Inside London Fashion Week’s new digital plans
By Kati Chitrakorn
In a bid to be “the Netflix channel for fashion”, the British Fashion Council is relaunching a new London Fashion Week hub that includes virtual showrooms, panel discussions and interactive offerings.
London Fashion Week (LFW) will rely on virtual showrooms, interactive videos and podcasts in its new digital format though few big names are participating amid an industry reset.
The British Fashion Council (BFC) is creating a new digital platform, the first in its 40-year history, for fashion designers to show their collections and inspirations, like a “Netflix channel for fashion”, said spokesperson Clara Mercer during a press briefing. The event, which replaces men’s week, is gender neutral and will include smaller women’s labels like Lou Dalton and Teatum Jones. LFW in September will still go ahead.
“What we lose from not having physical fashion shows is intimacy. Both from the personal interaction from the guests, models and celebrities present, but all that collective shared experience that comes from a live event,” says Andrew Groves, professor of fashion design at Westminster. “For example, the season Craig Green moved his audience to tears or any of McQueen's incredibly visceral fashion shows. However, what online fashion weeks are capable of achieving is another kind of intimacy where a broader, more inclusive audience can engage and be part of the fashion industry.”
A successful digital fashion collection will convince buyers they can tell a compelling story about your products in online retail, Groves adds.