The curtain might have fallen on London Fashion Week (LFW) – but bosses hope the runway of the future will start to look a bit different.
Fashion Britain is the British Fashion Council’s initiative to open up access to talent outside of London – so how do you shift the focus away from the traditional centre of that world?
The council told BBC Newsbeat it has been working with LFW on a series of pop-up events in England, Wales and Scotland to show this year’s event was “bigger than London”.
Northern Ireland wasn’t included as a location for this year’s initiative – but will be included next year, the council said.
A recent House of Commons report, external found that more than half (51%) of the creative industries’ economic output was generated in London in 2022.
However, it did report that there are “clusters of creative industries” across the country, which included cities like Manchester and Leeds.
“A lot of people think in order to make it big, you have come to this big city because it has the schools here,” says Charles Jeffrey, founder and creative director of international fashion label Loverboy.
“But actually, there is so much amazing education that happens in different places,” the Scottish designer tells Newsbeat.
“I first started [in] a tiny studio in Dalston [in east London] and we were having to use fabrics from these cheap fabric shops that you would probably only really get in London because of the rag trade,” he recalls.
“Now a lot of them have gone and what made London a capital city for fashion has been taken away, so you’re probably better getting your fabrics from a little fabric shop in Manchester – it’s probably ten times cheaper.”
