LONDON FASHION WEEK: Does Commercial Focus Mean Creativity Crisis on the Catwalk?
Leading fashion journalist Julia Robson reports from London Fashion Week for After Nyne.
Post-Brexit, London Fashion Week faces an identity crises. The British capital once famous for gritty fashion presentations staged in dank, warehouses smelling like urinals has woken up to the ‘c’ word. That’s ‘c’ for customer or consumer. And ‘c’ for cash - as in Yuans, Dirhams and Dollars, not just Euros. (What c word did you think I meant?)
So far shows here have been less about creativity or conceptuality and more about commerciality. On Monday, the livestream Burberry show will offer 250 pieces from catwalk direct to customer. (Kerching!)
Whereas fashion industry types might have been willing to let London get away with a few foibles - not just smelly shows but clothes designs so unwearable they will never actually make it onto hangers in shops, let alone real bodies - the public clearly aren’t. And this is having a knock-on effect on LFW.
As more designers adopt this ‘see now buy now’ strategy - where anyone can shop from collections in real-time, rather than waiting six months for ready to wear collections to land in store - London’s crazier clothes may become a thing of the past.
And not everyone is pleased. “A fashion show should be about generating ideas not just sales,” laments Lee Lapthorne, a fashion show event entrepreneur whose On/Off event, showcases new and emerging fashion brands each season.
Lapthorne has effectively launched the careers of British fashion stars, JW Anderson, Gareth Pugh and Roksanda Ilincic.
A combination of wild shows and extraordinary creations has proved a winning formula, which has ultimately benefitted penniless designers. Alexander McQueen, John Galliano and more recently JW Anderson, moved from LFW to the helm of giant, super brands. Investment from luxury investors led to them building their own brands.
“Fashion shows should be about ingenuity and passion,” continues Lapthorne. His latest protégé, Timothy Bouyez-Forge, fresh out of The Royal College of Art on Friday at On/Off, showed spectacular designs fashioned from industrial machines used for creating motorcycle parts.
“Designers need to sell clothes,” argues British stylist, Joe Toronka, who has styled Kim Kardashian, and worked on the Preservation show at LFW.
This is certainly the message trumpeted by Prime Minister, Theresa May who opened LFW, and Natalie Massenet, chairman of the British Fashion Council (BFC) the e-tail millionaire who founded Net-a-Porter.
Post-Brexit London is very much open for business. The direct value of the UK fashion industry to the UK economy is estimated at £26bn, up from £21bn in 2009, according to data from Oxford Economics.
“See Now Buy Now has started a revolution,” says Toronka who also teaches fashion students at LCF and INID. “We live in an era of instant gratification. Fashion students are being taught not only how to be creative but how to use their talent to make money.”
He cites the case of designer Christopher Kane, who French luxury group, LVMH, recently invested in. “Last season he used what looked like corrugated cardboard but it was in fact soft leather. It was extremely creative but it will sell. What is the point of putting all that work into design and going bankrupt which is what used to happen to designers in London. Not any more. Making money is very fashionable.”
Julia Robson is a fashion journalist and lecturer at Regents University London www.regents.ac.uk
IMAGE: Aquascutum SS17
