Knitwear designs to take centre stage on catwalk

To spice up this year's fair, Messe Frankfurt is collaborating with the Knitwear Innovation and Design Society (Kids), and design students from Caritas Bianchi College of Careers (CBCC) to stage two knitwear fashion parades.

Collaborating with Messe Frankfurt for the first time, Sabine Yu, chief executive of Kids, says she hopes to show overseas visitors the knitwear design abilities of local designers.

'Designing and producing a piece of knitwear is different from using normal materials. It takes more technique,' she says.

Yu says that Kids wanted to put on a knitwear design fashion parade due to the lack of knitwear design awareness in the city.

And, after the past few fashion shows they put on, she realises the standard of local knitwear designs is comparable to well-known designers elsewhere.

'Maybe it's due to our proximity to China, where all the knitwear material and designs are produced nowadays, that local designers are able to communicate much more easily with the factories and designers from the mainland, so their techniques on producing knitwear designs are sophisticated,' she says.