April 21, 2020 |
London Fashion Week has always been a place for innovation. A cultural hub for both emerging and big-name designers, the British Fashion Council takes pride in showcasing only the brightest talent the world has to offer. As Milan, Paris, and London included, have each scrapped plans to showcase standalone menswear SS21 collections in June in the face of the global pandemic, the BFC has taken this as an opportunity to re-think the seasonal calendar altogether.
As it was announced this morning, London Fashion Week will become one “gender-neutral platform,” merging both menswear and womenswear brands under the ‘London Fashion Week’ title. This will begin on June 12th, where LFW will be held as a three-day digital showcase for both people inside the industry and the general public. It is yet to be announced which designers will be showcasing in this iteration, but the event will not only include URL presentations hosted by brands based here in the UK, but will be packed with digital showrooms, interviews, designer diaries, webinars, and podcasts.
“The current pandemic is leading us all to reflect more poignantly on the society we live in and how we want to live our lives and build businesses when we get through this,” says the BFC’s Chief Executive Caroline Rush. “The aim of the format is to give designers bigger flexibility as to the audience they can reach, as well as the format and content of their presentations that can vary from product to cultural commentary.” The BFC aims to continue showcasing four fashion weeks a year, both in January and February and of course June and September. Yet this gender-neutral outlook the BFC hope will offer flexibility in the type of audiences designers can reach. Stay tuned for more announcements, we for one cannot wait…
Top image: Christopher Kane AW20, photographed by Jason Lloyd-Evans.
