Future Facing & Milestone Making: On 40 Years Of London Fashion Week

Those who sat front row at the very first London Fashion Week in 1984 might struggle to recognise the 2024 iteration. Back then, it was an industry event for insiders, who came armed with notebooks, not phones. There were no celebrities on the front row. As for social-media influencers, they didn’t even exist. It was a period when gritty club culture dominated the city’s creative scene, and that offbeat energy filtered into the catwalk collections; commercial success was lower down on the agenda.

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As the decades have passed, trends have come and gone and faces on magazine covers have changed. But the beating heart of what makes London fashion, well, London fashion, has not.

The creativity that defines the city’s brightest stars has remained a constant over the past 40 years, with the fearlessness shown when John Galliano and Alexander McQueen first made their debuts in London remaining. Today, with the British Fashion Council’s support, London Fashion Week continues to discover and platform globally revered names including Simone Rocha and Erdem, new-age houses such as 16Arlington and Chopova Lowena, and a host of box-fresh young talents intent on doing things their way. There are many reasons why Burberry opts to continually show in the city that made its name, and one of them is the originality the brand can surround itself with. Call us biased, but London Fashion Week is truly special. Here’s a reminder why...