If Paris is luxury and Milan is heritage, what is London Fashion Week? 

It’s London Fashion Week again. After New York, it’s now the UK capital’s turn to host buyers and press, and to prove its creative mettle. It’s not easy being the warm-up act before the big-ticket shows in Milan and Paris but London’s charm lies in its scrappiness. This is where many creative directors at luxury houses – including Givenchy’s Sarah Burton, Dior’s Jonathan Anderson and Hermès’s head of menswear Grace Wales Bonner – spent their salad days, developing their viewpoints before going on to bigger gigs. To overlook London’s role as a cradle for emerging designers is to do the wider industry a disservice later down the line. “If Paris is luxury and Milan is heritage, then London is creativity and innovation,” the CEO of the British Fashion Council (BFC), Laura Weir, tells Monocle. “Rather than trying to be something that you’re not, I’m a firm believer in using your assets to the best of your ability.” 

Names to watch out for in the coming days include Johanna Parv, Pauline Dujancourt and EWUSIE: a trio of designers that draws on personal references ranging from cycling clothing to Ghanaian culture. For emerging designers, developing a direct-to-consumer niche might be the key to survival in an industry where wholesale and multi-brand retailers have declined over the past decade. “The shift in the wholesale landscape has had a cataclysmic effect on fashion brands’ opportunities to scale,” says Weir. “The cost of business rates and rent in London is an issue. It’s up to the BFC to come up with initiatives to support brands where we can. We’re mentoring designers to take different routes to market and launching Fashion House, our new initiative to create physical spaces for studios.”

This season, the BFC is also hoping to revitalise London’s status as a fashion capital by luring back Alexander McQueen from Paris, where the brand has been showing since 2000. The decision to return also makes sense for the luxury house, which has struggled to cut through the competitive noise of Paris in recent seasons. If the show on Sunday evening goes well, it will be interesting to see whether other British brands that have eschewed London for Milan or other cities decide to return home. 

Finally, Burberry will be closing the week on Monday night. The brand reported a return to profit in May, driven by sales in the US and China, after two years of struggling to position itself in a tighter luxury market. The success of the brand’s strategy – peddling a campy image of Britishness, complete with trench coats, Olivia Coleman and cups of tea – should offer hope to emerging and established UK-based designers.