Fashion District has been supporting emerging designers, start-ups and makers across East London and beyond since it's launch in 2019. Co-founded by London College of Fashion, UAL and supported by Mayor of London, Fashion District was created to help nurture connections with industry ahead of LCF's move to Stratford.
The first Fashion District Festival launched in 2021 and celebrated sustainability and innovation across 5 different venues in East London. Working with industry partners including Westfield Stratford City, British Council and The Trampery, the festival championed sustainable fashion designers and start-ups that are working to disrupt fashion from the inside out. This year, the festival returned for its second iteration at Spitalfields, celebrating fashion, sustainability, innovation, and community. The festival featured numerous interactive events including pop-ups, swap shops, masterclasses and workshops.
The Fashion District Festival also won a Small Business Charter award for Outstanding Support for Small Businesses by demonstrating how technology, business and education can come together to support a business sector and nurture talent to drive economic and social transformation in east London.
"We are thrilled to have won the inaugural award for providing ‘Outstanding Support for Small Business’ for the ground-breaking Fashion District Festival. This award was in recognition of the most innovative and impactful initiative provided to support small business growth." - Dan Henderson, Associate Dean for Enterprise at LCF.
The festival emphasises collaboration and support for small businesses. Could you elaborate on how the event fosters connections and exchanges between these businesses to promote growth and innovation in the fashion industry?
Everything we do at Fashion District centres around connecting key stakeholders within the industry to promote sustainable growth and innovation. We recognise that start-ups and SMEs are a crucial part of London’s innovation ecosystem, and that they depend on connections to established brands, investors and public sector bodies to support the development of new solutions to the industry’s critical issues.
With this in mind, the Fashion District Festival programme was designed to enable smaller businesses to develop their network. Our team curated a diverse line-up of expert speakers that represented each part of the ecosystem, and we encouraged greater interaction between hosts, speakers and attendees by combining multiple event formats, including workshops, roundtables and speed networking.
Furthermore, we honed in on the topic of connections and collaborations at Fostering Innovative Partnerships, hosted by True. This event brought together investors and brands to share their expertise on how to secure partnership opportunities and investment. These connections are crucial for early-stage businesses, as they help to evidence market traction and garner financial support for further research and development. With each connection and continued support, innovative start-ups have a greater chance at sustained growth and making a positive change within the fashion industry.
Sustainability, innovation, and community engagement are mentioned as essential values of the festival. How do you ensure that these values are reflected in the events and activities organised during the festival?
Each element of the Fashion District Festival was carefully curated to ensure that sustainability, innovation and community remained at the heart of each activity and event. We worked collaboratively with our programme partners, tapping into their individual expertise, to approach these themes from different perspectives.
Take the Festival Pop-Up Shop as an example. Each of the brands that were featured provide alternative ways for consumers to shop, which are a little friendlier to people and planet. In particular, there was an emphasis on start-up brands that promote the use of existing materials and garments within their business model, such as preloved with Depop, upcycled with Alterist and rented with Loanhood.
Our community workshops were an opportunity for the wider public to learn how to extend the life of their clothing. Our workshop hosts each specialised in a craft, technique or skill that demonstrated the wide variety of ways in which garments can be repaired or upcycled to give them a new lease of life and keep them out of landfill.
Tamara Henrikson - Programme Coordinator, Fashion District