Laura Weir and I are taking in the rather wonderful sight of the legendary London DJ Princess Julia posing for photographers while standing atop a white tablecloth-covered runway which is strewn with dinner party detritus and half drunk glasses of red wine; the Last Supper, but make it Hackney. We’re at the Lueder show on the Saturday afternoon of London Fashion Week, the first under the stewardship of Weir, who joined the British Fashion Council (BFC) as CEO this past April. I’m with her for a few hours to experience her debut season first hand.
The show has just finished, another of Berlin-London designer Marie Lueder’s inventive reinterpretations of club culture style. (Princess Julia was one of the select audience members invited to sit table-runway-side.) With its enveloping hoodies, cargo-ish trousers and curled-toe booties, I thought Lueder very rave-y Rumpelstiltskin, in a good way, while a journalist I walked into the venue with took one look at the uber cool crowd revved up to see it and pronounced Lueder to be part of the “dirty” fashion movement, which is about to have its moment in a new exhibition at the city’s Barbican Centre, Dirty Looks Desire and Decay In Fashion, opening September 25th. As for Weir, she was into it. “It was like something you’d see in the woods after an all-night rave,” she says. “Marie is very good at the signifiers, building a cultural well.” The vibe of the show captured the hardwiring together of the runway and the street, something London still does better than any other fashion capital.
“It’s my first time at a Lueder show, though she has been part of our NewGen program for two years,” Weir tells me. “I’ve heard great things [about her]. And I liked how she has really lent into the Pull&Bear partnership. What’s great about NewGen,” she went on to say of the BFC’s long-standing sponsorship and mentoring of young design talent and the brands who donate to it, “is that the designers are obviously financially supported, but when you are working with a big retailer like Pull&Bear, you’re also exposed to so much of the commerce operations. I really hope that that helps designers be set up for success. We’re so grateful for their financial support, and a big part of my strategy going forward is how we can use that to thrive creatively and build businesses that can be sustained.”
This is Weir’s mission now: To speak the language of creativity, craft, culture, and commerciality – and bring them all together. After a career working at British Vogue, ES magazine, and the department store Selfridges, she is intent on activating a strong and successful future for London Fashion Week, and the British fashion industry more generally, in a post-Covid, post-Brexit landscape. Not to mention the fact that we’re in an era where the industry is in the thrall of powerful global conglomerates like never before. What’s an independent designer, young, or not so young, to do?
Earlier this year, she launched for the BFC an ambitious, visionary plan for how to revitalise the week, and these past few days alone, her leadership has been very much to the fore. Not just going to shows since the schedule kicked off Thursday – she’s planning on being at around 39 or so this season – but also the likes of attending a parliamentary debate on London Fashion Week launched by Rosie Wrighting, the Labour MP for Kettering, Northants, who was once a buyer for ASOS, and, just last night, co-hosting a dinner with Jonathan Anderson, who’s re-imagining his JW Anderson label as he commences the Herculean task of Dior.
We’re currently being ushered out of the venue, which is just as well, as we have to hotfoot it to the Roksanda show. As we’re exiting, Weir mentions that Lueder’s show makes her think of another designer she saw that morning, YAKU, designed by Yaku Stapleton. (A year ago my colleague Sarah Mower urged me to go see his work, and as always, she was right; it was fantastic.) YAKU stood out for Weir because it was a presentation, she says, “which took us on a journey to witness his ancestors meeting one another, both in origin times, and the modern day. It was a really emotional performance piece. I’ve noticed a lot of world building this season,” she continues. “For me that sparks a lot of ideas around our connection into the broader culture and creative industries. I’m really keen to forge partnerships with film and art partners. Dance is something that could be interesting for lots of our designers in terms of costuming.”
Appropriately enough, the Roksanda front row slap-bang opposite Weir and I is entirely representative of that cross disciplinary conversation, with Marina Abramović, Joely Richardson, Juergen Teller, Lashana Lynch, Stephen Jones and Afua Hirsch all in attendance to celebrate the twentieth year in business of this beloved designer, one of London’s leading proponents of artistic/conceptual glamour. On the way over to Roksanda’s show, Weir and I chatted about what it’s like to take on such a huge role at the BFC.
“I can talk about it on a professional and a personal level,” she said. “I’m over the moon that we have more designers on the schedule than this time last year. That for me was a win, yet getting bigger needs to be intentional. I’m really happy, for instance, that Alessandra Rich and Alice Temperley have brought back buying appointments to the schedule. In terms of telling a new narrative that’s really important. Are we going to beat Paris at that? No. But should we be encouraging our designers and brands to recognize London as a commercial city? Yes, of course. Burberry is also doing a great job at driving that idea forward. The energy has also been incredibly motivating. The goodwill towards London is massive, and everyone wants it to succeed, and that’s bigger than me. It’s about all of us.”
Of course, this first fashion week of hers was writ large in her mind from the moment she started the job. “September was always in the foreground,” she said. “For the last two weeks it has been white knuckles: We’re finalising the schedule, who’s signed up and who maybe can’t do it anymore. It was so intense. We have had a war room with a brilliant team who are at the coalface [of the week], with me supporting them in whatever way I can. And then two days before [fashion week began] you start to think, ‘I’ve got to surrender; I’ve got to give in and just have some fun’.”
Ironically, that exhalation moment happened sitting in the public gallery of the Houses of Parliament, during the debate on London Fashion Week. “Rosie tabled the debate and then various MPs stood up and talked about their constituencies’ relationship with fashion, and it was a real light bulb moment for me,” Weir said, “because I was thinking about the entire ecosystem in a different way. To hear the MP for Bexleyheath speak about how an adaptive fashion brand, Unhidden, is based in his constituency, and that his daughter has cerebral palsy and has found getting dressed difficult and for us to have Unhidden on our schedule…I just felt proud about that. And then you have Ian Murray, the newly appointed Minister of State for Media, Tourism and Creative Industries saying that the success of London Fashion Week is in the national interest, and I just thought, well, quite bloody right!”
Weir has been buoyed by the Roksanda show, all raw-edged, trim-waisted tailoring, raffia-adorned evening dresses, and trailing print silk scarves dramatically knotted at the neck and fluttering as the models walk past. “Dare I say it, but I thought it was her best work to date,” Weir says. “I suppose I’ve seen about twenty Roksanda shows in my time. She has always been the colorist of London to me; the first person I saw mix burgundy and sky blue. And she has evolved…the silhouettes and her use of color have become even more refined. And the quote from Nina Simone….” Roksanda’s soundtrack featured the voice of divinely goddess-like Simone saying, in short, that freedom is about having no fear. “I thought that was so London,” Weir remarks. “Roksanda…she loves women, she’s making for women, and you can tell that, so that they can move and express themselves and still feel beautiful and powerful.”
This seems the perfect moment to ask Weir about her own clothes, though I’d hesitated earlier; yeah, I know, we’re both in fashion, but given the bigness of her relatively new role I didn’t want to seem like I was trivialising it. If she was the CEO of British Gas, would I be asking her about what she wears? Well, maybe, but, you know. For her part though, Weir is more than happy to discuss the subject.
“When I was a journalist, I would dress primarily for comfort and speed,” she says. “In this role it’s a different semaphore; I’m conscious of representing our industry in the right way. When I’m on camera, I’m thinking about the way my clothes look. For example, I wore a Simone Rocha frilled rugby shirt yesterday, because it had some energy, it gave me a story to tell, and it was the right side of looking creative. I’ve set myself the challenge to only wear British. The only thing that’s not is my Hermes watch.”
Over the last couple of days, Weir has worn a pink Rocha blazer with black embellishment, followed by a black Erdem blazer with pink embellishment. “I liked the synergistic switch of that,” she says. “And when I do public speaking I’ll always wear a jacket. Suits are what I wear generally. When I was a journalist, I’d wear tailoring with trainers. And now I put on a heel.” True to form, today she’s in a Martine Rose jacket, tee and trousers, with zebra print Conner Ives for Jimmy Choo heels. “They’re literally the most comfortable shoes,” Weir comments. “And I’m not a natural heel wearer: if you see me on the weekend, I’m normally in Blundstone boots and a raggedy old pair of trousers, at my allotment.” Clothes for her are now a means to communicate and converse. The other night she’d sat beside Tristram Hunt, the Director of the Victoria and Albert Museum, at dinner, and she was, she says, “thinking about what am I wearing that I can discuss with him? I want to tell people the stories behind who I’m representing.”
By now, I’m getting a good sense of Weir: Thoughtful, funny, direct, super smart about the industry without any corporate affectation – oh, and can she move. She’s as nimble on her feet as she is in her thinking. As we arrive and leave each venue, I’m constantly speed walking yet always still three steps behind in a vain attempt to keep up—it’s the jet lag, honest, I got in at the crack of dawn this morning – and she’s doing it in those zebra stilettos.
Speaking of: We’re currently sprinting into Harri because the Barbican Centre venue – which is in part a housing complex – has strict rules about how late the show can go. (As in, not much. As in, not at all.) The show – full of Kerala-born, London-based Harri KS’s conceptualised casualness with denim, latex and inflatable rubber – is outside, encircled by residents’ apartments, who are looking out of their windows to catch the action below. Weir applauds the venue choice. “Part of the London magic,” she says, “is our architecture. Suddenly you can be in the British Museum, or another cultural institution, that you may not have had the opportunity to go to before. And how amazing it is to sit here in the heart of the Barbican watching the show as everyone who lives here is making their dinner?”
Weir’s brilliant driver colleague John is going full pedal to the metal across London to get us to Richard Quinn in time. (Somehow he miraculously does.) It will end up being my last show of the night, but Weir’s will go much, much later. Zipping past the Houses of Parliament en route we stop chatting to gawp at its Gothic majesty as the sun sets, pitting its dramatic silhouette against the darkening sky. Weir’s time there was only a matter of days ago, yet our conversation is going further back, to our earliest days of going to London Fashion Week. She isn’t one for rose tinted nostalgia, yet she’s happy to play along.
“My memories revolve around the Boombox era,” she recalls. “They were my kind of gang. And so it was Henry [Holland], my best friend – we went to university together. It was the time he was doing the slogan tees, like Flick Yer Bean For Agyness Deyn. Agyness [Deyn, the model] was my flatmate. We were living in West Hampstead, before Henry and shared a flat in Primrose Hill. We all came up together, this,” Weir starts to laugh, “collective of upstarts. Henry’s shows always mark a moment in time for me. I was beginning my career, and I remember when [the high powered PR] Daniel Marks gave me my first front row seat at Henry s show and I thought, ‘Oh my God, I’ve made it!”
The mid-to-late 2000s was definitely one of those very fertile periods for British fashion; the city’s designers were doing what the country’s designers so often do best, which is to extend their vision and influence far and wide without all the resources available to those in other cities around the world. “It was Christopher Kane, Roland Mouret, Erdem, Jonathan Saunders, Richard Nicoll, Roksanda and Fashion East,” Weir said. “There was one visionary after another. And now there are new designers stirring me the same way – Conner Ives, Patrick McDowell, so many.”
Weir met McDowell, who’d shown his spring/summer 2026 collection early Saturday morning, on her fourth day on the job, when he unexpectedly came to her rescue. “I found myself about to meet Catherine, Princess of Wales, who’d kindly agreed to present Patrick with the Queen Elizabeth II Award for British Design, and I didn’t feel I had the right thing to wear,” she said. “He took this green velvet boned jacket off a mannequin and I wore it. He pinned me into it. I gave my speech covered in pins.”
For Weir, the likes of McDowell, Roksanda, Erdem, and Richard Quinn, are the flip side of the Last Supper in Hackney, but in her view you need both to tell the story of British fashion. “They have this rhythm of exquisite make, beautifully cut, incredible fabrics, clothes with a sense of occasion,” Weir says of McDowell, et al. “There’s still a market for putting on a frock and going to a gala.” She is unsurprisingly hugely grateful to the Princess of Wales for presenting the award, but also that she took so much time to meet with the other designers who were there, at least sixteen of them, Weir reckons. “She was asking the most detailed questions, and the designers loved it,” Weir says. “She was really enraptured by their processes, and by their manufacturing domestically.”
At such a critical juncture for British fashion, further endorsement by the Princess of Wales would no doubt be a dream come true for Weir and her team, just as would the return of some of Britain’s biggest names – Stella McCartney, Victoria Beckham, Sean McGirr’s McQueen – to London Fashion Week who are currently elsewhere. (In a word: Paris.) Could that happen? Who knows. Still, even though I’m no betting man, I would say if anyone is going to do it, it will be Weir.
