Blueprint's "Tonight We W.E.D" gave a taste of what's to come for this year's Asia Fashion Exchange.

Blueprint is the trade event that emphasises on new emerging designers that happens during the Asia Fashion Exchange where buyers and designers come together to explore the trends and issues of the fashion industry.

The Blueprint team has created a "Wear Emerging Designers" movement to support emerging fashion brands by very simply choosing to 'Wear Emerging Designers' (W.E.D).

Buoyed by passion and a fresh point of view, these designers enter a challenging industry, quite literally to show us the shape of things to come.

With creations that are original, innovative, artisanal and often produced in limited quantities, to W.E.D is the way to reinforce our own unique style.

Held at Butter Factory, Tonight We W.E.D. is a drive for recognising emerging talent in the design world.

Fashion fans came out to party in their emerging designer best to show their support and love for new talent.

Click here to view the photos from the event.

This year's Asia Fashion Exchange (AFX) will happen from May 14 to 20, 2012.

It is made up of four elements - Audi Star Creation, Blueprint, Asia Fashion Summit and Audi Fashion Festival (AFF) Singapore.

For some, the main event of fashion excitement is the AFF Singapore that runs from May 16 to 20, 2012.

Themed "Lighting the Future", the opening night will see French fashion house Thierry Mugler present its Autumn/Winter 2012 collection with creative director, Nicola Formichetti attending, who is well-known for styling Lady Gaga.

French designer Roland Mouret, whose clientele includes Nicole Kidman and Sienna Miller, is another international designer featuring at AFF together with local stars Raoul and alldressedup.

One new element to this year's AFF is Future Fashion Now (FFN), an online fashion portal that lets consumers place their orders for the latest runway designs and pre-collections online, and have their orders custom-produced for delivery before the next season arrives in stores.

AFF will feature at least four shows in its line-up that will have FFN capabilites such as Yeojin Bae from Melbourne and Max Tan from Singapore.

Following its launch at AFF, FFN will continue to showcase various Cruise, Spring/Summmer and Fall/Winter collections and selected MasterCard cardholders will be able to view the collections up-close and meet the designers.

And, for the first time, AFF will have a prestigious hospitality experience that you can get for $1,500.

You will receive full VIP, red carpet treatment with access to the VIP Mezzanine lounge, front-row seats to the shows, pre-show backstage tours and exclusive dinner invitations with some of the designers.

This year's festival also supports new generation talent with the Parco Next NEXT showcase that features 18 new Singapore-based designers that will launch their collections on April 14, 2012 at Parco Millenia Walk.

Fashion is always about discovering the next new thing and Audi Star Creation celebrates just that.

Now in its third year, Star Creation is an Asia-wide fashion design competition that received a record number of entries this year.

A total of 255 fashion designers from 13 countries made submissions, that's more than the 144 received last year.

The highest number of submissions came from Thailand and two new countries being represented this year are South Korea and Iran.

Last year's three winners - Chen Zhi Gang from China, Tiang Boon Tieon from Malaysia and Tsia Ming Hung from Singapore - will launch their capsule collections and also showcase them at Blueprint this year.

Blueprint, that happens on May 17 to 20, is a trade event, that also opens to the public for shopping, where more than 150 emerging designers and up-and-coming fashion brands will feature their Pre-Spring 2013 collections.

40 per cent of these brands are from Singapore and the rest are from cities in Asia, Europe and the US, with new country collectives showing this year from France, Germany and South Korea.

This year's theme is Embodying The Future where designers at Blueprint are showcased as the next big thing.

This year's edition also sees a new element, The Brandery Asia, that is an extension of The Brandery fashion tradeshow from Barcelona.

The Brandery Asia is an international launchpad for established and new contemporary urban, street and casual fashion brands to gain a foothold in the Asian market and for Asian brands to be catapulted into the global scene.

The brands from Asia, such as Singapore's Island Shop and Hong Kong's Per Me, from Europe and the US, such as Baggu from the US, Feiyue from France and Custo Barcelona from Spain, will present their Spring/Summer 2013 collections.

With the trade event bringing together buyers, designers and industry players, Asia Fashion Summit is another part of the serious side of fashion business reflected at AFX.

Themed Engaging the Asian Fashion Consumer, this year's Asia Fashion Summit will focus on how brands can leverage on lifestyle retailing as well as using technology and digital media to engage consumers for the long term.

It will be held at the Raffles City Convention Centre from May 15 to 17, 2012.

For more information on these events, log on to:

www.audifashionfestival.com for the AFF,
www.starcreation.sg for Star Creation,
www.blueprint.sg for Blueprint,
and www.asiafashionsummit.com for the Asia Fashion Summit.

Photos: Plush, Jack Goh, Audi Fashion Festival