East London locations set the trend
The biggest event in the UK's fashion calendar - London Fashion Week - is here. The world class event hosted by the British Fashion Council will run from 19-24 February 2010 at venues across the city and is supported by the London Development Agency (LDA). London Fashion Week is worth £20 million to the London economy in terms of direct spend and over 5,000 visitors are expected including buyers, TV and radio crews, journalists and photographers (source: British Fashion Council, 2009).
Over in the east, London Thames Gateway has been incubating an insurgence of up and coming fashion designers and clothing manufacturers, with the region's reputation as a creative hotspot quietly going from strength to strength. Spitalfields Market's fashion heritage dates back to the thirteenth Century. It's no secret that Spitalfields' colourful past is steeped in textiles history and following a trough in the area's prosperity, less than 20 years ago it returned to glory as the UK's leading fashion district.
Today, east London welcomes new stars such as, Goodone Clothing. This award winning sustainable fashion company creates innovative and fashion forward recycled clothing. Throw-away high street fashions from budget stores have created clothing mountains but all is not lost as about 50 per cent of textile waste is reusable. With local textile recycling outlets such as LMB in Canning Town providing a rich source of fabric, Goodone deconstructs and reconstructs waste garments, up-cycling them into something sustainable and stylish.
Goodone is in good company, Hackney-based luxury shoes label Gina is just down the road and is looking to expand but still stay in the area, carrying out its manufacturing and office activity on one site.
Developed four generations ago, Chris Carey's Collections in Deptford provides textile recycling banks to organisations, local authorities, schools and corporations. It employs and trains "clothing pickers" who separate all the textiles that arrive at the warehouse which is remanufactured in the UK and overseas.
Creative businesses tend to favour being located close to other creative enterprises. This clustering effect is a positive driver for the economy as it forms groups of competing businesses that enhance demand for specialist labour and supply networks. Of course it is inevitable that east London's fashion epicentre will expand into the surrounding areas and this is true of the fashion crowd in east London; some of the UK's most innovative fashion designers have made neighbouring Dalston their home by locating their studios there; these include: Christopher Kane, Marios Schwab and Gareth Pugh.
Combining new with old, London Thames Gateway is also host to a patchwork of vintage markets and shops and capitalises on the celebrity trend for wearing one-of-a-kind treasures of yesteryear. Spitalfields Market is the most famous of these, joined by the Sunday Upmarket at the Old Truman Brewery, Cheshire Street's Beyond Retro, The Shop, Vintage Heaven, Hunky Dory and Rokit.
A photographer's favourite, London Thames Gateway has for many years provided an edgy and diverse backdrop for fashion photo shoots. Popular locations include the region's plethora of ultra modern offices and apartments; the City of London, for night time shooting to create a super sleek glamorous look; the rooftop of West Ferry Printers on Westferry Road with its Canary Wharf backdrop; and Canada Water, a regular haunt for budding photographers from Goldsmiths College.
Goldsmiths is not the only leading university in the locality, London Thames Gateway is also home to London Metropolitan, Queen Mary, East London, Greenwich, Trinity Laban, Ravensbourne and Rose Bruford. London Thames Gateway is a hotbed of creative talent; with the lowest employment costs in London; it has a dynamic local, skilled labour pool of 3.6 million and a further 4 million around London.
Added to this, organisations such as Fashion East give promising fashionistas a leg up into the industry. This LDA funded non-profit organisation was set up by The Old Truman Brewery in 2000; each season it gives preselected young designers funding, catwalk show production, PR support and advice to help them launch their labels. As a testimony to its ability to successfully identify and incubate London's brightest new talent, Fashion East has a slot on the London Fashion Week timetable, and works in partnership with Topman to launch the work of promising new menswear designers.
The final stage in the business process, access to market will never be an issue for those starting out in the textiles or clothing industry as London Thames Gateway has an unrivalled existing supply chain on its doorstep, playing host to warehouses; markets; designer, high street and vintage stores.
According to research courtesy of the British Fashion Council in 2009, UK designers sell an estimated £750 million of clothing at manufacturers' prices, of which two thirds is exported. The UK adult designer clothing market alone reached £1.9 billion in 2007, and represented 6.5 per cent of the entire global adult clothing market, with major export sectors including the USA, Japan, Russia, France, Italy, the Middle East, Hong Kong and China.
A rich cultural manufacturing and textiles heritage, together with education, training and supply chain opportunities all add up to one world-leading location for the fashion industry. London Thames Gateway's future looks bright.
