London Fashion Week: Cultural Contribution

Clive Jones Excerpts

Tuesday 16th September 2025 Westminster Hall

[Clive Jones (Wokingham) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Murrison. I thank the hon. Member for Kettering (Rosie Wrighting) for securing this debate.

London Fashion Week is known worldwide. As we probably all know, it started in 1984 in a tent in a Kensington car park, where the British Fashion Council brought British designers together to show their work. From those modest beginnings, it has grown into one of the most famous fashion events in the world, showing the best of Britain: innovative and inviting the world in.

I had the pleasure of working with two of London Fashion Week’s stalwarts, who sadly are both no longer with us: Hilary Alexander and Lesley Goring. They choreographed two fashion shows in which I took part for Breast Cancer Care in 2009 and 2014, helping to raise many hundreds of thousands of pounds for that charity. They had me on the runway twice in a day in each of those years, with other breast cancer survivors, parading in six or seven different outfits from top designers including Jeff Banks and Stella McCartney. We did it in front of 1,000 people at each session. Looking at me now, you would hardly describe me as a fashion model.

Over the years, London Fashion Week has set new trends, not just in clothing but in values. It was one of the first runways to ban fur, and it is going further this year by banning exotic animal skins such as snake and crocodile. That is important: it shows that the fashion industry can lead the world not only in style but in responsibility.

The fashion and textile industry adds more than £60 billion to our economy and gives work to more than 1 million people. It is not just about glamour on the runway; it is about people’s livelihoods, businesses in our towns and cities, and exports abroad. In London, the effect is clear: during the 2023 fashion week, footfall in London rose by almost 18% compared with a normal day, giving a significant boost to our traders. Shops, cafés, restaurants and taxis all benefited from London Fashion Week. That local boost matters, and it shows how culture and commerce can go hand in hand.

London Fashion Week is not only about money; it is about who we are. Designers from around the world come to London to share ideas and work with our home-grown talent. Our designers shape culture, tell stories through fashion, and give Britain a strong creative voice on the world stage. Through its NEWGEN programme, the British Fashion Council gives young designers a platform to show what they can do. Many well-known names today started out with that support.

Talent does not appear out of nowhere. It begins in our classrooms, our colleges and our apprenticeships. That is why we believe that arts education must be taken seriously. We would include arts subjects in the English baccalaureate, properly fund creative degrees and make sure that there are high-quality apprenticeships in creative and digital industries. Without that, we risk losing the pipeline of young people who will shape future fashion, music, film and design industries.

Of course, there is more that the fashion industry could do. Last year, out of 206 member brands at the British Fashion Council, just seven had published targets for reducing emissions and only five had targets in line with the 2015 Paris agreement on climate change. That is disappointing; the UK average across all sectors is 65%. Progress has been made with the recycling of clothing, and many people use platforms such as Vinted and Depop, but around 300 tonnes of clothing are still thrown away every year.

London Fashion Week is well known for embracing sustainable fashion and has a runway dedicated to it, and some designers are using recycled or eco-friendly fabrics, but we need to try to do better. The UK can and should lead the world, not just in style, but in sustainable fashion. That means tackling waste, fixing supply chains and supporting innovation in new materials.

Closer to home, my constituency of Wokingham may not host catwalks, but our young people, our schools and our small businesses are all part of the bigger creative economy. Local designers, digital start-ups and independent shops all have a stake in the future of the fashion industry. The choices that we make here in Parliament about education, sustainability and support for the arts directly affect opportunities for people in our local communities.

London Fashion Week matters on many levels: economically, it is a powerhouse; culturally, it is a beacon of creativity; and socially, it has the chance to lead on sustainability and ethics, but we must not take it for granted. We must invest in the education that produces the next generation of designers. We must demand higher standards on sustainability, and we must recognise the value of fashion, not just as business, but as part of our culture and identity. Our fashion industry is world leading, and the Liberal Democrats believe that, with the right support, it can remain world leading, not only in creativity but in responsibility.