Britain is a cut above the rest in fashion but it must safeguard that position

By Harold Tillman Published: 10:01PM GMT twenty-one February 2010

Comments 1 |

It is easy to boot designers and London Fashion Week as an elite, niche piece of the conform sector. After all, London Fashion Week is a traffic show with attendees singular to buyers and media. But, in fact, they are at the really heart of the broader conform industry, an industry that is the country"s second-largest employer. The designers at London Fashion Week and the ideas and trends that are display here in London oil the wheels of a multi-billion bruise conform industry.

The industry is fuelled by direct for the new, the on-trend and the inspiring. This comes from the implausible bent that shows on the catwalks. The creativity of these rarely inspirational designers has a absolute shift on the mass marketplace generating unchanging direct around unchanging showcasing of new trends and pattern styles. Without this bent there would simply be no abounding high street, no �46bn zone and far fewer jobs.

Property in Paris: Live the independent mental condition Make-up for the summer feverishness Lend them your ears: supersize earrings Recession is out of conform ? and Mrs B should know Above Suspicion: Lynda La Plantes younger, sassier inheritor to Prime Suspect

The British Fashion Council ensures this bent is identified, upheld and showcased by the bi-annual London Fashion Week and alternative general activity. Our annual awards eventuality recognises both past and destiny excellence.

I have regularly been desirous by bent from my really early days at the London College of Fashion I was shabby by the strange creativity around me and in the sky that was Carnaby Street and the Sixties. There is something singular about the British proceed to creativity now, as then, we lead the universe with the craving for the new, the irreverence, the need to pull bounds and the individualist take on the world.

The bent we see on the catwalks currently continues this bequest and takes it to a tellurian turn never seen before. Of course, the internet was regularly going to shift the approach that catwalks shabby retailing the trends get around the universe quicker, consumers wish them progressing and wish some-more and some-more preference as they conduct to get entrance to the ideas on the catwalks.

But right away consumers are being authorised evident entrance at the same time as the invited guests. This deteriorate the British Fashion Council is rising the world"s initial digital conform week with a brew of live streaming and digital-only presentations permitting millions of consumers to have their own chair in the "front row". As piece of this new schedule, Burberry will live tide in 3D in New York, Tokyo, Dubai, Paris and Los Angeles.

Never prior to has the catwalk been some-more influential. Our designers, the catwalks, the conform colleges and the conform media are concurred as the infancy beautiful in the world. It is not only the economy that relies on the energy of the conform bent but the tellurian beautiful repute of Great Britain.

Fashion is one of the infancy thorough and different of the beautiful industries it touches everybody in the UK everyday. It has concept interest conform is an measureless source of delight and contention for the infancy of the population. People can buy conform products, review about them in magazines, and emanate their own see at home. Fashion is the infancy approved of art forms it has genuine inclusive, interactive and informative power.

But this rarely energetic zone additionally has the own challenges. Designers are the lifeblood of the broader conform industry and the key target of the British Fashion Council is to await and showcase them. But blurb hold up for infancy of these gifted people is tough. We need unchanging and substantial appropriation from both open and in isolation sources to safeguard the designers embrace the courtesy they deserve.

We have no necessity of unusual talent; the designers are recognized the universe over as being at the slicing corner of conform value and creativity.

But the miss of blurb skills, production infrastructure and singular supervision await equates to they onslaught to have their commercial operation commercially viable quite in the tellurian economy. We know that there is a market, there is positively the demand. Brands such as Burberry have proven that a British code can knock out the world. We need to await the bent to reach out to bigger audiences and new markets. We have multiform schemes in place to await them together with the BFC/Vogue Fashion Fund that I launched at Number 10 Downing Street last year. The Fund aims to propel one engineer a year onto a tellurian theatre but more, most more, is needed.

We quite need commercial operation skills, trade assistance, informal growth await and loan growth pledge schemes to inspire banks to await the small businesses.

Fortunately we embrace await from UKTI and the London Development Agency. And all domestic parties have started to recognize conform as an economically and reputationally critical industry that needs supervision subsidy and assistance.

We are confident about the future. The bent keeps the repute drifting high and with the right await and support can go on to minister to the rebuilding of the economy.

Harold Tillman is authority of the British Fashion Council, and owners of the Jaeger and Aquascutum labels