London's Link and Lace

Public events, shoppable shows and a plan to take British fashion beyond the capital are changing who the week is for

London Fashion Week Goes Public: Who Is the Catwalk For Now?

When I started in this business, getting into a show required a ticket, a name on a list and a glare from a young person with a clipboard. The public’s role was to see the photographs afterwards. I do not say this was right. I say it was the arrangement.

The arrangement is changing, and this September made that plainer than any season I can recall.

What Was on Offer

Consider the programme. A high street retailer staged a runway show with the clothes on sale straight away. A second-hand platform ran a catwalk that viewers could shop from live. A global chain promised a reinvention of the fashion show with a celebrated photographer. A department store put the week’s labels in its windows. And on the final Sunday, Oxford Street was closed to traffic for a free public event.

One preview summed up the direction: for the British Fashion Council, it is another sign that London Fashion Week is becoming increasingly consumer-facing. The same piece reported that the council was launching “Fashion Britain,” a nationwide initiative designed to take British fashion beyond the capital for the first time.

The Old Model and Its Limits

Fashion week was designed as a trade fair. Designers show. Buyers order. Press report. Six months later the clothes arrive. It worked when magazines controlled what the public saw.

That control ended with the smartphone. Every look is online within seconds. By the time a collection reaches shops, the customer has seen it a hundred times and the high street has produced its own version. The delay that once built anticipation now simply gives copyists a head start.

So the question became unavoidable. If the public is watching anyway, why not address them?

The Case For

I find the argument for opening up persuasive on three counts.

Money. British fashion is rich in talent and poor in capital. Consumer events bring sponsors, ticket revenue and sales.

Relevance. An industry that speaks only to itself becomes a curiosity. Letting people in builds an audience that cares.

Fairness. Fashion week is supported, directly and indirectly, by public funds and public space. It seems reasonable that the public should get more than a traffic diversion.

The Case Against

The objections deserve a hearing, and some of them come from people I respect.

The first is that a show designed to sell is a different thing from a show designed to propose an idea. The collections that changed fashion were often unwearable and unsellable on the day. If every show must convert to purchases by teatime, the difficult, strange work gets squeezed.

The second is practical. Buyers and editors still need to do their jobs. A week crowded with public spectacle can make it harder to see the collections that matter commercially for small designers.

The third is that “consumer-facing” can be a polite term for advertising. There is a difference between inviting the public into fashion and using fashion week as a billboard.

Where I Land

I think both things can be true and that the task is balance. Keep the trade core, the showrooms and the schedule that lets a young designer be seen by the right forty people. Around it, build the public programme. What must not happen is that the second pays for itself by crowding out the first.

Beyond the M25

The part of this season’s news that interests me most is the least glamorous. Taking British fashion beyond the capital is overdue. This country’s clothing industry was never only London. It was Yorkshire wool, Lancashire cotton, Scottish cashmere, Leicester knitwear, Northampton shoes. Much of that was lost. Some survives, and some is reviving.

There are fashion students in Manchester, Glasgow, Belfast and Cardiff who should not have to move to Zone 2 to be noticed. There are customers everywhere. If “Fashion Britain” means real events and real investment in those places, it will do more good than another party in Mayfair. If it means a touring pop-up and a hashtag, less so. I shall be watching which.

The Venue Question

A word about where all this happens. A travel guide to the week notes that the council’s main show space is at 180 The Strand, a brutalist building that has been the central hub since 2015, when it replaced Somerset House. It is a fine place to see a show and a forbidding one to walk past. If the week wants the public, it might think about how its front door looks from the pavement.

The Oxford Street day pointed to another way. Fashion on the street, where people already are, without a list.

A Confession

I will admit to a pang. There was a pleasure in the old exclusivity, in being one of a few hundred people in a room seeing something first. I would be lying if I pretended otherwise. But an industry cannot run on the pleasures of its journalists.

What Happens Next

The test will be in February, and next September. Do the retailers return? Does the national programme have substance? Do the young designers get more attention or less? I do not know. I do think the direction is set. The doors are open, and they are not going to close.

To Finish, Lightly

Fashion week has always been a gift to humourists. The London Prat unwraps it in its UK satirical news on fashion week and British satirical news about front rows. There you will also find my running notes on the capital’s wardrobe. Bohiney Magazine covers the American runways.

SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/