The first annual Exclusive Fashion and Beauty Expo featuring vendors, performers and a fashion show will be hosted at Embassy Suites by Hilton Columbus Airport Saturday. Credit: Courtesy of Aliana Richards
The Exclusive Fashion & Beauty Expo will offer a day of networking, shopping and friendly competition.
Taking place Saturday at the Embassy Suites by Hilton Columbus Airport, the Exclusive Fashion & Beauty Expo aims to bring together beauty and fashion enthusiasts and professionals from all over Ohio, according to its website. Beginning at noon, the event will feature a vendor marketplace, barber and hair competitions and a fashion show featuring local and emerging designers.
“The Exclusive Fashion & Beauty Expo, or as we refer to it, the EFAB Expo, is a networking opportunity for industry professionals within the hair and beauty fields to come together and showcase their brand — showcase themselves,” Aliana Richards, founder and creator of the Exclusive Fashion & Beauty Expo, said.
The event will feature 50 vendors in the fashion and beauty fields, giving attendees the chance to discover a variety of businesses, Richards said.
“It really is a mix of everything. We have clothing brands, we have beauty brands, people who make their own hair products,” Richards said. “I mean literally it ranges from every demographic of business.”
Although the event is a chance for industry professionals to network and showcase their businesses, Richards said it’s also an opportunity for beauty and fashion enthusiasts to speak one-on-one with vendors and learn about small businesses such as YB Trendy Boutique, Faced Beauty and Trubone Clothing Company.
“While we’re creating this opportunity for the business owners and business professionals, we also want to make them accessible to the public to be able to tap in and ask the questions that you may not be able to ask, you know, to these Fortune 500 beauty companies,” Richards said.
Richards’ inspiration for the Exclusive Fashion & Beauty Expo came from her own skincare business, Mazo Beauty. She said she began the business when she started creating all-natural eczema products for her daughter, who was having little success with other treatments. She soon realized there were very few chances for local business owners to come together and network in one event, she said.
“The pop-up shops, while they were beneficial, they really weren’t giving me what I needed, which was really more so that connection to other business owners,” Richards said.
From there, Richards said she took it upon herself to create her own event.
“I realized that it really needed to encompass everything that I’m passionate about — which is fashion, which is the beauty industry — while also supporting my local business owners,” Richards said. “I was like, ‘This would make a great opportunity to bring some awareness and some notoriety to the local shops here in Columbus, Ohio.’ ”
The event will begin by opening the show floor at noon, which will allow attendees to meet with the vendors. The professional barber competition will start at 1 p.m., followed by the cosmetology student competitions, and the event will end with the fashion show and awards ceremony, Richards said. Starting at 10 p.m., an after-party, open to all attendees for an additional $10, will take place at HighLife Studio Event Space.
JaMéz Aloha, fashion and model coordinator for the Exclusive Fashion & Beauty Expo, said the fashion show will feature work from five designers specializing in styles ranging from custom clothing to streetwear.
“With the fashion segment of the show, we’re going to have some performers as well,” Aloha said. “So it’ll be a little bit of music, a little bit of fashion in between where people can take advantage of all of this good energy knowing that, again, we’re networking and getting everybody exposed to what is available within Columbus.”
Among the performers will be Sledge The People’s Champ and Marcus Standifer, Aloha said.
Classes that attendees can register for on the day of the event will be offered before the festivities start, with the earliest class listed on the website beginning at 9:30 a.m. Richards said the classes cover a multitude of topics ranging from haircare to business and are open to both industry professionals and the general public.
Tickets can be purchased on Eventbrite or on the Exclusive Fashion & Beauty Expo website. General admission tickets are $25 and include a pass to the event, and after-party tickets are an additional $10. VIP ticket packages can also be purchased on Eventbrite.
