London's schedule this season is the most Asian it has been

Style

Sep 14

Written By ZutterV

Alexander McQueen AW26 *Credits: Alexander McQueen*

At least six labels from Asia or led by designers of Asian origin are on London Fashion Week's schedule this season, spread across four of its five days when the week opens on Thursday.

Three of the four labels new to the official schedule are not British: the Chinese designer Joyce Bao, the New Delhi label Lovebirds, and the demi-couture brand Onalaja, alongside the British menswear label Geordie Campbell, according to the British Fashion Council.

Mithridate takes a Thursday catwalk slot on the opening day. Susan Fang shows on Friday. TOGA and Yuhan Wang show on Saturday, with Wang in an evening slot immediately around Richard Quinn's.

That last detail is the one that matters. Saturday evening is not a courtesy slot. It is the position a schedule gives a designer it expects the trade press to still be in the room for, and it is next to one of the two or three British names guaranteed to fill a front row.

Six labels from or led by designers based in China, Japan and India show across four of the week's five days.

London has historically been the Western week where a designer without a house behind them can get on the calendar, through NEWGEN, Fashion East and the BFC's other pipelines. What the SS27 list shows is that route being used by designers from outside Britain rather than only by British graduates.

The qualification is the Sunday. Simone Rocha, Erdem, Emilia Wickstead, Roksanda, McQueen and Mulberry all show on 20 September, and that day is where the buyers who flew in for Seán McGirr's London debut and Christopher Kane's first Mulberry collection will be.

There is also a thinner layer beneath the runway. The DiscoveryLAB presentations on Thursday, Koshik, Dean Lap Chan and Riverpeace.co, are digital-only, which is a way of including a designer without giving them a room.

Against that, the week's most heavily promoted debut belongs to Marks & Spencer, which shows a see-now-buy-now collection on Friday for its centenary, with eBay running a pre-loved runway shoppable through eBay Live and Selfridges carrying in-store edits of participating brands.

Laura Weir, the BFC's chief executive, said in July that the season brought together established houses, emerging designers and industry partners, and reaffirmed London's position as the global home of creativity.

Lovebirds shows in London this week from New Delhi, roughly four thousand miles outside the catchment the phrase "British fashion" usually describes.