A dose of high fashion injected the ongoing hotel labor dispute Monday as workers and owners clashed over the cancellation of The City's first-ever San Francisco International Fashion Week.

Event promoters pulled the plug on the glitzy three-day event late Friday night, stating that the lockout at 14 major city hotels had "seriously affected" the high-fashion affair.

Founder and producer Jacinta Law said picket lines would "compromise the integrity of the event" and instead she would focus on a spring season show in March. She said the lockout would affect "designer accommodations, event headquarters, pre-event publicity, press junket, awards luncheon, and post-event parties that were planned in these hotels."

"The designers don't care about crossing the picket line," said fashion week promoter Roxanne Hawkins. "They are not paying attention. They are in New York or Milan or out of the country. But other members of the organization were very concerned."

She would not name the hotels where fashion-related events were booked, except to say that there was a press junket and awards luncheon slated for the Four Seasons on Oct. 21.

A spokeswoman for Local 2, the union representing 4,500 locked-out hotel workers, thanked the organizers for the decision.

But the San Francisco Multi-Employer Group, which represents the 14 hotels involved in the strike, disputed the entire scenario put forward by the fashion promoters, saying no fashion events were planned for the Four Seasons.

"[Fashion Week] had made an inquiry at the Four Seasons but no contract had been signed there or at any other hotel involved" in the dispute, said SFMEG spokesman Cornell Fowler.

The couture convention was to feature hot designers like Esteban Cortazar and Chanpaul. It was the subject of a half-page feature in Sunday's Chronicle -- despite the fact it had been canceled Friday.

Fashion-industry figures lamented the turn of events.

"San Francisco has never really been on the fashion map," said Law.

Joseph Domingo, the one local designer included in the show, added: "There are so many talented designers here who don't get any recognition."

Anna Cintron, assistant to the Miami-based Cortazar, called the cancellation "disappointing."

"San Francisco really is a good fashion city, it just is not very well exposed," said Cintron.

Law said she hoped many of the designers from this week's canceled show would come back in March.

"San Francisco needs a fashion event of this magnitude," she said.