London Fashion week is in danger of being shortened to four days because of New York’s Labour Day. The main threat has come from New York fashion week organisers who said they need
more time to prepare because of because of the Labour day holiday in the US and the summer closure of factories that sew their clothes.
New York fashion week is planned to be extended from its usual eight days and means that London is likely to be cut short from six to four from next year. Milan and Paris, which follow New York and London and refusing to budge.
The fears are that fashion writers and buyers will skip London altogether and go straight for New York to Milan. Anna Wintour, the London norn editor in chief of Americas Vogue magazine is a notable absense from London fashion week this month.
Colin McDowell, who organsises Fashion Fringe during the London fashion week said: “London is the fashion capital and everybody knows it. New York started this move to eat into London’s time, but the villains of the piece are the French. Nobody wants to lose a day. Each day lost means 10 designers off the show.”
Harold Tillman, chairman of the British Fashion Council, and owner of Jaeger said: “We are working with our European counterparts to try and find the right solution. We will let everybody at the party know that we are the second largest employer in the country and that we will need to continue. The trouble is that tightening up does not give opportunity to new designers”. There are concerns that the combination of the time squeeze and the faltering economy will mean that the newest fashion graduates, however talented, may lose out if competing with more established labels for slots.
Yet promoting raw talent is a unique part of London’s reason to exist, according to commentators. If such a policy had been imposed 10 years ago, it would have put paid to the careers of Alexander McQueen, Hussein Chalayan, Stella McCartney and Luella Bartley.

I can’t believe they are doing this, why is this becoming a problem all of a sudden now? Can’t we all just shift a day? It’s all so ridiculous having to fight for our place in tradition. We just can’t lose too days, we would lose so much more. New designers from London are going to have to start moving away to show their designs, it’s unnaceptable.
I doubt that we will have to shorten by a couple of days, it just seems so unlikely.
Well, I really hope not.

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