Fashion Week

When we think about September there’s one thing that jumps out year after year – London Fashion Week.

We’ve worked shows in Paris, Milan, Copenhagen, Berlin, and New York; and supported brands showing in Tokyo, Shanghai, Kyiv, Hong Kong, Lisbon, Barcelona, and Mumbai remotely.

But it’s here in our home city that we’re always busiest during fashion week – this season handling nine on-schedule events, plus the dinners and parties around them.

London takes a lot of fire for not being New York, Paris, or Milan... But who said it has to be?

It's an amazing city, home for us, and one of the most important places there is for building and launching brands. That’s as true during fashion week as it is any other time of year.

London is unique. It has a character, vibe, and style no other place has. It is one of the world's great primary cities, we believe in it, and we're proud to be a part of it. Whether it deserves its place alongside the other fashion capitals shouldn’t need justifying – so we won’t.

As PR’s we get a level of viability over what’s really going on at fashion week that nobody else gets. And thirty seasons-in, we’ve seen it change. It’s that change that we’ve been thinking about this month.

Before we begin, let's not forget that fashion week, at its core, was always a trade event to launch new collection to industry before it hits the shop floor that opens that window to allow for wholesale buying, production, promotion. Shows were never an end unto themselves.

Shows then used to open a press window that lasted six months until the following show. They were a starting point for what followed and set a direction of travel for the season – the first chapter in a six month story.

That window has closed.

Shows now happen as a content capture opportunity, and the window for that content capture ends when the last model leaves the catwalk. The success of a show now lives or dies on how it appears on the feed in the immediate 24 hours around the show.

Which got us thinking about the feed.

We talk a lot at Lobby PR about what people search for and how they move through the media. The feed is the opposite of that. It’s pushed to screens whether people go looking for it or not, whether they’re ready to buy or not, whether the product is even available for sale yet or not.

Fashion Week arrives on the feed with the start of London Fashion Week and disappears as quickly as it came. Another show, another show, another show. Party, party, street style, collab. Then it’s gone.

How much of that content is promoting a brand or a show, and how much is using a brand or a show as a platform for content creation that keeps up with the feed? How much is curated and how much is driven by the algorithm? Who’s promoting who in a tidal wave of fashion week content that blows up everyone’s screens for a week? What is it that’s really happening?

The game has changed - but there's still a game to be played.

We work with brands to make the most of London Fashion Week every season and always will, but after a decade and a half of shows, we’re more excited about what we can build for the future with brands.

How do we do things together within the framework of London Fashion Week today that are built for it as it exists now, built to benefit from it as it really is, built to address the realities of the real opportunities in it now.

How ambitious and creative can we be together, how far can we go with it together, what could we do that would just be really really cool?

Fashion Week has changed - but change is good and everything evolves. Wouldn’t it be amazing to sit down and have real re-conversations about how to do it in ways that make the most of that change rather than fighting it and living in the past?