Western Daily Press (Saturday)
Fashion Week is ‘mirror of society’
THIS year’s London Fashion Week has started, marking the 40th anniversary of the biannual event.
Since launching in 1984, the event has grown from an avant-garde show to a giant in the fashion industry with this year’s London Fashion Week (LFW) opening at the London Stock Exchange this week, signifying the importance of the fashion industry to the UK economy. UK womenswear sales alone are worth an estimated £30.9 billion, according to Mintel data.
But the world has changed a lot in the past four decades - so is there still a place for LFW today?
Dr Benjamin Wild, senior lecturer of Fashion Narratives at Manchester Metropolitan University, believes so.
“Fashion is an industry that contributes just over 3% to the country’s
GDP. I also think in terms of diversity and social responsibility, that’s something I think London takes very seriously.
“With three globally established fashion weeks, I think that it’s imperative to be different,” says Wild.
First organised by the British Fashion Council in February 1984, London Fashion Week happens twice a year – in February and September.
When it launched, there were already three well-established fashion weeks running in Paris, New York and Milan, and London was considered an ‘interloper’ of the industry.
“It’s always been said and I think it’s very much true that right from its inception, London Fashion Week has always been associated with innovation, and in terms of its creativity, there’s a greater sense of freedom,” said Wild.
In March 1984, when then prime minister Margaret Thatcher hosted a reception to celebrate London Fashion Week, English designer Katharine Hamnett caused a stir by wearing a slogan which read ‘58% don’t want Pershing’, in response to opinion polls being against the basing of Pershing II missiles in the country.
Wild believes politics seeps into LFW more than the other fashion weeks around the world, adding: “Fashion is a mirror of society”.