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No future for London fashion?

February 13, 2025 - February 13, 2025   



Catwalk shows are seen as the way of making your name in the fashion industry – but costs can spiral up to £50,000, forcing some designers to turn to sponsorship or toning down their creativity in a bid to get ahead. In the first of a series of opinion articles, Melissa Mostyn looks at the state of the London fashion scene.


 




Did you know that a catwalk show can cost up to £50,000? At least that is the figure suggested by the British Fashion Council’s Gemma Green.


 

“To show at our venue [Il Bottaccio, or the BFC tent, both of which were used during London Fashion Week (LFW)] we normally charge between £3,000 ”“ 6,000 which covers the venue, lighting, listings in publications and our website. But you should also consider models, show producers, extra lighting and so on which the designers themselves provide ”“ and that can be anywhere between £20,000 and £50,000.”






Given that fashion designers begin with a loan in the low thousands (or even the hundreds), how are you expected to also meet the costs of a catwalk show?






From the British designer’s point of view sponsorship is often the best funding means, but even then there is a catch: the sponsors get to advertise themselves. Sass & Bide’s own off-schedule show, under the Westway, came laden with goodie-bags containing Aussie haircare (appropriate given Sass & Bide’s Australian roots), a fairy cake from Coco London and a co-ordinated Estee Lauder make-up set, as well as a Sass & Bide T-shirt. Good job then, that the parade of tawny Trojan-Horse-meets-Amy-Johnson warriors, whose aurous sequins shimmered as they crossed the huge skateboarding park, was bigger than the freebies.




“Other countries have production infrastructures that embrace each new generation of talent. In London, designers are working in a vacuum. When Britain lost its factories, it also lost its ability to fully support new design.”





Likewise Roksanda Ilincic, who showcased at The Lost House, a contemporary North London big-windowed building accompanied by a serene Japanese-style courtyard, had her PRs spoiling us rotten with Charles Worthington hair-styling products, Long Island iced tea and sweet delicacies before, during and after the show. I pitied one poor girl, faced with the soul-destroying task of distributing brownies and macaroons to the same catwalk stalwarts; already pale, she grew positively ashen as she did her rounds. The brownies never ran out.






The point of having a catwalk show is to publicise your new collection, not your sponsor. When your strongest memory of a show is the freebies that came with it, the exercise seems self-defeatist. Surely there are other, more cost-effective, means of boosting your label’s marketability instead of sponsorship?






The Guardian’s Charlie Porter supports that view. “London designers are seen as remote and untouchable, and it’s not necessarily their fault. Because London lacks big fashion houses on the continental model, the public has little awareness of what London fashion is.”






A British manufacturing industry in terminal decline aggravates the problem.






It seems that whatever novel, headline-grabbing, ideas will materialise from a small British-trained designer, the big brands will always win ”“ be it a sponsor or Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy (LVMH).







“Other countries have production infrastructures that embrace each new generation of talent. In London, designers are working in a vacuum. When Britain lost its factories, it also lost its ability to fully support new design.”

Likewise, government support is meagre. Last January a study of the UK designer fashion sector commissioned by the DTI and the BFC asserted that, since 1997, the British Government had given a total of £87.8 million to the textile and clothing industries. However, the DTI website reveals that only £1 million of that went to the designer fashion sector.


 




Our ever-increasing pool of fledging talent is being forced to show abroad, dilute their imagination for a High-Street chain, or even allow a global conglomerate to swallow them up. It seems that whatever novel, headline-grabbing, ideas will materialise from a small British-trained designer, the big brands will always win ”“ be it a sponsor or Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy (LVMH).






As Porter says, “The international fashion industry knows it can go to Britain and tap into its skills without having to support London fashion itself.” That is what keeps the majority of international buyers away from LFW ”“ making almost untenable last month’s five-day schedule of 50 shows and another 50 off-schedule. And the British public doesn’t care either, because it’s busy lusting after a more accessible international label such as D&G or Armani.






Even with an understanding of production, marketing and business acumen ”“ which far too many British fashion designers lack ”“ if a designer refuses to compromise his creative vision (as Hussein Chalayan discovered to his cost, going into liquidation in 2000 after being named British designer of the year) further difficulty will arise from maintaining support in this country. Consequently, if his label is to grow properly, he will have to go abroad. McCartney, McQueen, Galliano, Bartley, Chalayan ”“ all these famous British names now show in Paris or New York. The latest recruit to decamp to New York is Roland Mouret, although he hints it won’t be permanent.






Meanwhile, the rest of us wait, with trepidation, the next course of DTI action to be taken.






Next fortnight: How do the French do it?







by Melissa Mostyn




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