Colombia Moda and Feria de Las Flores 2009

The City of Medellin is abuzz in anticipation of this years Colombia Moda and Feria de Las Flores.  Hotels and apartments are filling or full, many new faces are appearing in local restaurants and nightclubs.  Most stores are stocking up on beverages and snacks.  The street vendors have packed in extra provisions and products in anticipation of record crowds for this years events.

The local people are filled with excitement over this annual event and many are scheduling out the parties they will attend on a daily basis.  Tickets to Colombiamoda events are as hard as hens teeth to come by and many are fetching premium prices for the most desireable shows.  I know one gentleman who paid $250 USD for a ticket to the Leonisa fashion show.

Decide early where you want to meet with your friends and send someone early to hold your spot for Cabalgata on Saturday August 1st.  The parade usually starts around 2:00PM and can last well past midnight.  Stock up early on your refreshments and snacks.  Last year, Carrefour on the Auto Pista sold out of many libations by early evening.

 

If this is your first Cabalgata, you will return home with stories about an event that your friends, relatives and neighbors will just not understand.  Take photos and/or videos and let them do your talking because you will not be able to describe it adequately. Bring a folding chair or be prepared to sit on the ground, curb or stand for long periods of time.  Be prepared for loud music all along the 28KM parade route.  As the parade unfolds into the early afternoon, the Paisas become very festive (and most will be well into a bottle or two of rum or Aguardiente), dancing will break out as well as raucous partying.

We will be taking videos and photos and will post them on the MTG website and YouTube for your viewing pleasure.  If you can’t make this years Festival of Flowers, start making plans now for next years event so you can be a part of one of the most incredible 10 days of partyingin all of South America.  Medellins Colombiamoda and Feria de Las Flores!

What should you pack for your visit to Medellin?

We get asked this question  lot.  Casual (not shorts) is our standard pat answer but here we go into a little more detail!

 

What should you pack for your visit to Medellin?

 

Attire is very casual in Medellin. It ranges from dressed down casual to fashionably casual in the more upscale neighborhoods like Poblado and Tessoro but casual none the less.

For men:

Jeans, Dockers, T shirt, polo shirt, casual cotton short or long sleeve shirt;

Tennis shoes, loafers or regular street shoes.

Baseball caps are worn by many.

The only ties or coats and ties you see are worn by office, casino and some mall workers.

Rarely do you see shorts, sandals or flip flops.

These guidelines pretty much apply to daytime or nighttime activities for guys.

For the ladies:

You probably do not have to buy anything special (too bad).

Jeans, pants, cotton tops (many times layered but accentuating cleavage), light sweater tops, fashionable belts and accessories;

Shoes range from tennis shoes to fashionable boots.(this is also a good place to buy shoes as many are manufactured locally. (Good news.)

You do not see many skirts or dresses except on office, casino and some mall workers although short skirts are worn by younger adults.

At night, the ladies are more inclined to dress up especially if they are going clubbing or to discos. Again, there is a major emphasis on plunging necklines and displays of cleavage. (don’t mean to be sexest here, just letting you know how the local ladies dress). You will not see a lot of sweat pants, baggy sweat shirts, ruffled hair or ladies without makeup. Usually, nails are well manicured.

Although Medellin is considered a conservative town, the Paisa women are proud of their god given assets. Many of them have been enhanced and are proud to show off their results.

 

Medellin clothing sizes tend to follow the international sizing conventions. In this chart it would be the continental sizes. http://www.onlineconversion.com/clothing.htm 

 

 

Feria de Las Flores 2009

RCN Noticias (the local 24 hour news station) is estimating that 4,000 foreign visitors will be in Medellin this year for Feria de Las Flores.  About 1,700 of those will have visited Colombiamoda the previous 3 days.  Now, to many of you, that is not a staggering number but to the promoters of the event, it is about an 85% increase over last years foreign attendance. They are also expecting in excess of 50,000 Colombians from other cities to be in town as well.

RCN also announced that there are very few if any hotel rooms available in the city during the 10 day event.  Surely a good sign for the Medellin economy. Expect a 20-30% premium over normal posted rates for this event.

 

The festival begins on July 31st and runs through August 9th.  This year, Cabalgata is on Saturday August 1st..  Cabalgata has been trumpeted as the worlds largest outdoor horse parade with over 7,000 riders and participants in last years parade.  It is an event not to miss if you are in Medellin.

 

There are plenty of places to view the prade along the 28 kilometer route.  Just a word of caution.  Avoid large crowds of people as there are many pickpockets working the event.  Protect your valuables, money, cameras, don’t wear flashy jewlery etc.  A fanny or back pack is recommended.

The Mayors official website has a schedule of events for the Feria; http://www.medellin.gov.co/alcaldia/jsp/modulos/V_medellin/index.jsp?idPagina=1015

For the locals and many Colombians that visit from other cities, this event is an opportunity to party for 10 days. For the visiting foreigners, they will see Medellin life at it’s best.

MTG

Colombiamoda ends, Feria de Las Flores Begins

Local lingerie and beachwear designer Leonisa made it’s usual grand entrance and captivated the audience with its sexy, lavish creations pointing out the fashion trend of the upcoming summer season in Colombia. “The bright coloured red, pink and yellow lingerie embroidered with laces and glitter seemed to match perfectly with the the show entitled “Latin Furor”. The Leonisa catwalk show is perhaps the most difficult to obtain tickets for as it’s models are always breathtakingly beautiful as well as revealing in their display of “Ropa Interior”
         
“The celebrated Spanish designer, Custo Dalmau,  stole the spotlight this year at Colombiamoda. His brand, ‘Custo Barcelona’, widely known for its t-shirts and other casual clothes, closed the last and final night of the event with a show that mixed outfits from both winter and summer collections.”
         
“The blending of fabrics in dark and light colors highlighted this years collection and brought to a pinnacle his adept ability to create new designs that the public will buy.”
         
Colombiamoda claimed that from January to April 2008, the Colombian clothes industry generated sales worth $879 million dollars up 42.2 percent jumping from $325 million to $476 million dollars from the same period last year.

 

The following day marked the 51st annual beginning of Feria de Las Flores.  This year, the feria organizers placed the world famous Cabalgata on the first Saturday instead of the last Sunday of the event.  It seemed to be a stroke of genius as the Cabalgata attracted record crowds and participants in the parade (as if that were possible).  Staking our position in front of Carrefour on the Autopista, we were quickly immersed in a sea of local paisas partying, watching the parade, visiting with friends and enjoying a beautiful sunny day in Medellin.  Within hours, it became a standing room only event much like a crowded concert.  Bodies seemed to merge with one another and moving amongst the hordes of people became more and more difficult as the afternoon wore into the evening.

Observations from Cabalgata 2007 versus 2008;

-The parade was in the opposite direction this year.  Last year it went from N to S.  This year was fron S to N.

-It seemed like more people and more parade participants (as if that were possible?)

-Last year, parade watchers were kept back against a roped off area.  This year, the crowds were going back and forth to the opposite median, posing with riders and walking amongst the parade participants.

-Last year, the parade seemed to move along rather easily. This year, there seemed to be frequent bottlenecks that frequently halted the parade.  It certainly was better for taking video.

As a parting note, we left before the crowd became even more engorged on Rum, Aguardiente, Beer and other locally grown products.  Still, we have never seen so many beutiful women in one place at one time in our lives.  Absolutely breathtaking!

 

Medellin Travel Guide

Colombiamoda 2008 Medellin Colombia

It has finally arrived.  The much anticipated 19th annual Colombiamoda begins tomorrow in Medellin Colombia.

GENERAL INFORMATION
Date: July 29th to 31st, 2008
Schedule: 9:00 am to 6:30 p.m., Tuesday – Wednesday
Thursday, from 9:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.
Place: Plaza Mayor, Medellín – Colombia.

IMPORTANT: Tuesday July 29th from 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m., the trade show will only be open to buyers.

Buyers and Exhibitors have been seen arriving for the past few days.  Exhibition booths are being assembled in Plaza Mayor and the models are making last minute preparations on their hair, nails and body sculpting.

Colombiamoda is billed as the largest fashion show in Latin America. Having celebrated its 18th anniversary this past July, it is rapidly becoming known internationally as one of the most important fashion events to attend in the world.

Medellin is regarded by many as the largest textile center in Latin America so it is little wonder this event continues to grow in importance for the local economy.

Well attended you ask?:

450 national and international exhibitors.

1730 international buyers.

7260 national buyers and visitors from Alemania, Argentina, Australia, Bahamas, Barbados, Bélgium, Belice, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Costa Rica, Chile, Ecuador, El Salvador, España, United States, France, Guatemala, Holland, Honduras, Israel, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Norway, Holand, Panama, Peru, Poland, Reino Unido, Dominican Republic, Singapor, Switzerland, Trinidad and Tobago and Venezuela.

60.000 meters of exhibition and services space.

400 national and international journalist.

The trade show

A place where you can find the new trends for formal, casual, jeanswear and sport collections for the feminine, masculine, junior, children and baby market. Ideal for wholesalers, chain stores, department stores, boutiques and distributors.

Business, fashion, sensations and brands is what everybody breathed this past year in Colombiamoda. It takes place every July.

This important business center that has become one of the most important in the Latin American textile and apparel sector is held at the Plaza Mayor Medellin, its Recinto Ferial, Centro de Convenciones and The Teatro Metropolitano.

**For visiting the catwalks you need an invitation, the Colombiamoda’s badge is not valid.

These invitations can be hard to come by but if you get lucky and snag a couple of tickets to attend a catwalk fashion exhibition it will dazzle your eyes with the beauty of the Colombian fashion models. Knowing somebody in the industry is always an advantage.

The general exhibition halls are open to the public on a daily basis. Entrance ticket purchase required. Eye candy is free.

Medellin Travel Guide Portal

The original design concept for Medellin Travel Guide was to make it into a portal, a gateway if you will, to finding information about visiting or traveling to Medellin Colombia.  Inclusive of our rental apartments, penthouses and realestate for sale listings we have with our clients, the portal is now well over 180 pages in length.  Too big and too cumbersome for many surfers although our unique visitors continues to grow at a 20% month over month rate.

We tracked some data points, for the past 4 months, of which topics were of the greatest interest to our site visitors and decided to publish an easier to navigate more user friendly website with short snippets of information and links back to individual pages on MTG is there was interest in more detail on a particular subject.

 

It had a natural selection of about 5 main topics;

Accommodations;

Getting Here;

Realestate;

Things to do;

and, Services

 

From those broad categories, we took the top 33 most frequently visited pages/topics and created www.medellinvisitorsguide.com  In some cases, you will be taken to a specific page on Medellin Travel Guide but will never leave the Medellin Visitors Guide Site.  We used the KISS approach in determining if less intensive information would meet your needs for Medellin Information and just created new pages or whether the information on MTG was succint enough to just link you to that specific topic.

A splash or landing page was created about a month ago and we have been periodically working to complete the site.

 

Today, we have re-launched www.medellinvisitorsguide for your perusal.  We hope it meets your needs for information about traveling to or visiting Medellin Colombia.  You can always find more detail on many more topics on Medellin Travel Guide but you may just find what you need on Medellin Visitors Guide as well.

 

Thanks for visiting and helping to make Medellin Travel Guide the #1 English web site about Medellin Colombia on the internet.

 

Regards,

 

MTG

Colombiamoda 2008

Colombiamoda 2008 will be held July 8th-10th. at Plaza Mayor and other locales in Medellin.

If you are into fashion, you will love visiting Medellin.

Colombiamoda is billed as the largest fashion show in Latin America. Having celebrated its 18th anniversary this past July it is rapidly becoming known internationally as one of the most important fashion events to attend in the world.

Medellin is regarded by many as the largest textile center in Latin America so it is little wonder this event continues to grow in importance for the local economy.

Well attended you ask?:

450 national and international exhibitors.

1730 international buyers.

7260 national buyers and visitors from Alemania, Argentina, Australia, Bahamas, Barbados, Bélgica, Belice, Bolivia, Brasil, Canada, Costa Rica, Chile, Ecuador, El Salvador, España, Estados Unidos, Francia, Guatemala, Holanda, Honduras, Israel, Italia, Japan, Mexico, Noruega, Holand, Panama, Peru, Polonia, Reino Unido, Dominican Republic, Singapur, Suiza, Trinidad and Tobago and Venezuela.

60.000 meters of exhibition and services space.

400 national and international journalist.

The trade show

A place where you can find the new trends for formal, casual, jeanswear and sport collections for the feminine, masculine, junior, children and baby market. Ideal for wholesalers, chain stores, department stores, boutiques and distributors.

Business, fashion, sensations and brands is what everybody breathed this past year in Colombiamoda. It takes place every July.

This important business center that has become one of the most important in the Latin American textile and apparel sector is held at the Plaza Mayor Medellin, its Recinto Ferial, Centro de Convenciones and The Teatro Metropolitano.

**For visiting the catwalks you need an invitation, the Colombiamoda’s badge is not valid.

These invitations can be hard to come by but if you get lucky and snag a couple of tickets to attend a catwalk fashion exhibition it will dazzle your eyes with the beauty of the Colombian fashion models. Knowing somebody in the industry is always an advantage.

The general exhibition halls are open to the public on a daily basis. Entrance ticket purchase required. Eye candy is free.