The Backstage
Beauty Bar
Eight thousand square feet of working backstage, built this year as a beauty event inside a fashion week. Classes, chairs, brand stations and a gifting table, running live through two runway shows.
Taught Live
Backstage
One Day
Since 2016
What
A beauty event
inside a fashion week.
Most fashion weeks treat backstage as a service corridor. We treat it as a venue. On October 17 the second floor becomes a working beauty floor with four zones operating at once, open to guests between and during the two runway shows, and built so a brand can do more than put a logo on a wall.
Education
Five classes across the day, taught by working hair and makeup artists. Technique, not theatre. A brand can sponsor a class, supply the products used in it, or teach one themselves on a skill their product exists to solve.
Live Hair & Makeup
The model call for both shows, running in the open. Professional artists working under a key, on real deadline, with product in hand and cameras on the floor.
Brand Stations
Dedicated branded space for trials, demos, consultations and content. Your team, your set-up, your shot list, in front of an industry audience rather than a mall crowd.
Sampling
Curated gift bags handed to guests, designers, models and press. The lowest-friction way into the day, and the one that travels home.
When & Where
October 17, Downtown LA.
Saturday, October 17, 2026. Two runway shows, afternoon and evening, with a completely different line-up in each.
Elysium — 212 E 8th Street, Los Angeles, CA 90014. In the Downtown LA Fashion District, three floors: the runway on the main floor, the Beauty Bar on the second, and a rooftop VIP lounge with an open bar.
Who
Who is in the building.
A room weighted toward people who buy, build, fund and broadcast — not a general admission crowd.
Ways to participate
Six levels,
smallest to largest.
Most brands start at one or two and grow. Nothing here requires a traditional sponsorship budget.
Your product in the curated bags handed to guests, designers, models and press. Send product, we handle the rest.
Your range in the kit at both model calls, available to every artist working the shows, with your product in the frame while the looks are built.
Your own space in the Beauty Bar for both shows. Product displayed, your team or your creator working from it, guests moving through it all day.
Take one of the five teaching slots and run a class on a skill your product exists to solve. Not a product demo — a technique people leave knowing. It is the single most effective thing a beauty brand can do in this building, and the slots are limited by the schedule rather than by budget.
Presence beyond the beauty floor: a dedicated space on the main floor and in the rooftop VIP lounge, in front of guests and buyers rather than only talent.
Category exclusivity and the floor in your name. One brand only, no competing product in the building, and your name on the Bar across every announcement, the run of show and the post-show content.
Cost
Tell us your budget.
We will build to it.
We would rather design something that fits than send you a menu you have to squeeze into. Participation runs from a few hundred dollars for gifting and backstage product placement, through the mid four figures for a branded station or a teaching slot, up to full named partnership of the Beauty Bar.
title partnership.
Reply with the number you have to work with and what you are trying to achieve — a launch, a content library, sampling at scale, a retail conversation — and we will come back with a specific proposal rather than a tier sheet. Content production can be handled by your team or by ours; if ours, it is quoted separately.
What we need from you
Three things, then we build it.
Your budget
A real number, even a rough one. It is the fastest route to a proposal that is worth reading.
Your objective
What this needs to do for you. Sampling, content, a launch moment, buyer visibility, or a category story.
Your product
What you would send, and roughly how much. We will tell you honestly if it is more than we can use.
Let's build your October.
Positions on the beauty floor are assigned in the order they are confirmed, and the teaching schedule is fixed at five slots.
Email partners@sfwrunway.com