LFW generates 20 million pounds a year

According to last released data, the London Fashion Week generates 20 million pounds a year for the capital and draws in orders of 100 million pounds. In general, the British fashion industry is said to pump 200 million into UK’s economy.

FashionUnited reviews the figures behind the scenes of one of the leading international fashion shows.

Fashion industry is by all means one of the main drivers of the British economy, and as so it was addressed by David Cameron during his speech for the launch of the London Collections. “I want to see Britain re-industrialised and I think the fashion industry can play a huge part in that,” the Prime Minister clearly stated.

Earlier in January, this year's London Collections: Men launch was held in 10 Downing Street with the Prime Minister addressing to the likes of Tom Ford, Richard James, Richard Nicoll, Patrick Grant and Lou Dalton and putting a particular stress on the fashion industry’s potential economic benefits to Britain: 200 billion pounds pumped into the economy.

“First that it is the scale of what you do that is so important. Dylan Jones gave you the figures: over 20 billion pounds put into our economy, close to 900,000 people working in British fashion…And that leads me to the second point, which is the potential. That is what I see when I look at British fashion, when I look particularly, perhaps, at menswear and what you are doing this week. We have always had in Britain the infrastructure of a fantastic industry. We do have the best fashion colleges in the world. We produce some of the most creative and brilliant designers in the world. We produce fantastic brands. But could we do more to produce the big fashion businesses of the future? Yes, of course we could. Can we see many more people, who I meet going around the country as I do, people that want to go into fashion as entrepreneurs, people starting up themselves? Yes, of course we could do more.”

In fairness, and according to British Fashion Council report last issue, launched in February 2012, there is still large room for growth as the projected value of UK online fashion sales by 2015 is 7 billion pounds and the annual growth of UK designer clothing sales in the last decade was at a rate of 20 percent. Finally, 41 million pounds is the annual spend on UK fashion sector by overseas ‘shopper tourists’ and a total 200 million pounds the estimated value of UK fashion’s domestic brand equity.

The direct value of the UK fashion industry to the UK economy is 21 billion pounds, according to the BFC Value of Fashion Report 2010. Oxford Economics estimates that sales of UK designer clothing have been rising by around 20 percent a year in the last decade, and are currently worth somewhere between 2.5 and 2.9 billion pounds (as sourced in the BFC Future of Fashion Report 2012). In summary, fashion's wider contribution to the economy in influencing spending in other industries is estimated to stand at over 37 billion pounds, highlighted the data compiled by the British Fashion Council.

For fashion week alone, the British Fashion Council (BFC) estimates that more than 100 million pounds in orders are generated each season and that international media coverage was worth 61 million pounds. As well, it directly contributes 20 million pounds to the London economy, according to BFC.