British Fashion Making Money

At last, something Britain does well. Victoria Beckham’s fifth collection takes New York Fashion Week by storm.

And London Fashion Week kicks off today with the news that the British rag trade – so long regarded as a lightweight industry – in fact makes a stellar contribution to the UK economy.

A report from the British Fashion Council shows that fashion contributes nearly £21billion directly to the economy each year – a figure that rises to more than £37billion when its influence on other industries, including IT and tourism, are taken into account.

At the 15th largest in the UK, that puts it alongside the food and beverage and telecoms sectors – and makes it twice the size of car manufacturing and publishing. ‘When I started out the ‘rag trade’ was seen as the riskier end of the market. Now it’s a respectable industry,’ said Harold Tillman, who heads up classic British brands Jaeger and Acquascutum.

‘And we’ve got the very best education for design and textiles in the world.’

Sometimes it’s easy to forget that Britain is home to some of the world’s most iconic fashion brands.

From Burberry through to Vivienne Westwood, Paul Smith, Giles Deacon and Stella McCartney, British designers are blazing a trail around the globe.

Unlike the cheap and cheerful High Street brands, many of our most promising designers continue to make their clothes here.

In fact the fashion world, which encompasses not only fashion designers but manufacturers, retailers, magazine publishers, fashion journalists, lecturers and business managers, is the largest employer of all the creative industries and directly employs 816,000 people, while 1.3m jobs are associated with fashion.

For Annette Felder and her twin sister Daniela, who are putting the finishing touches to their collection for London Fashion Week, the report came as no surprise.

They came from Cologne to study at Central Saint Martins, graduated in 2006 and never left Britain.

So why did they stay? ‘I think for two reasons – London is such an inspiring place; it has such an international draw, and it’s hard to compare it with other places in terms of the level of creativity; and the focus here is so strongly on new talent and new designers unlike anywhere else in the world.

‘We found a network here that we wouldn’t have been able to find anywhere else.’
Britain is also better at helping new designers turn themselves into viable businesses, says Annette.

Burberry is one of the major success stories of recent times – a staid brand that reinvented itself with Christopher Bailey at the design helm.

The individualistic streak that marks this nation is reflected in the output of its designers, according to Christopher di Pietro, marketing director for Vivienne Westwood.

‘I think British people are inherently individualistic and that comes from being an island nation. We’ve developed a peculiar sartorial style – even City boys wear bright waistcoats and funny socks.’

But it wasn’t always this way. ‘Italy and France always saw their Armani and Dior as important companies as we would see our Tesco and Sainsbury – not only as businesses but for the prestige of the country,’ said di Pietro.

‘For us it’s a more recent thing. My grandmother never wore fashion – she had a dressmaker.’

Minister for creative industries, Ed Vaizey, says that it’s vital in the wake of the report ‘to make sure we invest in the skills base, so we continue to have world class fashion colleges and we also invest in business skills for fashion designers and the wider skills for fashion retailers.’

‘We want to maintain our manufacturing base for fashion here and I’ll be meeting in the next few months with leading manufacturers to talk about the challenges they face.’

As Anna Wintour, editor of American Vogue, joins the other front-row celebrities later today, she may like to reflect on the increasing number of foreign fashion designers who are choosing to switch to showing in London, including the American Tom Ford – whose design rooms are already in the UK.

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