LONDON — The British Fashion Council is launching a long-term partnership with BBC’s “50:50 The Equality Project,” an initiative for the media industry launched in 2018. It is a voluntary monitoring system with the target of creating content that fairly represents the audiences it serves.
To be unveiled during the upcoming London Fashion Week starting on Sept. 17, the project aims to help benchmark and track progress in terms of reflecting the audiences, consumers and communities that fashion week-participating brands and businesses serve and employ. The BFC will also be collecting, benchmarking and tracking its own progress.
The process will be measured by data collected by fashion week participants each season based on the makeup of their teams at the event, ranging from design teams to hair and makeup, models, production, communications and more.
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More than a dozen designers have signed up to take part in the first round of the project, including Edward Crutchley, Kaushik Velendra, Labrum, Matty Bovan, Osman, Palmer//harding, Richard Malone, Roksanda, Saul Nash, Tiger of Sweden and others.
The findings of the project will begin to be published once 18 months of data has been collected and they will be used for continued benchmarking and monitoring purposes.
June Sarpong, director of creative diversity BBC and board director BFC, said, “We look forward to seeing the success we have seen of 50:50 within the BBC, positively impact London Fashion Week.”
“50:50 will encourage all businesses to make more conscious choices around the teams they employ from full-time employees to the freelancers employed at shows, from models to stylists, hair and makeup artists, communications and production teams,” she added.
The BFC touted the partnership as “an essential part of the BFC’s long-term plan to fight prejudice and galvanize the industry into action with a key long-term objective of the project being to encourage and empower cultural change across the industry.”