The Commercialization Of the Catwalks: Has London Fashion Week “Lost Its Romance”?
“Fashion has become very noisy. It used to be something wonderful, a world of allure, refinement and scarcity. Not any more”. That was the view expressed by Patrick Grant, the creative director of Norton & Sons of Saville Row, on the BBC Radio 4 “Today” programme on the morning the latest London Fashion Week (16th-20th September) opened in Soho.
Grant expressed his regret that fashion has been transformed into a “business juggernaut” dominated by big companies such as Burberry and was evidently bewildered by “why a fashion brand needs to have a million followers on Instagram”. He believes this trend presents a major opportunity for those brands “who want to retain a sense of smallness, luxury and specialness”.
The editor of “Grazia magazine, Natasha Pearlman, pointed out in reply on the same programme that the fashion industry is simply “Responding to what the consumer wants: They drive the profits and there’s a huge number of them. According to Pearlman,”The products become more sought-after when they are more available”.
This divergence of opinion reflected the continuing fierce debate about the future of the traditional bi-annual New York / London / Milan/ Paris fashion show system. In an article titled “Chaos on the Catwalk” in the Sunday Times “Style” magazine on February 21, journalist Richard Gray highlighted the fact that Burberry, Tom Ford and Tommy Hilfiger would “soon be selling clothes straight from their shows” – a decision which was “revolutionary” and would throw the fashion calendar into disarray.
On Monday evening (19th September), Burberry indeed (in the words of the Sunday Times) unveiled its “See Now, Buy Now” initiative “to allow the public to buy any of the 250 catwalk designs online or in its shops immediately, rather than having to wait six months”.
In The Guardian’s “Fashion Issue” published to coincide with the start of LFW SS(Spring/Summer)17, Jess Cartner-Morley asked whether the romantic element would be lost if fashion “is reduced to clicking-to-buy a new pair of boots” and becomes more commercial at the expense of experimentation. Her optimistic conclusion was “not necessarily”. She also quoted the assertion by Imran Ahmed, the founder of Business of Fashion, that the two-season format, organised around “autumn/winter” and “spring/summer” for two contrasting wardrobes “ is outmoded and antiquated in an era of air conditioning, of mass-market long-haul travel and of a global economy”.
The British Fashion Council is candid about the fact that “Business lies at the heart of London Fashion Week”. In its preview to LFW SS17, it noted that the event would be welcoming more than 5,000 guests from all over the world. New figures released in June “Show that the British fashion industry’s worth to the UK economy has increased from £26 billion to £28 billion” and that the number of people employed by it has gone up from 790,000 to 880,000.
Although there was some speculation as to whether there were fewer big brands represented in the Designer Showrooms and whether the Soho venue felt a little less crowded than on previous occasions, the BFC’s preview emphasized that “the UK continues to be an attractive and fertile destination for an array of designer businesses of any size and from any place”.
This was certainly confirmed by the wide diversity of international designers who featured throughout the five days of LFW SS17 – among them, Ryan Lo (originally from Hong Kong), Emilio de la Morena (Spain), Morecco (Portugal), Faustine Steinmetz (France), Ashish (India), Eudon Choi (South Korea), Asli Polat & Malone Souliers (USA), Edeline Lee & Steven Tai (Canada), Paul Costelloe (Ireland), Marta Jakubowski (Poland) and Roksanda (Serbia).
