Première Vision, the world's leading organizer of trade shows for creative fashion materials, is launching a new event in Portland, Oregon, on Aug. 14 and 15. The new Première Vision Sports show will offer seminars, color forecasts and a specialized offer of fabrics, components and designs for high-performance clothing and active sport selected by the Paris-based organization for the numerous sports companies gravitating in and around Portland.
The U.S. West Coast city was chosen because it is home to the national or international product development departments of many sports brands, including Nike, Under Armour, Adidas and Columbia Sportswear.
The new show will take place in the Oregon Convention Center, in partnership with The Materials Show, which is dedicated to components, fabrics and leathers for footwear. Each year, it welcomes some 300 exhibitors and 1,500 visitors. It started in 1995 as a vendor show for Nike. It is now held in Portland as well as Boston.
Première Vision said this new event is designed to support the current trend that sees sport and athleisure increasingly infusing the fashion world in recent years. The initiative comes after Première Vision's launch of a new Sport & Tech area at its main event in Paris last September, featuring a range of high-performance and technical materials for brands.
The management is aiming for a starting offer of around 60 exhibitors, mainly from Europe, but also from Asia and the U.S. It said that eventually, the fabric offer could be extended to components and textile designs.
When it comes to sports fabrics, the Performance Fabrics show in Munich and the generalist Ispo Munich fair have been offering a much bigger selection of exhibitors than Première Vision in Europe. A few days after the announcement of Première Vision's new project, Performance Days said it was working on a similar trade show in combination with Reed Exhibitions that would be held on Oct. 22 and 23 at the same venue in Portland.
