International Designer Spotlight

Teresa Valencia, from Ecuador, South America, is the hottest designer to have shown at both Panama and Miami Fashion Weeks. Teresa has been creating elegant, comfortable, and contemporary articles of clothing for the past 8 years. A successful designer and exporter, Teresa has many clothing stores in Ecuador, Panama and North America. Teresa has been covered by press around the world, including Latin American Vogue, Fashion TV, E! Entertainment television, Lucire Magazine (N.Y.), SOHO magazine and Home Magazine.

Bisma Ahmed, from Dubai, UAE, has a multi-cultural background with a family business in fashion design. While girls played with dolls, Bisma played with laces, threads, ribbons, and beads, and her mother and aunts schooled her on the technical aspects of designing early on. Young Bisma was the winner of the Emerging Talent Competition, which won her a spot to show her collection at the prestigious Dubai Fashion Week. She has shown her collections at many events in Dubai, Harare and Islamabad. Later, Bisma went on to create a company called B’ZMA, a line for women which embodies youth, vibrancy, energy and women’s independence.

Eva Chen, from Richmond, Canada, will show the spring 2010 collection from her Juan Eva Couture line. Based in Canada, Eva’s artistic upbringing inspired her to become a fashion designer—at six years old she played the Erhu instrument, sang, danced and created drawings. Eva has presented her collections around the world, including in the United States, Canada, Singapore and China, and her clothes have been worn by famous TV personalities. She has just won a British Columbia Outstanding Woman of the Year Award.

MonaPali, from Delhi, India, is a team of two designers. They have shown their collections at Fashion Weeks all around the world, including US, London, Toronto, Dubai, Milan, Russia, Hong Kong, Kathmandu, and Bangkok. Their designs can be seen at India’s premiere events like Wills India Fashion Week and Lakmé Fashion Week, which is run by the same company (IMG World) as New York Fashion Week. At their latest Fashion Week, Bollywood heartthrobs Bipasha Basu and Minissha Lamba walked the ramp in Indian bridal ensembles. With nine commercially successful fashion labels under their belt, Monapali also designs for international brands like Maxmara. Their clientele includes the Governor General of Canada, Patrick Swayze, Aishwarya Rai and the world’s 4th richest man Ambani.

Catalin Botezatu, from Romania, is no stranger to New York, Las Vegas, Namibia, the Caribbean, Sun City, Iceland, Sri Lanka, Indonesia and every major European Fashion Week. Catalin attended the European Institute of Fashion in Milan, where he worked with the late Gianni Versace. A regular on Fashion TV in Paris and at the Cannes Film Festival, Catalin has been creating hit runway collections since 1996, dressing clients such as Vanessa Williams for Vogue.