London Fashion Week
Saturday 29 September 2007
Last week, the fashion world landed in the UK for London Fashion Week. What is London Fashion Week about and how does the world of fashion work?
Fashion is money
Fashion is big business. According to a recent enquiry the British fashion designer industry alone was worth £1.8 billion in 2004. In 2006 the fashion industry as a whole, including design and also retail and fashion in general, generated about £33.5 billion and employed 380,000 people!
What is London Fashion Week?
London Fashion Week is a week long series of shows, events and parties designed to showcase the latest fashion trends. It is really important to the London Fashion industry because it attracts fashion leaders, department-store buyers, press, stylists and celebrities. This increases both the profile and the credibility of British fashion around the world and in the UK.
There are actually two London Fashion Weeks that place in February and September. This September over 200 British and international designers showed off their clothes for the Spring 2008 season. The collections are ‘ready-to-wear’ and are clothes that you will eventually see copied on the High Street.
The British Fashion Council
The British Fashion Council was set up over 20 years ago to help promote British fashion design worldwide. The BFC is in charge of London Fashion Week and brings it all together. It also supports new designers in any way it can including sponsorship and business help. The BFC’s Colleges Forum is also aimed at finding and supporting up and coming design students.
British Fashion
In recent years British fashion has become more and more respected in the fashion world. British fashion designers have an international reputation for being eccentric and being at the forefront of change.
Fashion Colleges such as Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design and the Royal College of Art are also greatly respected throughout the world.
London Fashion Week also has a reputation for giving young, talented designers a platform to show off their work. Watch out for the most talked about young designer this year Gareth Pugh.
Young talent showcases and awards such as Fashion Fringe, MAN and Fashion East are also part of the London Fashion Week schedule and give new graduates the first step on the ladder by exposing them to the press.
With British designers, such as Stella McCartney, models such as Kate Moss and even singers like Lily Allen also designing for high street shops, the profile of the British Fashion industry seems to be increasing.
Models UK
Kate Moss is perhaps one of the most famous UK models. She was also one of the first models to spark a debate on whether models are too thin when she started on the catwalk at just 15 years old.
This year ultra thin models were banned from shows in Milan and Madrid. London Fashion Week decided not to ban any models but to concentrate instead on educating the British models about health issues. They asked designers to use only 'healthy models' aged 16 and over and are now working to create new guidelines for the industry.
One of the biggest modeling stars of London Fashion Week 2007 was a 17 year old British girl who was discovered in a Primark store in London. Jourdan Dunn is being called a supermodel in the making and has already modelled clothes for well known top designers such as Marc Jacobs and Tommy Hilfiger. She also recently went to New York , the first time she had ever been out of the country, and modelled for all 15 of Gwen Stefani’s shows for her fashion label Lamb.
