch Aid, which will use the proceeds for its program to help Ukrainians.

“The Hungarian Fashion & Design Agency joined the Support Ukrainian Fashion initiative created to help Ukrainian designers,” explains Anita Forintos-Szűcs, deputy CEO of the HFDA.

“We have been partners with the organizers of the Kyiv fashion week for several years, and this year, they are celebrating an important anniversary: they have been organizing the event in the Ukrainian capital for 25 years. But the Ukrainian fashion week was cancelled this year due to the war, so we offered Budapest as a venue to present the newest Ukrainian collections ahead of several other European fashion weeks,” Forintos-Szűcs adds.

The designer collections from the Budapest event can be viewed on bcefw.com

This article was first published in the Budapest Business Journal print issue of September 23, 2022.