LONDON — London Fashion Week, which began Friday, has nearly 80 designers on the five-day schedule and 5,000 members of the industry ready to take their catwalk side seats for the fall shows. Yet for some well-known London designers, the show is not going on — at least not in the traditional sense.
Increasingly, designers in this city are seeking alternatives to the runway show — an exercise that can cost them $90,000 or more each season — and to the punishing seasonal cycle that demands they churn out multiple collections each year. They’re also looking for new ways to do business in an overpopulated space dominated by the big luxury brands, fast-fashion retailers and hot contemporary labels.
London Fashion Week stalwart Richard Nicoll canceled both his men’s and women’s shows for fall in order to step back and consolidate his business strategy in what he describes as an increasingly pressured environment.
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Ostwald Helgason, one of the 30 labels short listed for the inaugural LVMH Young Fashion Designer prize, abruptly canceled its show in order to focus on “the development of the brand and its core collection,” according to the designers Susanne Ostwald and Ingvar Helgason.
Instead of a runway show, Marios Schwab opted for one-on-one appointments at Hotel Café Royal earlier this month as part of a long-held desire to engage with press and buyers in a more intimate setting.
“What is the point of inviting 500 people to a catwalk show when I have a niche label?” Schwab said in an interview with WWD. “I felt like the hand work, fabrics and details were getting lost on the catwalk. I wanted an intimate dialogue, not a circus, and a show that was manageable for me and for my business.”
Ten days before LFW was set to start, Schwab, who has been showing in London since 2006, the same year he won the prize for Best New Designer at the British Fashion Awards, filled his hotel suite with mood boards, clothing rails and a table full of art books. He hired one model, talked editors through the collection and sent out a look book of polished images one week later.
He chatted about the origins of the Austrian gold filigree buttons dotted across a jacquard cocktail dress, and the dainty red embroidery, meant to mimic bunches of spindly nerves, on a black silk one. The collection was two-thirds the size of the usual catwalk one, and Schwab said he was able to “stay closer to the sampling, and even do some of the stitching myself.”
Nicoll, who is also creative director of the British high street label Jack Wills, skipped the fall/winter season altogether, and plans to relaunch for Resort. He’s taken a step back, he said, because the fashion cycle has become unwieldy.
“In the 10 years that I’ve been doing my label, the fashion seasonal structure has changed a lot, with increased seasons and commercial pressures, so I felt the need to pause and think of the best and most relevant way forward for now,” he told WWD.
No one can blame these designers. Runway productions aren’t cheap, with the most basic of LFW shows costing upwards of 60,000 pounds, or $92,300, including the collection, venue and models. There is no guarantee they’ll see that money again, as shows are pure marketing exercises with a questionable return on investment.
London designer Peter Jensen, who quit the catwalk following his fall 2012 show, compared the cost of a runway event to putting a deposit on a house each season.
“It’s an unfair situation to put London companies in the same category as someone like Prada, and I don’t really know what is benefiting,” said the designer, adding that after he dimmed the runway lights, sales rocketed by 50 percent. “You can just really focus on what you want to present and what you want your brand to be saying,” he said of the presentation format.
The cost of a runway splash is just part of the story. Emerging, independent labels are also at the mercy of mills and factories that put them at the bottom of the pile because their runs are relatively small. In addition, for small companies that are living from order to order, cash flow is a perpetual headache.
Meadham Kirchhoff is another label that’s dropped off the London schedule this season, due partly to cash flow problems. The future of that company — which admittedly staged some wacky runway spectacles in the past — remains unclear.
London’s designers are also grappling with another difficult dynamic: A market that’s overrun with creative talents — and not enough stores or customers to sustain them. “There is too much supply and not enough demand. Not everyone is going to succeed,” said Paul Alger, director of international affairs at UK Fashion & Textile Association, of the glut of designers on the market.
Alger, who each season takes a group of about 100 London designers, beneficiaries of UKFT grants, to the big Paris trade shows, noted that the British fashion schools turn out about 4,000 design graduates each year. “Buyers are getting barraged by brand new companies each season, and there is a limit to the time and investment they can make in small brands,” he said.
Jensen, who is also the men’s wear tutor for the Central Saint Martin’s MA program, said his students are now beginning to realize that becoming a creative entrepreneur and setting up a label might not be worth the effort. “All they want is a job. Lots of them are not interested in setting up their own companies. It’s so expensive. They come out with a huge amount of debt and how do they pay it? As a designer label, you might get support for the first three seasons, and then what?” Jensen asked.
A flawed fashion system is one reason why designer Alexander Lewis decided to launch his eponymous label, whose stockists include Barneys, Club 21 and Avenue32.com, in an unconventional way – with pre-collections only and no shows. Lewis, who had worked on Savile Row and as a personal shopper at Harrods, started his label with the belief that “people shop for situations and not seasons. You can be in a polar vortex one day, and on Ipanema Beach the next. The world is flat,” he said.
Lewis also recognized how much of their budgets buyers were spending on pre-collections — about 80 percent — and that jumping into the business at that stage in the cycle would give him substantially longer lead times to develop his collections and allow him to take advantage of factories’ quieter periods.
London’s designers are not the only ones attempting solutions in a shape-shifting industry. Over the past five months, two Paris-based industry pillars, Jean Paul Gaultier and Viktor & Rolf both decided to shutter their ready-to-wear lines and focus on more satisfying — and lucrative — aspects of their businesses, namely couture, fragrance and special projects.
“It confirms that the rhythm and the pressure of a worldwide fashion industry are too strong. Some designers are well surrounded by an appropriate staff and can face that pressure, while some others are not,” the Paris-based industry consultant Jean-Jacques Picart told WWD earlier this year.
Both French retrenchments also show that midsize fashion players are often vulnerable without a cash-cow leather goods business and global store network, and in a climate where luxury megabrands, hot contemporary chains and fast-fashion behemoths are flourishing.
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There are even more challenges on the horizon for smaller, independent labels. Against an uncertain macroeconomic backdrop, buyers have become less willing to take a chance on emerging designers and rtw labels. One European showroom owner, who asked not to be named, said buyers today want safe bets.
“Their focus is on the super brands, names like Valentino, St. Laurent, Céline, Isabel Marant. These are labels backed by the magazines, by advertising, and it’s where the buyers are putting their money. There is definitely less interest in London designers today,” this person said, adding that smaller London labels continue to be plagued by quality issues, late deliveries and inconsistency in design. In addition, “many have not created a ‘go-to’ image for the customer.”
The showroom owner cited labels such as J.W. Anderson, Peter Pilotto, Mary Katrantzou, Simone Rocha, Christopher Kane and Erdem as examples of London names that have created a strong image and are steadily building businesses. “Look at Erdem. He hasn’t re-invented the wheel, but he has a signature. He owns lace — and has a fantastic business.”
A London showroom owner, Maria Castagni, also believes buyers are becoming more risk-averse and price-sensitive. “They don’t want to be adventurous, and they do want to see the brand performing for a few seasons,” she said.
That is potentially damaging for emerging and small designers because it’s critical they pick up as many stores as they can — as soon as they can. “Maybe these designers are selling through 30 doors already, but they need 50-60 doors to see a profit,” said Castagni, noting that while buyers’ schedules and budgets are stretched, she’d still like to see more attending showroom appointments and presentations “just to have a look at the marvel that is happening in London at the moment.”
Buyers are in a tricky situation: Many of the big department stores are built around concessions, leaving retailers little room to experiment with their own buy. In addition, the big city stores in Europe and the Far East are also catering to increasingly international, aspirational tourists, hungry for the big name brands they see in magazines and in duty-free shops.
In a recent report on the changing habits of the Chinese tourist, HSBC said that luxury stores in places like Hong Kong, Paris and London “are selling very little to locals…and becoming incrementally cosmopolitan in nature.” The report added that the Chinese now represent close to a third of all luxury sales worldwide, with more than two thirds of their consumption happening abroad.
“If you are a store with lines of Chinese tourists waiting to buy then, of course, you are going to take the recognizable brands and blow them up. The Chinese want the status bag. Those stores are just reacting to business opportunities,” said Ed Burstell, managing director of Liberty in London.
Liberty is not dependent on tourists, with 75 percent of business coming from the U.K. Burstell said the store aims to support small brands of every classification, including rtw, jewelry, home and beauty, and that small, independent brands can make it if they know their customer and their place in the market.
“The designers who are struggling have stuck to one note, and have not figured out how to make their businesses commercial. You cannot lose the balance between creativity and being commercial. As a designer, you need a business plan. You need to be price-appropriate. Simone Rocha has done well: She has her niche, she’s stayed true to her design sensibility. She’s growing a business. Sophie Hulme is booming. She knows her market, she knows where to sit in terms of price.”
Natalie Kingham, buying director at Matchesfashion.com, said the multichannel retailer invests much time and financing in the big brands, but also pursues small, emerging ones as well. “The customer seems to enjoy — and purchase — new, under-the-radar labels,” said Kingham, adding that she tends to buy “very much from the heart and gut, because the consumer looks at the product that way as well.” She said the successful small labels have a “really, really strong DNA and identity,” and that the store will support them as long as they perform at retail.
While the climate for independent designers may be a cold one, there are some who have found ways to thrive.
Christopher Raeburn, who has been in business for five years, has no outside investors and is building his collections on upcycled fabrics and materials — not exactly a straightforward proposition. For fall, he’s worked with material from a 25-man life raft, complete with rations and flares, which he bought online. The designer, who is also artistic director for the fashion division of Victorinox, said the retail market has shifted “massively” since he launched his business.
“We’ve seen the growth of brands like Alexander Wang and the reality of the customer waiting for sales and discounts and taking part in flash sales,” Raeburn said, adding that it’s important to build up the commercial side of a designer business. “In order to validate your concept, you have to have a business. We know we need ‘bridging’ product, and to bring the commercial into the collection — to a degree. It’s about understanding what the market wants.”
Raeburn said self-belief plays a big part, too. “You have to have the confidence that, by running your own race, you will stand apart. I hope that through a strong concept, creativity and sheer stubbornness, I’ll grow a successful business.”