London Fashion Week, devoted to the fall/winter 2022 collections, opens Friday for five days of fashion shows with some notable absentees such as Burberry and Victoria Beckham, which gives pride of place to emerging designers.
Last year at the same time, this event was held in a 100% virtual format, parades with an audience being prohibited in a country in full confinement. This time, 37 public parades are on the program, including established brands that are used to this meeting such as Simone Rocha, Molly Goddard, Roksanda, Erdem, or Rejina Pyo presenting both women’s and men’s collections.
Other designers prefer to keep a digital format, such as the queen of punk Vivienne Westwood who will present her latest creations in a video. As for Burberry, the iconic British brand has announced that it is planning a show in London on March 11, outside of Fashion Week.
It’s SOHUMAN who will open the show on Friday, a sustainable fashion brand created by the Spaniard Javier Aparici who abandoned a career in finance to take the path of fashion, promising “radical transparency”. For such up-and-coming brands, London Fashion Week is a chance to shine like Albanian designer Nensi Dojaka, 27, who won the 2021 LVMH Prize for Young Talent, or SS Daley, a graduate in 2020 from the University of Westminster.
The stars of tomorrow will be unearthed among the students of the prestigious fashion school Central Saint Martins or the designers selected by the talent incubator Fashion East, whose fashion shows are organized on Sunday.
Among the leading designers in sustainable fashion, Briton Bethany Williams and Irishman Richard Malone will present their creations on Tuesday. Shows that the general public will be able to follow or review on the Fashion Week digital platform, launched in June 2020, in the midst of a pandemic.
Also in the spirit of reaching fashion lovers around the world, Serbian Roksanda Ilincic will present her fall/winter 2022 collection in the form of an NFT, certified digital token, created by the Institute of Digital Fashion. It will be available for purchase on roksanda.com.
“Very difficult years”
After being hit hard by the pandemic, the British fashion sector, which employed some 890,000 people in 2019, is trying to recover.
Interviewed by AFP, Caroline Rush, director general of the British Fashion Council, admits that there have been “a few very difficult years” which add to the effects of Brexit at the start of 2020.
The UK’s exit from the European Union “continues to be a challenge for the fashion industry, whether it’s customs duties, paperwork or visas for people to work in different countries, we continue to engage with the government to see what can be done”.
In terms of the health situation, the lifting of restrictions in many countries allows the return of an international audience.
“We will not have the presence of people from many Asian countries who are still unable to travel, but (…) we can still do business”rejoices Caroline Rush.
A report published last year by Oxford Economics for the Creative Industries Federation and Creative England Federation, claimed that “with the right investments” the creative sector might recover faster than the UK economy as a whole.
The study predicted growth of over 26% by 2025 for the sector and a contribution of £132.1bn (€154bn) to the UK economy – over £28bn more than ‘in 2020.
London Fashion Week will be followed by Milan and then Paris.
