How London Fashion Week began: An oral history

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What were you doing 40 years ago? The characters in this article were busy putting together London Fashion Week, which this year celebrates its 40th anniversary. Wanting to take part in the celebrations but, more importantly, look for the lessons we could take from the story of such a historic event, we spoke to some of the designers, PRs, show producers, buyers and journalists that made up the London fashion scene in the mid-1980s.

Everyone we spoke to was extremely generous with their time and wisdom, but this very long oral history had to be edited for brevity. So, in this chapter, we will be focusing on the formation of the British Fashion Council (BFC) and the very early years of LFW.

• Forming a new body to represent British fashion
• Coming together
• The shows
• The schedule, the front row and the press
• Buying, selling, struggling

Suzy Menkes OBE (Fashion journalist): The start of fashion week in London was much more polite and local than might have been expected. The early-on story was not a wild moment of madness in the depths of distant parts of the city. It is important to grasp that there were intriguing and interesting clothes from lively young designers — but nothing like the grandeur and formality of the traditional Parisian fashion. There was no reference in England to “famous” houses, which might be dressing the Queen of England. There was a total separation between the upper class and the rest of us! And nobody ever said: UK.

John Wilson (Businessman, first chief executive of the BFC): Before 1984, the fashion companies exhibited at the British Designer Show at Olympia, which was run by Joanne Davis and a company called Philbeach Events. This show incorporated the London Designer Collections (LDC), which was run by Annette Worsley-Taylor.

Jasper Conran OBE (Fashion designer): Annette Worsley-Taylor was the person who brought the designers together, she was really special. And a great supporter of mine from the beginning. She would help all of us young designers — she found financial backers and connected us with other creatives. She needs to be remembered for that.

Achilleas Constantinou (Businessman, co-founder of Ariella Fashions): Annette worked hard on the LDC, but she wasn’t getting the return that she deserved. The young designers she represented were really good, but they weren’t getting the exposure that designers would get in Paris and Milan. And there was also the problem of scheduling: neither the LDC nor the mainstream companies that I represented liked the dates that Philbeach Events were putting on the shows. They didn’t fit in what we considered a good fashion calendar.

The mainstream companies needed a longer lead time in order to maximise our order book. And then, we also needed enough time to process that production in our factories before the season started. So we needed a good three to six months from the date of order to the date of delivery. Designers couldn’t afford such a long lead time. They needed shorter delivery times because they were producing two dresses or three dresses per style. So, that’s where we had the big problem.

At the time, I was part of the Fashion Industry Action Group (FIAG), FIAG, which represented the smaller fashion-led businesses. We were having this meeting trying to find a solution to the scheduling problem. Designers and mainstream companies did not belong in the same exhibition venue. But we needed a link, so we decided to form one body to represent the industry as a whole; the Designers with a capital “D” and the mainstream fashion companies. We didn’t want to represent just manufacturers. And that’s how the British Fashion Council was formed in 1983, and Cyril Kern became the first chairman.

Mikel Rosen (International runway show producer, fashion and style consultant): Before 1984, the designers were all showing in different places. I was working for [legendary PR strategist] Lynne Franks, doing shows for some of her clients. And Joanne Davis said it would be easier for the press and the buyers to just come to one venue. So, she was going to do that in the Pillar Hall at Olympia. I got commissioned to make a video where I interviewed people like Zandra Rhodes, the buyer from Harvey Nichols, Betty Jackson, and they all said, “Oh, we’d love to show under one roof.” Whilst I was working for Lynne on another project, I showed her that video, and she said: “No, no, no, we should do it in a tent like they do in Milan and Paris.”

Lynne Franks OBE (Public relations strategist, founder of Lynne Franks PR): I started looking around for somewhere to put the tent up. I walked all over London at the time, and finally, I came across what was then the Commonwealth Institute, which is now the Design Museum in Holland Park. And they had a big lawn at the front and lovely indoor spaces as well. But then I had to find the money to pay for the tent. I was doing PR for Gloria Vanderbilt Jeans, which belonged to a man called Mohan Murjani. He was a very successful jeans manufacturer. He launched Tommy Hilfiger and all sorts of things. I asked him if he would give me the money to put up a tent at the Commonwealth Institute. He agreed, and so that first event was called Murjani Designer Focus.

Mikel Rosen: In October 1983, we constructed the first tent in London. Seven of my clients did their shows in the tent. By March 1984, 22 people wanted to show in that venue, so we hired the art gallery at the Commonwealth Institute. And we built a high-tech, bigger tent outside.

Lynne Franks: But then we were told that we couldn’t have it there anymore because the lawn where we had the tent was sinking. So we went looking again, and this time, we came up with the Duke of York’s Barracks in Sloane Square, which is now the Saatchi Gallery. At that point, it was a big army barracks. So we had a lot more space to be more creative — we could have a double catwalk area, and we could have space in the middle for a café and a press room and all sorts of other things. But that cost even more money. So I went around to all my clients — Swatch watches and Harrods among them — and raised what was needed.

By then, it was felt by the people who were running the exhibition at Olympia that we were having all the fun in the tent. They wanted us to go up to the car park at Olympia, which I fought very hard not to do because I felt we’d lose all the designers. We showed at the Chelsea barracks for three seasons before going to Olympia. Once we were in King’s Road, we agreed to have the tents integrated with the rest of the fashion week activities, as I thought it was better for the industry. My company stayed on running the event.

Wendy Dagworthy OBE (Fashion designer, design academic): In October 1984, the event was called London Fashion Week for the first time. There were 24 catwalk shows in the fashion week calendar, including myself, Betty Jackson, Bodymap, Jasper Conran, Sheridan Barnett, Arabella Pollen, Zandra Rhodes, Jean Muir… and many others.

Marysia Woroniecka (CEO of Zero + Maria Cornejo, previously founder of Marysia Woroniecka PR): Once it all got rolled under the auspices of London Fashion Week, it started to professionalise and organise, and it started to create these opportunities for British designers. They would invite international press and buyers, for example.

Betty Jackson CBE (Fashion designer): It was such a relief when the BFC came in and sort of pulled it all together and provided the backstage stuff — I thought it was great. We paid for the people, of course, and hair and makeup and all of that. But what they did was provide the infrastructure — there were mirrors and rails and dressing tables and a catwalk and lights — the whole thing was sort of erected, and we didn’t have to worry about that. When we showed at the Pillar Hall previously, we had to build it all. Not everybody agreed with that. It took people a while to realise we were stronger together.

Iain R. Webb (Writer, curator and Professor of Fashion and Design at Kingston School of Art): 1984 was an important year for British fashion in general. There were a lot of young designers who were just graduating from various colleges, like Central Saint Martins, Middlesex, Ravensbourne and Kingston, and they were setting up their own labels. There were people like Bodymap, Richmond/Cornejo, Stephen Linard, Bernstock Speirs, and they were all doing exciting things. And suddenly the focus was back on London, and there was this whole talk of, “Oh, it’s the most exciting thing since the 1960s!”

Marysia Woroniecka: But it all evolved, you know? It’s not like suddenly a bomb went off, and people started doing shows. People were showing and building businesses before 1984. Vivienne Westwood showed the Pirates collection at the Pillar Hall at Olympia in 1981. Richmond/Cornejo were showing at Olympia, too.

Maria Cornejo (Fashion designer, previously co-founder of Richmond/Cornejo): We had club kids modelling, Leigh Bowery, Judy Blame, ourselves. It was very London, very punky and very romantic. Everything had safety pins on it. The girls had big hats that looked almost like something from Napoleonic times, and they were wearing jersey dresses with prints and patches.

Iain R. Webb: The catwalk shows were really exciting at that time. And it’s interesting to hear younger people today talk about inclusivity and gender-neutral shows when designers like Wendy Dagworthy and Katherine Hamnett and Bodymap were doing that back in 1984. Those shows were almost the beginning of fashion as entertainment. There was lots of dancing on the catwalks; in Bodymap shows, you had children, old ladies, and people of every colour and gender. And that was down to various fashion show producers as well, like Mikel Rosen. Like the fact that he did a show for Bodymap, where the back of the stage was taken off completely so you could see all the models dressing. It was a really exciting time.

Mikel Rosen: That was the second collection Bodymap showed in that tent in October 1984. And they got a really bad deal because we took the back wall of the runway out, and we exposed everybody getting changed in the dressing room to the audience. The models had either big afro wigs on or swimming caps to look bald. And every time they came out on the runway, we had strobe lighting and lasers. The collection was called Barbie Takes a Trip Around Nature’s Cosmic Curves. It was these lovely, simple designs, but the audience thought everybody was out of their heads. The Americans who bought Bodymap big time the season before got really cagey, and it caused this sort of controversy.

Their first show in March 1984 (The Cat in the Hat Takes a Rumble with the Techno Fish) was a big sort of crash into London of something very different happening on the runway. We had no budget for models, so we used mums and dads and children. I think that was the first time real people had been on a catwalk in London.

Stevie Stewart (Fashion designer, co-founder of Bodymap): We were the hottest ticket in town for the “Cat in the Hat” show. The phones didn’t stop ringing, requesting tickets. We had a full house, and Lynne Franks was in a full Bodymap outfit.

David and I and our small team wouldn’t sleep for days before the shows. We made the entire collection in our little studio in my flat in King’s Cross, there were rolls of fabric everywhere. We made everything from outer garments to undergarments and accessories, as we couldn’t find anything we liked off the peg. It was always our intention to dress the models from top to bottom ourselves — working in collaboration with some accessory designers.

Mikel Rosen: The clothes were still arriving on the day of the shows. We were working through 3am talking about what looked good with what and what would make an outfit. We’d have a conversation about it all over the three months leading up to the show, but it wasn’t until the night before that you could put the outfits together and plan the running order for the runway. I finally had that in my head, probably about eight hours before rehearsal, and then you just had to do it. And I probably had like a 45-minute rehearsal to get these things together before the show would begin.

Maria Cornejo: There was a lot of madness. We stayed up all night, putting things together. It was very exciting, though, because we worked with a lot of friends and John [Richmond, co-founder of Richmond/Cornejo], and I always liked a very diverse casting and cross synergy. I remember we cast Naomi Campbell when she was 14 to do one of our shows. Martin Margiela came to our show when he was working for Jean Paul Gaultier. It was a real, creative community.

Betty Jackson: One time all of our shoes were stuck in customs. And so we started preparing to just do a barefoot show. And it was a winter show. But eventually, somebody went to Heathrow Airport, and I think probably cried in front of the customs officer and got them.

Another time, the hairdresser went to the stylist and said there was a problem with one of the model’s hair, that she’d seen things jumping about in her hair. And so that was awful. I bet if you watched a show from the 1980s, first of all, it probably lasts half an hour, which never happens now, and there’ll be at least three girls on the catwalk at one time, and they’ll turn around, and they’ll walk back, and then they’ll come down again. It was all very different to now and hilarious.

Jasper Conran: What you have to remember is that we had no government funding or support. You went to the factories and picked up your scissors and cut your clothes. We really did everything. It was very intense, very hard work. But there was a nice camaraderie to it. You know, everybody was in more or less the same boat, and we were friends.

Mikel Rosen: Once the word got around that the shows were all happening in one tent, it got quite chaotic. I remember Tina Turner showing up to one of the shows. So then the people at the BFC realised that what Lynne and I had been doing was organising the schedule. I remember sitting down in Lynne’s office and going, “Well, if this show was at 11am, that means it has to be rehearsed before then, and so, maybe the next show can be at one in the afternoon.” That’s how we were working out the schedule.

Lynne Franks: I was always the one that had to make sure that everybody sat in the right seats. That was just a joke. It became a complete nightmare; the Italian buyers would always sit in the press seats. Or the photographers would stand in front of the journalists. And then there were always the fashion students trying to get in the door.

Angela Quaintrell (Fashion and style consultant, previously head buyer at Liberty London): For a buyer, the schedule was the most important thing — once you got it, you had to sit and plan out where you could go and what you could see. And you had to be someone in the business to be invited. So we were all very chuffed with ourselves that we were there. We all went dressed up in the hottest designers, even though sometimes we had to stand outside in the rain waiting for the doors to open. And, of course, we were always looking to see who sat in the front row.

Iain R. Webb: There were a lot of grande dames in the front row from various magazines like Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar. And when I got my first real job in about 1986 as the fashion editor at The Evening Standard, it was sort of seen as a real moment. There was also a girl called Judy Rumbold, who was fashion editor for The Guardian at the same time. And we were suddenly these new young people that were in establishment jobs, and around us were mostly women of a certain age who had been in those jobs for quite a long time. And you also had magazines like Blitz, The Face and i-D — there was a whole new group of young people coming up who had been club kids, and then suddenly we had a voice and were able not just to comment on, but also document, this alternative world.

Betty Jackson: Honestly, we didn’t really know what we were doing. We had nobody to tell us. But we were sort of aware that we were causing a bit of a stir, and the shows were absolutely packed.

John Wilson: The press coverage we got in those early days was significant. There are countless examples of interviews with me, I am sorry to say.

Iain R. Webb: At the time, the press worked differently. There wasn’t that instantaneous reporting on the shows. The Sunday papers would maybe run a special. But it would be another few months before you would actually review the shows within the magazines.

As journalists, we were very much part of the crowd; we were there enjoying the shows, taking notes and doing things like that.

And I think a lot of the time, when daily newspapers featured fashion stories, they were negative. I remember things like The Daily Mail doing a whole thing about Vivienne Westwood when she showed her Buffalo collection at the Pillar Hall and saying, “This isn’t fashion because it’s not sexy. The dresses aren’t flattering. Who would dress up in these big clothes and layers and cloth shoes that look like you have bags on your feet and big hobo hats?”

Lynne Franks: There was this thing where every two years or so, the British press would write something negative, like “Fashion is finished!” So I went to see Liz Tilberis, who at the time was the editor of British Vogue, and I said, would she chair this committee that would bring us together with all senior British fashion press so they could also hear the stories behind the stories, what was really going on. So she agreed and she did a launch for it at Vogue House. And that British fashion press committee really turned things around; after that, there were no more negative stories about the designers.

Julian Vogel (PR, CEO of ModusBPCM): Even if we looked at what the visual coverage was like — there was still a moment where it was sketches. Then, when it became photography, they would only show, like, maybe one picture. But the editors weren’t interested in writing about the collections because the readers would complain that they couldn’t buy it.

Angela Quaintrell: If there was a designer you were already buying from and you’ve had a good relationship with, you’d normally go and have a preview of the collection. So when it came to the show, you’d know a bit about the clothes, and you’d see them on the models and if they looked great, you’d go back to the showroom. And I always used to say, “I don’t want something that I have to have a diagram to show the customer how to wear it.” It has to be something you feel is going to be easy to sell.

And sometimes, with the young designers, we would talk about what people might like and some would also come to do staff training at the store, which was great. But others, like Lee McQueen, did their own thing. But the thing that was amazing with him was that the customers always came back for more.

Julian Vogel: There wasn’t a Chinese market the way there is today. So, the fashion industry was really small. I remember there was this guy called Peder Bertelsen who was the distributor for Ralph Lauren. And he had this group of designers he supported. He was the one who backed Katharine Hamnett. Browns was also very supportive — Joan Burstein (Mrs B) would buy designers from their first collection. People like, you know, like Galliano, like Hussein Chalayan. There were these people who were quite philanthropic and had a real passion for fashion, as well as business acumen. But there was no venture capital.

Lynne Franks: Mrs B was a very important person in London fashion. A very lovely person too. She and Joseph [Ettedgui, founder of retail chain Joseph] were the two top retailers, and they were both very supportive of British fashion; both of them helped young designers a lot.

Jasper Conran: Mrs B was very, very influential. Browns was the very best shop, and it had the very best mix of designers and she really knew what she was doing. If you sold to Browns, you knew you were going to sell to other shops. She could really make people’s careers.

Julian Vogel: You also have to think about where people wore the clothes because there were so many clubs and so many parties. It wasn’t so much for the red carpet — it was much more about going to clubs. Also, the clothes weren’t as expensive as they are now. It was all a lot more affordable and approachable.

Marysia Woroniecka: There was so much less money involved. I suppose there was a bit of sponsorship, but largely speaking, a lot of the designers just scrambled and found the money to do the shows themselves. And the models would do favours — they would do the shows for very little money. It was very sort of unprofessional in that way.

Another issue in London at the time was the concerns about the IRA, you know, bombs going off. And so all of a sudden, the American media would get squirrely and wouldn’t come. The amount of media attention that happened back then in the States really generated a lot of business for British designers because the problem with London is that there’s not nearly enough of a market in England alone to sustain a designer.

John Wilson: We had exceptional talent here, which was so innovative, and it led to that talent being exported to bigger fashion houses overseas. We did not have the big fashion businesses here, nor the retail structure, dominated as it was by chain-store retailers, to want to buy the product. Similarly, our manufacturing was dominated by production for chain-store retailers with limited facilities for the short-run production needed by the designers.

Julian Vogel: I’ve been talking to a lot of young designers recently, and I feel like they are dealing with many of the same issues designers were dealing with 40 years ago. The way the seasons work, you almost have to have designed, sampled and manufactured almost three seasons before you get paid for the first season. You need so much money to even just deliver the first season. It’s such a long process.

Ninivah Khomo (Fashion designer): I opened my own shop in 1984 in Knightsbridge because, to be truthful, I was fed up with not getting paid. You know, when you’re younger, you’re kind of naive. I’d send out collections all over the world and then find out I wouldn’t be getting paid for a while or at all. So, I decided to go into retail. I was quite friendly with Joseph, so he bought a lot of my clothes, and I found a little shop in Knightsbridge and concentrated on that.

When the buyers did come in for fashion week, they’d come by my shop and see me. I didn’t have to abide by the fashion calendar so much. You could tell when London Fashion Week started because, you know, the cars would turn up, and you’d get all the buyers looking at what’s in the stores.

Having the shop is probably why I’m still working today. Jasper (Conran) had his own shop, Betty Jackson had her own shop and that all kind of started probably around that time. Stephen Jones and Philip Treacy too – we all became aware that having your own retail unit really helps. You get to know your customer more.

Wendy Dagworthy: And then suddenly the economic crash happened in 1987. American buyers weren’t coming any more. And people would gradually disappear from the catwalk and the exhibitions — some started showing in Paris, and others stopped creating altogether. My last catwalk show was in 1987, in March. And I’d advise young designers, because we don’t all have business minds, to hire a business manager — have someone to run that business for you or take some business courses.

Maria Cornejo: I think the reality is that we work in a business, so it’s quite brutal. And you’re only as good as what you’ve just sold. Most of the time when we did shows, our agent in Italy would come backstage and just slag it off, and when the press loved it, the buyers hated it. It’s rare that a collection would hit both levels at the same time on the same level. It’s just the way it is. You take five steps forward, six back. It’s never a done deal.

Jasper Conran: You know, when I started, “fashion” was a dirty word, people thought it was a rag trade. And, you know, this is even after you’ve had Mary Quant and Jean Muir and Ossie Clark — all these people that had successful businesses before me. But there was no help. Unlike in France or Italy, where they took it seriously. I’m not sure that to this day, they take it very seriously in Britain.

Lynne Franks: All the designers put their hearts into it, and it wasn’t big business. But everybody came to those tents at one point or another, including Princess Diana, Boy George, everyone. And there were the parties at Number 10. It was a really exciting time, and everyone was friends. In the late 1980s, a number of designers went off to start showing in Paris, and it was never quite the same again.

Mikel Rosen: That tent wasn’t just a tent. It was a sort of moment in London fashion history that launched the craziness we still have to this day. So when you go to the shows now and you see Matty Bovan or the Saint Martins’s student runway shows; they’re really wild, but it all actually began in the very early 1980s. And if you could see videos from the shows in that tent in March and October 1984, you’d really think it was this day and age.

Scroll down for more photos, show invites and more early LFW paraphernalia:

Some of the images in this article can be seen first hand at The Fashion Show: Everything But The Clothes, which has been curated by Iain R. Webb and runs at V&A Dundee until 10th March.

Comments, questions or feedback? Email us at feedback@voguebusiness.com.

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