18:00 // 17 SEPTEMBER 2008
London and Beyond
by Kay Barron
Britain is not feeling too cocky at the moment. The swagger of the early days of New Labour has been replaced with a spirit of half-assedness. Whereas China offered organized spectacle after organized spectacle in Beijing, Britain offered a pretend pop-star singing from a plastic bus, with a strap-on Jimmy Page for credibility, and dancers with umbrellas safely crossing zebra crossings. The whole thing was an unambitious, limping pit-pony of a show.
The same is often thought of London Fashion Week, where the spirit of creativity and ideas is often reported as modest student cruddiness, regardless of how long ago the designers graduated. In fact, although the week is the most public private event on the calendar (tickets only, not available to most), everyone has an opinion. There are those who believe London to be a home away from castle for Daddy’s girls, who have the contacts, cash and desire to make patterned dresses for their not so patterned friends. Then there are those who talk about the bottomless pit of ideas but the lack of professional substance (whereas in New York, business savvy seems to be added to the water). Those who want London Fashion Week shortened or moved, as apparently there isn’t the talent here to justify 6 full days out of the schedules of international fashion editors and buyers. And of course there are those who are more supportive, and will stand by London as the centre of all creativity, while waving the Union Jack and a picture of Erin O’Connor at you. Even the tabloids have an opinion, throwing out headlines like ‘Breast of British’ and ‘Flashin’ Week’, for all they want is to see a model’s brittle bones break on the catwalk, or at least for a brittle nipple to fall out of her Swarovski crystal halter-neck.
To be fair, there may be some weight to all of the voices, but that does not mean we should listen to any of them. In fact students, designers, writers and commentators should ignore them all, for they know how bloody difficult it is to carve out a career in fashion armed with little more than a pattern master, the address of Shepherd’s Bush fabric market and the voices of Central Saint Martins tutors ringing in their ears.
London is a relentless machine. It will shatter fashion dreams as soon as glance a fleeting eye upon them. Or it will help you build those dreams until you reach the point of no return and no money. Basically, it takes all you have in order to get nowhere or everywhere.
For every Christopher Kane fired into the spotlight, there are hundreds of other fashion graduates spat into retail, and the closest that they get to their much-dreamed-of own catwalk show is the ‘smart-casual wardrobe update’ catwalk event they organize for city women in the personal shopping department. Not that it is less worthy, it is just that if design is their ambition, it is a further kick in their clenched teeth when London Fashion Week is ridiculed from New York power houses to Paris couture houses.
It is clearly evident in Hywel Davies’ book 100 New Designers just how talented London designers are, for there are many of them rightfully featured in the pages. Regardless of how difficult the expense and cynicism of the city makes a creative career, there have been thousands who have been through the same heartbreak and now form the network that supports young talent as much as they nurture the established showmen.
What everyone should be talking about is how London can do it all. Designers can make you a dress out of lollypop sticks and feathers, but they can also design an ‘it’ bag, and basically regenerate companies whose legacy is stacked in the corner gathering dust and inappropriate associations – Burberry, Loewe, Chloe.
London’s young (and not so young) designers deserve championing, not mocking. The success rate is deathly low, many of their ideas are exciting, and they work crazy hours for a few lines of acknowledgement in a glossy. Why should we support them? Because the insane (perhaps masochistic) love they have of the discipline keeps fashion alive. Even if their ideas are shoplifted by cynical old veterans passing through the shows, even if fashion is cyclical in nature, it still needs ideas and that is what London’s fashion world excel at, which is nothing to be ashamed of.
London Fashion Week is like a visiting whorey auntie – she shows off, she can be embarrassing and exhausting, but you love her anyway - how can you not, she has all the best stories. Besides, what is one week, when it is the rest of the year that is important?