Gender neutral and entirely digital showcase planned for London Fashion Week

In response to the ongoing Covid-19 crisis, the British Fashion Council has announced that London Fashion Week will merge womenswear and menswear into one gender neutral format. Scheduled from June 12 to June 15, the showcase will be entirely digital.

With a focus on storytelling and giving a voice to British fashion businesses and creatives, London Fashion Week will host multimedia content from designers, creatives, artists and brand partners on its website. The intention behind this is to connect the fashion community, enable collaboration and merge fashion, culture and technology.

“Many of our businesses have always embraced London Fashion Week as a platform for not just fashion but for its influence on society, identity and culture,” said Caroline Rush, chief executive of the British Fashion Council in a statement. “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.

“The other side of this crisis, we hope will be about sustainability, creativity and product that you value, respect, cherish. By creating a cultural fashion week platform, we are adapting digital innovation to best fit our needs today and something to build on as a global showcase for the future. Designers will be able to share their stories, and for those that have them, their collections, with a wider global community; we hope that as well as personal perspectives on this difficult time, there will be inspiration in bucketloads. It is what British fashion is known for.”

London Fashion Week to go gender neutral and entirely digital

Trade fair attendees, as well as the wider public, will be able to access this new digital experience, which will offer interviews, podcasts, designer diaries, webinars and digital showrooms.

The British Fashion Council will be working with several digital brand sponsors for the upcoming show such as Amazon Launchpad, Facebook, Google, Instagram and Youtube. These platforms, by offering unique content, will help British designers reach new public and trade audiences.

Last month, as a response to the global lockdown measures, Shanghai Fashion Week became the first to go entirely digital. Moscow Fashion Week followed suit shortly after by replacing catwalk shows with thirty-two fashion videos for audiences to stream online, while denim trade fair Kingpins will launch its first digital edition this week in Amsterdam between 22 and 23 April.

Photo credit: London Fashion Week, Facebook