Fashion week showcases local designers and gives them a chance to show the world their creations. Each designer hopes to be discovered. What struggling designer working long hours at a dull day job would not want to be discovered as the next Calvin Klein, Donatella Versace, or Ralph Lauren?

So many activities have been jammed into this year’s Boston Fashion Week, October 20 through 26 that it is literally bursting at the seams. A "pre-Fashion Week" fashion show by the talented Iraq-born designer Firas Yousif is being held tomorrow in the grand ballroom of the Gamble Mansion, and a post-Fashion Week fashion show by Marcela Scvirer, one of the event’s Vision Award winners, bookends the week. Both shows are well worth a look.

The best thing about Fashion Week is the fact that it brings to the public, in one compact grouping, some new names in the fashion field that would otherwise not get the attention they deserve. Local designers who struggle in their basement or living room studios, most of them working late-night or early-morning long hours around non-fashion day jobs, for one brief period in October when they can show the world their creations. The spotlight focuses on their creativity, and each of them hopes that their hour in the spotlight of Fashion Week will help them on their way to becoming the next Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren, or Christian Dior.

If you have never been to Rio de Janeiro during Carnaval but always wanted to, you can certainly get the flavor of that riotous pre-Lenten festival here in Boston by heading over to the French Library and Cultural Center on Sunday October 27. There, Fashion Week 2002’s Newcomer Excellence Award winner Marcela Scvirer, will present "Second Skin," a collection of hot dresses, separates and lingerie inspired by her native Brazil.

The fashion show, added long after most of the week’s activities were planned, will feature Scvirer’s; signature slinky silk jersey stretch tops, asymmetrical jersey tie tops and dresses with sexy ruffles dancing over the hips, beige wide wale stretch corduroy pants and skirts with wide loops to hold giant belts, and her new line of lingerie that mimics the famous Brazilian bikinis.

Her colors for the fall line – turquoise, sand, white and gold, echo the colors of the ocean, the sunset, the woods and the beaches of Brazil. She explains that even the music for the show, featuring students from the Brazilian drum class from Berklee College of Music, will sound like Carnaval, says Scvirer. Her mere six months on her own as a designer in Boston have garnered much attention from the media and from retailers, as well as just about anyone who sees them. When she first arrived in Boston two and a half years ago, Scvirer hooked up with veteran designer Denise Hajjar, whose own fashion show is Friday October 25 at the Boston Public Library. Scvirer assisted Hajjar by fitting clients and organizing fashion shows, and by last winter was working on her own debut line, which she showed to the public last April.

This fall, Alo, a store in Harvard Square, picked up 11 pieces of her fall line to sell. When a female real estate agent recently walked into Scvirer and her husband’s South End studio/home and saw one of her jersey cocktail dresses, she immediately bought it. Scvirer’s mother, who was a painter and sculptor, died when Scvirer was 14. From the age of 9, Scvirer wanted to be a fashion designer, and she realized her first dream by graduating from the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York. Marriage, to Brazilian finance executive Daniel Grozdea, brought her to Boston, and that’s why Fashion Week is privileged to see her show. "When you put something like this on," says Scvirer, ruffling the skirt of a one-shoulder silk jersey dance dress, "you have to be happy."

Others besides Scvirer receiving the Vision Awards on Monday October 21’s ceremony beginning at 7 p.m. at the Massachusetts College of Art include, Mary Garthe, Betsey Jenney and Jo Somers for the Vision Leader Awards; for leaders who embody inventing an environment, including peers in their quest and inspiring new generations, designer Denise Hajjar for the Eye on Style Innovator award and Yolanda Cellucci for Lifetime Achievement award; Jane Conway, Katherine Dibble and Kristie Raymond for Vision Community Spirit awards, and Cindy Aiguier for Vision Style Setter award. Following the award ceremony there will be a reception later that night at Pho Republique.

p.1 Design by Vision Award winner Marcela Scvirer