Come Super September, as it’s become known in the industry, Milan and Paris will make global headlines as a cohort of recently appointed creative leads (Matthieu Blazy at Chanel, Louise Trotter at Bottega Veneta and Jonathan Anderson’s Dior womenswear among them) make their play on the runway. Closer to home, meanwhile, the British Fashion Council’s new CEO, Laura Weir, will be reminding us – loudly and clearly – that London hasn’t been left behind. It is, as Weir says, time we realised our own strength and “put our chins up”.
The 43-year-old former creative director of Selfridges accepted the top job in January, succeeding Caroline Rush, who announced her departure after 16 years last September. “I felt like now was a really good time,” says Weir. “We’ve come through the pandemic, we’ve got a new government and we need to leave the shackles of the post-Brexit years behind us. We have to lick our wounds and move on.”
She and I are seated at the glossy vintage walnut desk in her office at 180 Strand. In truth, mere months into her role, Weir has spent most of her time away from it, asking designers, patrons and her own team what the first thing they would do if they were her – and listening carefully. The fashion industry is worth nearly £29 billion to the economy every year (as Justine Simons, deputy mayor of London for culture and the creative industries reminds me over email). Hampered by hikes in operational costs, UK-based brands have been facing EU tariffs on imports of four to five per cent for yarns, eight per cent for fabrics and 12 per cent for clothes, and need to catch a break. Weir’s ambition is to nurture sustainable businesses that will grow and for designers “to make the money they deserve”. Decorating has, understandably, been a little lower on the CEO’s list of priorities. “Hence my office being quite so empty,” she says, looking around.
The office still feels like her, though. Leaning against a wall is a painting by London artist Sikelela Owen, which she purchased at the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition. There’s a vase of flowers from the 180 Corner Shop and today’s newspapers. “I still get these delivered because I believe in disseminating information with respect for the craft it’s taken to create it,” she says, flicking past the Post-It notes that tab up stories that might be of interest to her team.
Downstairs in 180 Studios, bright young fashion designers including Tolu Coker and Harris Reed are hard at work on the collections they’ll be presenting at London Fashion Week in September, Weir’s first in her new role. We’re also a short walk from Whitehall. “I had a great meeting with Lisa Nandy [secretary of state for culture, media and sport] last week,” she says. “We just really connected.” Both women are dedicated to decentralisation – “by that I mean: what does fashion look like outside of London? What does fashion mean for the people in her constituency in Wigan?” Weir explains. “That’s why I’ve launched Fashion Assembly, which was conceived by [BFC ambassador for emerging talent] Sarah Mower. It’s a creative education programme that will take designers back to their old schools across the country, so that young people outside of London can see themselves in this industry in the future.”
Weir is apolitical in her role. When it comes to Keir Starmer’s cabinet, she has “hope and optimism”. “I want to see the UK government respect fashion – and the contribution it makes to the economy – in the same way it respects TV and film.”
There is, after all, nothing diminutive about the nation’s design talents, including Sarah Burton, Stella McCartney, Martine Rose, Victoria Beckham, Phoebe Philo and Daniel Lee, not to mention rising stars such as Jawara Alleyne. They shape global trends. “It’s our responsibility to talk a positive game,” Weir says. “Let’s be limitless.”
Her plans are far from talk, however. As CEO, she is charged with leading both the Council’s functions: The BFC Foundation, which supports education through charitable initiatives including scholarships, breakfast clubs for school children that thrive on creativity, Newgen (the platform that launched the careers of Jonathan Anderson, Lee McQueen, Simone Rocha, and more) and several awards (including the prestigious BFC/Vogue Designer Fashion Fund) which support UK designers through financial contributions from patrons including Chanel, Burberry and Dior. Just 77 days in office, Weir revealed she has already secured an extra three-year funding commitment to the BFC Newgen programme from 2026, and will be increasing scholarship funding too.
The other arm of the Council’s operations, BFC Ltd, is responsible for scheduling London Fashion Week and the annual Fashion Awards (Weir wants the Awards to be more intentional and honour British style, encompassing everyone from the Princess of Wales to Charli XCX) as well as designer outreach – which is where Weir spies the most potential to make her mark. Her first decision as CEO, met with industry-wide acclaim, has been to waive London Fashion Week fees, meaning that designers who are members of the BFC and choose to hold physical runway shows have one less cost to worry about when preparing to exhibit their work.
“Fashion Week is a shop window for what creative Britain looks like,” Weir told an audience of designers, press, buyers and thought-leaders gathered at the Serpentine Pavilion for the Council’s summer party in July. “My core priority is to dial up London Fashion Week again,” she reiterates to me. “I think sometimes we forget quite how wonderful it is. There’s certainly a layer of fresh magnetism that we can give to the event itself.”
Her words have captured the hearts and minds of designers (and their accountants), including 2025 BFC/Vogue Designer Fashion Fund winner Conner Ives. (At the time of going to press, “There’s set to be 20 per cent more designers on schedule than last September,” Weir says.) The London-based, US-born dynamo received a career-changing prize of £150,000, and dresses the likes of Dua Lipa, Rihanna and Jennie Kim in upcycled antique piano shawl dresses, shirred football shirts and military surplus gowns, which he handcrafts in his Tottenham studio.
Ives is all too aware of the “insane” cost of putting on a fashion show – as designer Priya Ahluwalia once told me, runway lighting alone will “cost you a minimum of £12,000 for 10 minutes” – and why Weir’s mandate on LFW fees matters.
“I feel the tide is changing,” Ives says of the newly announced incentives. We’re speaking over the phone, his studio abuzz in the background. “I show in London because, as much as my work is centred around Americana, I found my creative world here. The reason I moved here in the first place is the same reason why I’ve stayed: in spite of the hardships London Fashion Week has faced, there are like-minded people here who will get behind an idea.”
Big-name designers, who were all once students, agree. “Laura’s appointment means more opportunity and support for young British designers who are just starting out in their careers,” Burberry creative director Daniel Lee emails to tell me. “It’s so important to put funding into the next generation of talent, securing creativity and innovation on a global platform.”
For Ives this means retaining his autonomy. “In London, I don’t have to sell myself out, everything I’ve done here I’ve done on my own terms.” My mind flicks to Erdem and Simone Rocha – two fashion designers, both LFW stalwarts, whose robust independence has been central to their creativity, and ultimately the survival of their businesses.
Weir has a wishlist of British talents (including Grace Wales Bonner, recipient of the 2019 BFC/Vogue Designer Fashion Fund, who shows in Paris) that she wants to “come home” to be part of the re-invigorated LFW she’s masterminding – a beacon for nationwide fashion talent.
As CEO, Weir also wants to ensure other designers, such as Ives, Aaron Esh and Martine Rose – whose shows have taken place variously at a former job centre, a sex club and a Camden cul-de-sac – stay put. They are proof that living, working and, crucially, showing in the UK has a boosting effect on other homegrown creatives, be that street-cast models, local fabric traders or fashion graduates hungrily seeking opportunities.
Ives remembers how he and Weir first met. “It was at a reception at Buckingham Palace. She was the head of Selfridges, but was easy to talk to. I didn’t feel like I was speaking to a fashion executive, but an equal, and someone who was listening,” he says.
Weir’s can-do, will-do optimism is complemented by her signature Josh Wood blonde hair and incisive gaze. An industry veteran, who shops her knife-sharp tailoring from the menswear section, she cut her teeth as a reporter at Drapers Record and previously served as British Vogue’s fashion features editor.
From there, Weir arrived at ES Magazine as editor-in-chief. It was important to her that ES was distributed for free with London’s Evening Standard paper and had the power to reach millions. Born within the sound of Bow Bells to young educators in Hackney, and raised in the capital, hers was a politicised upbringing. “I was on the poll tax riots as a kid,” she says. “I was at Greenham Common with my mum. It shaped me. I’m as comfortable at a table with a member of the royal family as I am with my granddad, who worked in the steel works, or my friends from the allotment” – which is where you’ll usually find her when she’s not at work.
Weir shows me iPhone snaps of her latest harvest: tomatoes, broccoli, strawberries, carrots, courgettes. To the delight of her nine-year-old daughter, Astrid, there are also wild flowers and newts in the pond. “We’ve got a great fig tree, but it’s getting decimated by the wood pigeons,” she says, laughing. Work-life balance doesn’t exist, it’s all integrated, she says. “It is a place of calm; somewhere Astrid, my dad and I will take a packed lunch.”
It makes sense that cultivating the vegetable patches chimes with her job. Ever since her stint at Selfridges, Weir has been fastidious about measurable growth, be that with planting or persuading a board of directors around to her way of thinking. She encourages her team to check in regularly with designers and connect them with the right people to drive their businesses forward, on a local and global scale. Weir’s own Rolodex isn’t short on contacts. She has close ties with V&A director Tristram Hunt, chief executive of the BFI Ben Roberts and Serpentine Galleries CEO Bettina Korek. She is also in lockstep with Justine Simons. “It’s an industry that has huge growth potential and also more broadly, the power to bolster our reputation and influence our culture,” Simons says of Weir’s appointment, citing her vision in stewarding the BFC into its next exciting era.
Arguably, the CEO’s biggest challenge will be to rewrite – and continuing rewriting – some of the Council’s own rules from within. “Arriving here at the BFC when you’ve had the same leadership for 16 years, of course, you’re going to have this feeling of ‘We’ve always done it that way’, but what would we do if we were rebuilding – how would we reshape this organisation for now to meet the needs of the people that matter most, which is the design community?”
It’s time to get strategic about the UK’s global fashion future, she says. On her mission list: forging new relationships with her colleagues in Paris to work together to ensure that, with the pipeline of creative talent that comes out of the capital to service the rest of Europe, “London stays a healthy part of the fashion ecosystem”. She’s also envisioning what a future for British designers might look like with a BFC base in Mumbai. “Everyone talks about how the other cities have got commerce, and we’ve got creativity. Yes, we do have creativity, but it doesn’t mean that there isn’t success, scalability and growth that can be attached to that creativity,” Weir says. Outside her window, the Regency balustrades on London’s rooftops are bathed magnificently in late afternoon sunshine (“Architecture from when this nation was proud,” Weir notes).
Brace yourself for London Fashion Week, and a new dawn for British fashion. “This is the start of a different era,” she says. “Let’s experience it together.”
Cover look: Jacquard jacket and jacquard jeans, Nicholas Daley. Cotton T-shirt, With Nothing Underneath. Leather shoes, Le Monde Béryl. Hair: Mike Mahoney. Make-up: Emma Broom. Set design: Juliet Caswell. Production: Kate Maidment.