On Friday our CEO Tamara Cincik was invited to the King's Foundation Celebrating Craft at Highgrove House in Tetbury, for a Christmas event in the presence of His Majesty the King. The King's Foundation is a charity launched by the King as a vehicle to train the next generation of skilled craftspeople – including in fashion and textiles – in heritage techniques valuable to many traditional UK industries.
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Read MoreLast night J W Anderson took home ‘Designer of the Year’ award at the British Fashion Council ‘Fashion Awards 2023.’
Of course Anderson wasn’t the only one to take home an award last night, Sarah Burton who took on the mantle after Alexander McQueen passed, was honoured with a special achievement award for her 13 years as Creative Director. She has left a very large gap in the role of women as Creative Directors in the fashion sector.
Sarah Mower was also awarded a special recognition award for championing young designer talent. Her dedication to New Gen talent in all forms has been game-changing for so many and something which Anderson acknowledged in his speech.
Finally, Editor-in-Chief of British Vogue, Edward Enninful OBE, received the Trailblazer Award for his contribution to the fashion industry.
Read MoreAlice V Robinson is a designer based in London and is the co-founder of British Pasture Leather. Her journey began through the process of making a handbag, whilst studying her MA in Accessory Design at the Royal College of Art.
On realising the lack of connection between agriculture and fashion and the convoluted supply chain she was faced with, Alice embarked on a journey of extraordinary lengths to make a connection and discover the provenance story of British leather.
Provenance is often ubiquitous with food, but doesn’t always connect with fibre in the same way. In writing her book ‘Field Fork Fashion’ Alice purposefully makes this connection, whilst working at a smaller scale with regenerative farming practices.
Through this interview, Meg Pirie and Alice discovered many thematic similarities between Fashion Roundtable’s work on regenerating British wool and Alice’s discoveries while working with leather as a medium.
Read MoreThis week has been a whirlwind, and has seen our CEO, Tamara Cincik travel across the country – quite literally – from Manchester for a DCMS event with Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport – Lucy Frazer, and then on to Scotland and London.
In Scotland, Tamara attended Dumfries House and spoke at the King’s Foundation (formerly Prince’s Foundation) x the Fashion Council Germany conference entitled ‘Disruption’ which was this year supported by TENCEL™, eBay and The PVH Foundation. The King’s Foundation's Future Textiles initiative is designed to breathe new life into a renowned British textiles industry. Back to London, we then hosted one of our largest events on localism in Parliament, in our capacity as Secretariat of the Ethics and Sustainability All-Party Parliamentary Group. Click through for more.
Image shows our CEO Tamara Cincik in a red dress in a panel discussion at Dumfries House. Image credits Eleanor Kelly @mastrelli.media
Read MoreThe news of Pharrell William’s Louis Vuitton $1 million bag dubbed ‘Millionaire Speedy’ has gone viral.
Sold via a made-to-order basis, the newly released bag, replaces the generally used cotton canvas for crocodile leather, embellished with gold hardware and diamonds.
Pharrell was spotted at Paris Fashion Week recently donning a yellow version of the bag. Pharrell was appointed Creative Director in February 2023, and this direction nods to a louder trajectory than even the late Creative Director Virgil Abloh’s street influences for Louis Vuitton.
The press has been split since news of the bag surfaced, from excitement to criticism and offers an antithesis to ‘quiet luxury’, something which in fact might be labelled as ‘loud luxury’. Click through for more.
Photo by Julie Ricard on Unsplash. Image shows a brick wall with the message, ‘Until Debt, Tear Us Apart, graffiti on.
Read MoreLast night an exposé by BBC Panorama aired probing the practices of fast-fashion giant Boohoo, who last year made a reported £1.7bn worth of sales. The majority of the filming occurred in their Manchester headquarters, where journalist Emma Lowther spent 10 weeks.
The evidence garnered showed increasing pressure to cut prices in order to save money and the unscrupulous practice of amending prices after the stock had already been made. Lowther exposed a number of occasions where suppliers were left out of pocket due to discounts being applied which were not initially agreed.
We unpick the evidence.
Read MoreZebedee is an inclusive talent agency, championing disabled, visibly different, non-binary, and trans UK models. Global names already signed by Zebedee include Ellie Goldstein, who recently made the cover of British Vogue and Jasroop Kaur Singh who appeared in the Australia Vogue ‘Vogue Vanguard’ issue.
Zebedee was established by co-founders Laura and Zoe in 2017 as a direct response to the lack of representation and inclusivity in the media. Now Channel 4 has created an insightful documentary series with the working title, ‘New Model Agency’ which follows Zebedee HQ and many of their diverse and dynamic cast of models. The documentary will air in February 2024 around London Fashion Week – so watch this space!
Meg Pirie speaks with co-founder Laura Winson who also sits on our Representation and Inclusion Committee. They talk about the progress Laura feels has been made in the fashion sector; what still needs to happen; and the spending power of disabled people – which is thought to be around £280 billion pounds every year in the UK alone and £1.3 trillion worldwide; and the fact that if brands don’t get on board, they’ll soon be left behind.
Read MoreNicholas Diamond-Krendel, co-founder of Luxury Leather Goods Brand Paradise Row reviews Fashion City - the latest exhibition at the Museum of London Docklands, which is about how Jewish Londoners shaped global style. In the process, Nick connects to the precious oral testimony of what will be the last generation to have known these brands first hand. Unlike so many of their family members left behind, the likes of Sophie Rabin, Netty Spiegel, Peggy Lewis, Otto Lucas and so many more will now be given their rightful place alongside more familiar names in the annals of British fashion.
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