Blog by TopDown Trading

London Fashion Week returns on Friday to celebrate the nation’s most esteemed design talents.

Over the course of five days, editors, buyers and social media influencers will come together to see what brands including Molly Goddard and JW Anderson have up their sleeves for spring/summer 2020.

But this September could mark the beginning of a seismic shift in the fashion industry. 

With the increasing likelihood of a no-deal Brexit looming and environmentalists putting pressure on the British Fashion Council (BFC) to cancel fashion week altogether, there’s a very real chance that this bi-annual trade event might never be the same again.

From sartorial mastery to political shakeups, read on for everything you can expect from London Fashion Week this season.

Fur has always been one of the most incendiary topics in the fashion industry, but the debate has reached new heights in recent months as an increasing number of labels implement bans on using animal skins in their clothing.

The ethical issues of using animal fur for clothing are well-documented, and while it might’ve once been considered uber glamorous to glide down the street in a fluffy mink coat like a 1930s Hollywood starlet, doing so now would be seen as a sartorial cause célèbre. Also, an activist might pour a bucket of fake blood on you, which is probably not much fun either.

UK brand whose sales jumped 35% last year says it appeals to women not driven by trends.

PrettyLittleThing and Missguided have hit the big time selling £5 dresses and £1 bikinis to the youth market but another online British brand, Hush, is expanding rapidly in a backlash against fast fashion.

Sales at London-based Hush, which is run by a husband and wife team, jumped 35% last year to more than £40m as its jumpsuits and dresses found an audience among women aged 35 to 45 who, it says, “like fashion but are not a slave to it”.

Tech giant Google and sustainability champion Stella McCartney are teaming up to help reduce the environmental footprint of the fashion industry.

McCartney has long spearheaded the use of recyclable fabrics, organic cotton and synthetic leathers in her designs, so it seems only natural that Google should look to the 47-year-old to help create a scheme which aims to improve sustainability in the fashion supply chain.  

Brands send emails. Brands send, by some estimates, more than half of all the emails that are sent worldwide.

The cashier at Urban Outfitters recently asked me for my email when I bought something in a physical store, so that the company might send me emails every day, which I was already getting. Rihanna’s Savage X Fenty brand, I’m sorry to say, sends an egregious number of emails, and it’s not just me noticing. I have eaten at the fast casual Mediterranean restaurant Cava only one time, in a city I don’t live in, almost a year ago, and have received an email every week, like clockwork, which is actually pretty useful because the subject matter is typically which vegetables are in season.

Hip Scandinavian fashion retailer Carlings knew it had to make a big impression when it launched its first online store in 2018 — years after most other apparel brands.

Carlings has more than 200 physical stores in Norway, Finland and Sweden and is known for its wide range of jeans and casual clothes. When it finally started selling online last year, it wanted to do something that would draw people to its website and make it stand out. Virtual “clothes,” pieces that were available only as digital items, turned out to be the answer.