The British Fashion Council (BFC) has cancelled its June edition of London Fashion Week.
Instead, the focus will shift to providing more commercial opportunities for British brands through a London Show Rooms showcase in Paris, which will run from 26 June to 1 July. BFC outgoing CEO Caroline Rush hopes the showroom will provide an opportunity for designers to “generate sales and develop their relationships with international media outside of a show environment, reinforcing our commitment to providing vital commercial opportunities for British designers”.
The BFC reintroduced its Paris showroom in September 2024 for Spring/Summer 2025, after a hiatus following January 2023. Since September, the BFC has been rethinking the commercial support for the region’s emerging and independent brands. In February, for AW25, the BFC introduced a pop-up London Fashion Week Shop on Regent Street, which featured brands including Ahluwalia, Nicholas Daley and Saul Nash, and was open to the public.
The London Fashion Week June edition was initially launched with a menswear focus as ‘London Collections: Men’ in 2012, which was then rebranded to London Fashion Week Men’s in 2017. In its heyday, exciting brands such as Alexander McQueen, JW Anderson, Wales Bonner and Craig Green attracted an engaged international audience.
In June 2020, the event turned co-ed as show formats began shifting that way more broadly, and was presented digitally during the 2020 and 2021 Covid seasons. After the pandemic, the event returned with a smaller — but still buzzy — edition in 2022 featuring shows from exciting newcomers at the time, such as Ahluwalia, Labrum London and Robyn Lynch, as well as an off-schedule show from Martine Rose. The June 2023 schedule shrunk considerably, featuring a handful of presentations from Saul Nash, SMR days and Qasimi Rising, and in 2024, the BFC trialled a new format centred around an exhibition of London design at the Institute of Contemporary Art as well as events celebrating the cultures that have impacted London’s menswear scene. There were a few shows — Denzilpatrick, Charles Jeffrey Loverboy and Qasimi — and a presentation from Harri.
As the June edition shrunk, exposure dwindled, leaving many brands feeling it was no longer commercially viable to show in London during the week. But, with London’s February and September editions now essentially co-ed, some menswear designers believe there was a lack of space carved out specifically for men’s and that the buying period was misaligned.
To tackle this, the BFC says the June showroom will make menswear its focus, and that it plans to collaborate with buyers and press both locally and internationally through a “digital-first approach”.
“By scaling back to more targeted programmes this June in London and Paris, we aim to create strong foundations to amplify the message of our brilliant British menswear businesses,” says Rush. “We recognise the challenges the sector faces both in the UK and globally and remain committed to amplifying the voices of British menswear designers as they navigate an ever-changing fashion landscape and will continue to adapt and find ways to platform our brilliant British menswear business.”
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