London Fashion Week announces new venue

The British Fashion Council has announced a new venue and rebranded its consumer fashion event London Fashion Weekend as it looks to bring together its three bi-annual events into one home.

In a move to build consumer engagement with British designers, the British Fashion Council is combining London Fashion Week and London Fashion Weekend into the same venue and renaming it, London Fashion Week Festival, which it states is due to "an increasingly big appetite from both brands and public to open up our industry" to a wider audience.

Both events, along with London Fashion Week Men’s will take place at The Store Studios, located at 180 Strand, a venue which has previously hosted the Louis Vuitton Series 3 exhibition, and the Christopher Kane, Roksanda and Thomas Tait catwalk shows.

This move will see London Fashion Week in February moving from Soho’s Brewer Street car park, which it moved to last year, into The Store Studios the current home of London Fashion Week Men’s, and house a catwalk space as well as a presentation area.

The new home the British Fashion Council says is also a “strategic location at the intersection of North, South, East and West London and has easy access to the river as well as to main central areas such as Covent Garden and Southbank”.

London Fashion Weekend rebranded into London Fashion Week Festival

As part of the move, the British Fashion Council is also rebranding London Fashion Weekend, the biannual, four-day ticketed event, held at the Saatchi Gallery, which will be renamed London Fashion Week Festival. The main focus of the consumer event will continue to see catwalk shows, talks, and shopping, but tightening its relationship with London Fashion Week by being held in the same venue.

British Fashion Council chief executive, Caroline Rush said: “We saw this in September with the see-now-buy-now collections. The BFC has always encouraged this kind of innovation while making sure that our showcasing platforms remain strong opportunities for the designers to present their work to the industry.

“London Fashion Week and London Fashion Week Men’s will still showcase the best talent to industry professionals, giving the designers the opportunity to expand their businesses and get incredible international media exposure.”

Rush added: “London Fashion Week Festival is a natural continuation of the increasingly popular London Fashion Weekend. Housing the Festival at The Store Studios will reinforce the importance of offering direct to consumer experiences and insights into the fashion industry and there will be a lot of different ways for the public and businesses to get involved.”

The Store Studios creative director, Alex Eagle, commented: "With the fashion industry spearheading the shift from the direct experience of a runway show to broadcasting that experience around the world, The Store Studios is the perfect space for the London Fashion Week Festival.”

London Fashion Week will run from February 17 to 21, with London Fashion Week Festival commencing on February 23 until February 26. Tickets for the festival will be available for purchase at londonfashionweekfestival.com from November 1.

Earlier this year, the British Fashion Council also announced the rebranding of London Collections: Men into London Fashion Week Men’s from January. The four-day menswear event changed its name to reflect the evolution of the event from a two-day showcase to a four-day one.

London Fashion Week Men’s will take place from January 6-9.

Images: British Fashion Council/London Fashion Week Festival website