London fashion week: where all the international attendees come from

London fashion week kicks off on Friday, with thousands of guests expected to attend the five-day event. Where are the international visitors from and how is the UK’s fashion industry perceived?

 Models, led by Cara Delevingne (L) present creations from designer Burberry Prorsum during the 2014 Autumn / Winter London fashion week in London on February 17, 2014. Photograph: BEN STANSALL/AFP/Getty Images

Twice a year London becomes the world’s capital for many of the global fashion elite. From fashion editors to bloggers and buyers, London fashion week - held in September and February - draws in a huge amount of international interest.

Along with New York, Milan and Paris, fashion week in London makes up the ‘big four’. According to the British Fashion Council (BFC), more than 5,000 visitors attend the bi-annual event, made up of a mix of UK and international fashion buyers, TV and radio crews, photographers, journalists and bloggers.

By far the largest proportion of international guests registering to attend the spring/summer 2015 shows, which were held in September of last year, were from Europe. There was also significant representation from Asia and North America which, combined, accounted for almost half of all international guests.

Visitors from the US comprised the biggest proportion of international guests from an individual country at 20%, followed by France (11%). 

The BFC claim that the direct value of the UK fashion industry to the UK economy is £26bn, up from £21bn in 2009, and that UK fashion industry is estimated to support 797,000 jobs.

But how is the UK, and specifically it’s fashion industry viewed internationally?

A 2010 report by Oxford Economics, commissioned by the BFC, discusses the difficulty in quantifying the UK’s “international brand equity” (i.e the overall image of a nation in the eyes of the outside world) when it comes to the fashion industry.

However, the report does try to measure the UK’s fashion reputation overseas. To do so it looks at the 2009 results of the Anholt-Gfk Roper Nation Brands Index (NBI) - an analytical tool that aims to measure and rank the reputations of 50 countries across the world based on a survey of over 20,000 adults in 20 ‘core countries’.

Among the 20 ‘core countries’, almost as many respondents associated the UK with fashion as they did with film and television. The research suggests that fashion beat ads, food, agriculture, crafts and oil as a key type of export associated with the UK.

The same report also calculated that foreign tourist spending attributable to the UK fashion industry was around £98m in 2009, accounting for 0.5% of total international visitor spending.

The value of London fashion week in helping to build the international reputation of the UK fashion industry is firmly highlighted by the report, which calls the event and UK fashion retail “magnets for both British and international audiences with an interest in fashion.”

----By the Guardian