A London Fashion Scene Temperature Check

Yesterday, we published the 2024 GQ Fashion Awards, our annual salute to the designers, sneakers, watches, trends, rebounds, and retirements (we miss you, Dries!) that defined the past 12 months. Not to be outdone, our friends across the pond at the British Fashion Council held their marquee fashion awards gala on Monday night at the Royal Albert Hall in London. You’ve probably already seen the images of A$AP Rocky and a fuzzy hat-clad Rihanna pulling up on the red carpet—Rocky was there to receive the “Cultural Innovator” award. But the event’s true purpose is to toast the British designers who have turned London into a global capital of contemporary fashion.

Or at least who once did.

Nowadays, London occupies a strange position in the fashion world. The city still holds considerable mystique as the crucible that forged generational geniuses like Alexander McQueen and John Galliano, and it remains a hub for premier fashion schools, a renowned traditional tailoring industry, and the thriving subcultures that have long powered fashion’s most creative movements. In recent years the buzziest names in menswear have come out of London: Grace Wales Bonner, Kiko Kostadinov, and Martine Rose, not to mention Palace and another bona fide streetwear sensation in Corteiz.

Yet most London fashion people would tell you that the energy on the ground is a bit more unsettled. London Fashion Week is no longer considered a crucial stop for buyers and press—of the nominees in the British Menswear Designer of the Year category, all but one primarily show in Milan and Paris. (Craig Green, we see you.) Meanwhile, Brexit and the UK’s economic recession have upended the already-tricky math faced by independent brands, forcing many designers to reconsider or shutter their businesses altogether.

What’s going on over there? I called British GQ senior style editor Murray Clark for a recap of The Fashion Awards (as the BFC gala is called) and his take on the state of London fashion.

Murray Clark: A weird cross between the fashion Oscars and the fashion VMAs. It's a high-low thing. Interestingly enough, it used to be called the British Fashion Awards, but since it was rebranded in 2020 it has felt a bit more global. This year Moncler had a table, Loewe had a table. It feels more like a big party than an award show proper. The BAFTAs, for instance, are very buttoned-up. The Fashion Awards aren’t like that. People are getting pissed, people are partying.

There is a weird kind of camp majesty to the Fashion Awards, yes. Like London Fashion Week, it’s a bit art school-y. Everyone from celebrities to designers—loads of them—to marketing execs to PRs to journalists like you and me show up. And then there are fashion students who sit on the upper tier, and they’re always chanting and screaming. It’s a real petri dish of British fashion.

It's a lot harder. The BFC wants more Grace Wales Bonners and more Nicholas Daleys—that’s why they exist, and why the Fashion Awards exist, because they want to elevate people, especially given how tough it is in London. Wage stagnation is a real problem in this country. Rents are out of control. It might sound a little bit cheese on toast, but I think when times are tough, that's when people get more creative. That's when designers figure out how to be resourceful. There’s a bit of a grindset mentality with a lot of London designers. Bianca Saunders has been working so hard and now she’s finally starting to break through. Same with Priya Ahluwahlia, who won the New Establishment Menswear award. She finally got her flowers. Even the most misanthropic fashion people in the room seemed to enjoy themselves, because it was a testament to people succeeding when the odds are stacked against them.

Jamie Dornan and Jonathan Anderson, who won Designer of the Year at The Fashion Awards 2024Courtesy of Getty Images / Dave Benett

It's money, right? The money’s not in London, the state of the economy is not in good shape, so why would a designer want to stay here when they can go to Paris or Milan? And there’s certainly more money if you can get a job at a luxury house in Paris or a big commercial giant in New York.

People don't talk about it as much these days, but the scars from Brexit are always going to be here. A lot of designers talk about how import tariffs are insane now because we're not in the EU. A lot of brands getting good quality clothing made in Portugal have found their costs have doubled. That falls onto the consumer, which has been the case in almost every single industry, not just fashion. But the flip side of losing talent to the continent is we’re also not attracting talent the same way we used to. London is no longer quite such an attractive prospect for creatives as it was pre-Brexit.

It's actually quite good. If you go to Soho, there's an energy, there are kids wearing designer clothes again. When I say kids, I mean 20-year-old guys who maybe are coming to London for the day and blowing their week's salary on something from End Clothing. There's a queue to get into End Clothing, which is mad. There's like kids hanging around getting their photos taken again, which yeah, it's a bit cheesy, but it's nice. It's nice to have that feeling back. People seem to be spending again. There’s a massive queue outside of the new Aimé Leon Dore store, and that’s good for all the little other shops around it. We were on Savile Row today talking to a few brands and they were saying it’s been a standout year.

It’s interesting, if you look at the women who design menswear, it's brands that tend to be a lot more directional, right? Look at Martine Rose, look at Simone Rocha, which can be very visually striking. It’s quite easy to ID a Simone Rocha haunted Victorian school child jacket. Bianca Saunders, again, and Chopova Lowena, which won for emerging womenswear, these brands feel more fashion-y, for lack of a better word. These designers don’t play it safe, and I don’t know if you can say that for all the other London brands in the mix.

God, yeah. A successful politician will do the Philosophy, Politics and Economics program at Oxford. A successful fashion designer will do an MA at CSM, you know? And these designers talk about their time at CSM quite a lot. I remember interviewing Stella McCartney and she spoke about it at length. But she didn’t do it to brag, it was more humbling than that. CSM is where you learn. It’s where you knuckle down and it’s not an easy ride. So the CSM graduate show is still a legitimate thing, a lot of journalists and buyers still attend. No other fashion design course in the country has that kind of pull.

He’s being realistic though, right? He started JW Anderson out of school, but how many other JW Andersons are in the grave right now? Countless. You can follow your dreams, but it doesn’t always happen. And perhaps he has a responsibility as one of the most successful designers to come out of London for a very long time to provide some sound advice.

Again, the general vibe was messy in a good way. Rihanna is at one table and somebody from Love Island season three is at the next. But my biggest takeaway, weirdly, was that it seems like a lot of fashion designers are more aware of their mortality than they were 10 or so years ago. I think with this whole assembly line of creative directors going through brands for two seasons, back then that would have been unthinkable, and now it’s standard practice. And I think that made winning these awards more special because it emphasizes that nothing is permanent. Everybody is aware that there’s maybe no such thing as a job for life anymore if you’re a designer. And it seemed to make everyone more humble, and make the whole thing feel more poignant and important.

Exactly. Despite it all, London fashion people can still take a moment to enjoy themselves.