Queuing For The Catwalks: Are They Worth The Wait?
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London Fashion Week is for all”. So declared the Evening Standard journalist Karen Dacre in her preview of LFW AW15 on 17th February. She then proceeded to console those who hadn’t “scored a ticket to a show” that – never mind – they could instead watch the highlights online from the comfort of their couch at home.
This rather skirted round the obvious fact that, following a catwalk (or a football match) on even a very large flat-screen TV is never quite the same as being there, absorbing and indeed contributing to the atmosphere. Dacre then proceeded to reveal the gulf between “Fashion Week’s most fabulous (people)” and the majority of her readers by pointing out that anyone who wanted to be “in on the action” and attend the “shindig” at the Serpentine Gallery hosted by US leather brand “Coach” would have to pay “ a cool £200”.
This yet again raises the issue as to the purpose of London Fashion Week and who exactly benefits from it. According to the British Fashion Council’s (BFC)“Facts & Figures” press release issued prior to the “61st Edition of LFW (20th-24th February), the UK fashion industry makes a “direct contribution of £26 billion to the UK economy, supports 797,000 jobs and £100 million of orders are placed during each LFW session”.
The BFC also estimated that 30,000 Lavazza expressos, 25,000 bottles of Fiji water and 5,376 bags of Propercorn would be consumed during LFW AW15 and that it takes a model 51 seconds to walk the length of the catwalk in the BFC Show Space” at Somerset House.
The mere fact that so many “global brands” – among them Burberry Prorsum, Paul Smith and Vivienne Westwood Red Label – continue to participate in this bi-annual event clearly indicates they feel it is in their interest to do so. Both the BFC and the LFW’s “Designer Showrooms Preview” emphasized the vital role played by “NEWGEN” (“an internationally respected identifier of emerging talent”) in nurturing and funding young designers such as Claire Barrow, Molly Goddard and Ashley Williams.
This enthusiasm for fashion is not, however, shared by all commentators. The Guardian’s Tanya Gold, for example, feels that, if it is “your primary means of expression, you are only to be pitied – because women have better means of expression these days”. Is it a coincidence, she asks, that “the fashion houses’ most avid customers are the female relatives of the tyrants of the Middle East? Fashion is obsessed with surfaces and is full of victims”. Her colleague Simon Jenkins, in his column on 19th February discussing the current controversy on the extent to which advertisers influence newspapers’ editorial policy, pointed out that “fashion pages would not exist without kickbacks” and recalled instances of “perfume firms threatening to withdraw ads after stories on animal cruelty”.
In the queue for the Ashley Isham Show at the Freemasons’ Hall near Holborn on 20th February, there was a group of students from Trinity College, Dublin. They had come over from Ireland especially for LFW but had tickets for only a couple of catwalks. They had to wait in the cold and rain for more than 30 minutes to see a show which (though spectacular) lasted around 10 minutes. The queue and the wait for the Jean-Pierre Braganza event at the BFC Show Space the same day was even longer.
Why this insistence on holding LFW in February instead of (for example) April or May when the weather is usually far more congenial? This same argument could be applied to all of the “Big Four” Fashion Weeks (New York / London/ Milan/ Paris) which take place in sequence in February/March and September /October each year. The problem with moving them, it seems, is that they would then clash with other important fashion weeks in cities such as Berlin, Barcelona, Los Angeles, Buenos Aires and Singapore. The justification for the “Big Four” being twice a year (rather than just once), says “Mashable.com” is that they enable the media and potential buyers to find out what the trends will be for the following season. Thus at LFW AW15, the designs displayed were for this Autumn/Winter and LFW SS16 in September will highlight the styles planned for Spring/Summer next year.