We recently spoke to Zsófia Jakab, the CEO of the Hungarian Fashion & Design Agency.
In 2018, the Hungarian Fashion & Design Agency, (HFDA), was founded with the vision of growing the fashion industry in Hungary and growing the awareness of talented individuals and upcoming brands in the country’s fashion and design industries. The agency formed an efficient and structured way to achieve its vision that focuses on professional coordination, enhancing Hungarian brands’ availability of trade opportunities, educational development and manufacturing development. To support this vision the council created the Budapest Central European Fashion Week (BCEFW), with the goal of raising awareness of talented designers in the region and giving them a platform to showcase their designs and brands to a regional and international market.
This year was the 14th edition of the event which was the biggest event so far with over 5,000 visitors. More than 60 designers were present, showcasing their Spring/Summer 2025 collections, and buyers, press and VIP guests from around the world were invited to attend. The event took place across 40 venues in Budapest, the Hungarian capital and brands showcased their designs in the form or runway shows, presentations, exhibitions, workshops and more. Leading the vision of HFDA is CEO Zsófia Jakab, who is tasked with elevating the profile of not just the designers, but of Hungary as a regional hub for the fashion industry. During the event we sat down to find out more about this and why the Middle East is a key market for designers in Central Europe.
Tell us about Budapest Central European Fashion Week and its vision.
We started Budapest Central European Fashion Week in 2018, and we are now in the 14th edition. Our goal was to be a fashion hub in the region comprising of Hungary and the neighbouring countries. In the beginning, we collaborated with neighbouring countries like Austria, Slovakia, Ukraine and Czechoslovakia, and we had just a few brands, but now we are showcasing designs from 60 designers, including 20 international designers from neighbouring countries. We have opened our profile to also take on countries from the wider region and support international designers.
In fashion, there are the big four cities, but there are other places that are important to focus on, and I think in this region, we are the only ones who can be a player in this field and support brands that may not be able to showcase in the big four cities. This is a good option for them as they get awareness and visibility from international buyers, clients, and the press, which allows them to move forward with their brand. In a sense, we are a platform to help them get to where they want to be.
What are the prerequisites for you to take on designers to participate?
We have an application form that all potential designers need to fill out, and this year, we had the biggest demand so far. The criteria are that they need to have existed for a couple of years and have seasonal collections that align with the international market. If they don’t have this, there is still the opportunity for them to come, but not in the sense of a catwalk show. We have created many formats for designers to be part of our fashion week. We want to give as many designers as possible the opportunity, particularly Hungarian brands. Many smaller brands show their collections in a presentation format, allowing us to support more brands.
International brands who are applying to be part of the event should be ready to showcase the right seasons, and they need to share pictures of their previous collections, as well as some ideas about their new collection. This can be a moodboard or a drawing. We have an advisory board, created three seasons ago, that will consider all of this.
If you look at this part of the world, what is it that Budapest offers as a platform for designers that the neighbouring cities don’t yet have?
We are inviting a lot of international guests. Our focus is really on being a meeting point for the region. I think this is the biggest event in our region of this scale. We are a small country, and our market is small, but we aim to be a regional hub to help brands grow on a regional and global level. That’s why we collaborated with other agencies and fashion weeks this season. We have collaborations with Serbian Fashion Week, Austrian Fashion Week, The Slovakian Fashion Council, and Ukrainian Fashion Week. This allows us to have a bigger reach and also gives these entities the best designers from their markets.
We understand you will also have a day of presentations at Milan Fashion Week – tell us more about that, and do you plan to roll out to the other cities?
Yes, we definitely need to be part of other fashion weeks. There are a couple of brands from the Hungarian market who are ready to be at these fashion weeks. We have been working closely with Camera Nazionale della Moda Italiana since 2008, and we have a partnership with them. This will be the first season we organise our event in Milan. Until now, Camera Moda was the organiser, and we had a collective fashion show, which was a huge opportunity for us, but after more than ten seasons, we decided we were ready to organise our own event.
Our brands all have different target groups and styles and so we decided not to combine them into one fashion show but instead to do an event that showcases the brands on a different format. We want to show guests that something important is happening in Hungary, so we are creating a whole universe for them to discover more about our brands and what’s happening in our market. It will be a holistic approach that also focuses on Hungarian gastronomy, design, skincare and other elements of our country, of course, with the main focus remaining on fashion.
Why did you choose to have this platform at Milan Fashion Week rather than in other cities?
The four main fashion cities have four different goals. Just because Milan is in Italy, it doesn’t just focus on the Italian market; it focuses on a global market, and I believe this is where the business is. In Milan, people come from all around the world and you can reach many different markets in one place. So, for us, it’s the most international market, and it is the best place for us to have the opportunity to create our story.
In your capacity as CEO, what are the challenges you face?
I think the hardest one is that the whole fashion system is changing. Economically it’s really hard now to create an established fashion brand. The whole economic situation is not easy in general. We are missing Chinese shoppers – they are coming back as tourists, but they don’t really shop like they did before. It’s really hard to get your place in this big crowd. For me, as CEO, the biggest challenge is that I’m not the CEO of one brand. I’m representing an agency that’s representing a whole county’s creative industry – brands producers, fashion schools and more – so I need to think about what’s good for our country and so when we are doing an event, I need to involve more than just one designer, and it needs to be a collaborative effort to find the best solution that works for everyone.
What would you still like to achieve with the agency, and where do you want to take this fashion week in the future?
If we can continue with the path we are on now, from season to season, we grow. Our international awareness is growing, and if we can ensure that we get more coverage and attention every season, this will continue.
With the agency as a whole, we have some really good brands, and we want to have three or four of these brands showcasing on an international level and having success in international markets.
How important is it for you to focus on awareness in the Middle East for this part of the world?
This is a new challenge for us, but it’s very promising. We started focusing on the Middle East a couple of years ago during Expo 2020 in Dubai, where we had a beautiful fashion show, and we saw there was an appetite for our brands. Now we have found good partners in the region, and we are focusing on understanding the needs of clients in that region and our designers are preparing for this market. It’s a very special market, and our brands are ready for it.
