Jonathan Anderson, Kim Jones, Martine Rose, Simone Rocha, Chet Lo, Roksanda Ilinčić, Craig Green, Karoline Vitto, Marques Almeida — the Fashion East alumni list reads like the who’s who of contemporary British fashion. After 25 years, there are now 115 designers on the list, the vast majority of whom have gone on to do great things.
To mark its quarter of a century, Fashion East is hosting a retrospective exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) from 20 to 21 September during London Fashion Week. Curated by founder Lulu Kennedy and Fashion East head of projects Raphaelle Moore, alongside creative consultant Patrick Waugh, the exhibition features special commissions and sculptures from Rocha, Green and Richard Malone, artworks from Jawara Alleyne and Claire Barrow, photography of some of the alumni and previously unseen imagery from the Fashion East vault.
The exhibition — which celebrates the creativity and diversity of the alumni, and highlights the different routes to success in the industry — comes at a pertinent time, given the challenges facing emerging designers in post-Brexit London. It is a welcome reminder that creativity can still thrive, even when the economic backdrop is dire.
Some of the alumni, like Maximilian Davis and Jones, went on to steer the creative direction at heritage luxury houses such as Dior, Fendi, Louis Vuitton and Ferragamo. Some, like Rocha and Ilinčić, have launched their own, successful independent labels. Others, like Ebru Ercon, have gone on to work in large corporations, bringing their creativity to the mass market. And a handful have stepped into aligned worlds, such as art and interior design (Malone, House of Holland).
“Maximilian Davis and Kim Jones are incredible case studies — they each did a few seasons with us before they were picked up by a house [Ferragamo and Dunhill, respectively]. And there are others that are quietly getting on with great jobs, like James Long at Iceberg and Ebru at The North Face. Then, there are people that have gone into art or set up something different, like Rottingdean Bazaar. We’re proud of all of them,” says Kennedy.
Kennedy set up Fashion East in partnership with The Truman Brewery in 2000, to support young creatives that otherwise wouldn’t have a foothold in the industry. The selection process is intentionally unscientific. “We tend to agree on who we want to support,” says Moore, who joined in 2016, initially as Kennedy’s assistant. “Usually, there is something we want to say, or something that’s lacking that we want to promote. And it’s fun to have designers that say completely different things with their work or have completely different practices. It could be upcycling, or it could be someone who wants to do wholesale and go down the traditional route, or it could be someone that’s super into art and goes on to be an art director. We take into consideration the person behind the brand.”
Have the challenges facing emerging designers changed in the 25 years since Fashion East was established? “Most of the pressures are still the same: it’s cashflow and it’s wholesale, which has become more problematic,” says Kennedy. “We love our buyers, but wholesalers are going through a really tricky patch. We’ve always advised our designers to take things slowly, don’t grow too fast, and make sure you’re not taking orders that you can’t fulfil, because you can get caught up in the excitement of an amazing new stockist.”
Here, three Fashion East alumni reflect on what they learnt from the experience and how it shaped their subsequent careers.
I joined Fashion East for Spring/Summer 2023 and AW24. I think, until that point, people saw me as an Instagram brand or just a project, and not necessarily a functioning, fully working brand. So it was a really important, formative experience. That first show meant that I had so many more eyes on the brand, and there was a different level of respect. It was an amazing school for me in terms of how to do a show and how to communicate a collection in that context. It would’ve been super scary to do it by myself if I hadn’t had the guidance and the experience and the eye of someone who nourishes and fosters talent, like Lulu and Raph.
We had a full curve cast for the first show, and so we had this amazing group of women backstage. I don’t think anyone had done something like that before, in the sense of not having had any sample-size models in the casting. The models really connected, some of them became friends — it was really emotional. A lot of journalists said that, too. It made me feel like I was doing something right.
After Fashion East, I did a project with Dolce Gabbana where they supported my first solo show [on-schedule in Milan]. That was another global exposure moment, and gave me the experience of working with a brand on a much larger scale. There were so many people working on the show. After that, I started to fly on my own. I joined [talent incubator] Newgen and had my first fully independent solo show for SS25. It’s taken a few seasons to get to this point: it feels like when you’re learning how to ride a bike and your parents let you go.
The biggest challenge for emerging brands today has to be the financial aspect — cash flow. The industry is so unstable at the moment in terms of wholesale. I mostly work direct-to-consumer, so for me it is a little bit different. There are other challenges like tariffs and export rules around where I manufacture my clothes.
No brand is the same, and the recipe for things working out is different from brand to brand and also from designer to designer. That’s why it’s important to have a diverse range of initiatives and people willing and able to support creatives. I feel really positive about this in London because I don’t think any other city at the moment has the support we have here.
I did menswear accessories at the Royal College of Art and quite a lot of people pulled from my graduate collection for press. And [British fashion journalist] Charlie Porter, who was one of our lecturers, bought some of my graduate collection. Lulu’s always had her ear to the ground about what’s bubbling and what people are wearing. I was nervous when I applied to Fashion East — it seemed very daunting — but she offered me the place and it quickly felt very comfortable. Once she’d made that decision, you felt like you could do it. That was the confidence it gave.
Fashion East was my first foray into clothes. It taught me how to put my ideas to the market, but still in a very creative way without the boundaries you face later on in your career. Lulu took us to Paris with the collections — I genuinely didn’t know that was a step, which sounds crazy now. We would go and talk to buyers and it was a gentle introduction into what it means to have your own brand. We did a collab with [Parisian concept store] Colette, on a T-shirt and a bag, which was really commercial. I think that’s where Lulu is clever. She can offer an idea of commerce without it feeling heavy or pressured. Colette was the most important store in the world at that time, and that gave us exposure. People could wear your brand, but the catwalk could still be creative.
It was amazing when I got into Browns, and then Harvey Nichols. Once I was in those stores and had that visibility, I started getting consultancy jobs in Paris. Then, Donatella asked me to relaunch Versace menswear in Milan. I was working in Milan consulting and still showing my menswear in London. The brand was ticking along well and I had investment. After, Iceberg CEO Paolo Gerani contacted me and said he’d seen my show and really liked some of the knitwear that we were doing, and would I meet them? I had always loved a lot of Iceberg’s archive, from [co-founder and former creative director] Jean-Charles de Castelbajac’s work to the famous Pamela Anderson campaigns photographed by David LaChapelle. Paolo asked me to relaunch the men’s collection, then the menswear pre-collection, then womenswear. Each year I took on another thing. Now, I do everything: golf, childrenswear, runway, pre-collections, Iceberg Jeans, perfume. It’s taken 10 years to get to this point. And I think Lulu’s refusal to put any of us in a box has stayed with me.
The radical change between when I did Fashion East and now is that there wasn’t social media. I was locked away in my studio. Now, you have to think about so many more things than just your designs on the catwalk. You have to be the face of the brand in so many different ways. You’ve got to think of clever ways to market things. Maybe there are a few people who are switched on when they start, but I certainly wasn’t. And wholesale felt a lot more secure back then. There was definitely a point in my career where I thought I had to keep moving. But now, I feel very lucky to be here in this quite stable atmosphere.
I applied to Fashion East mainly for the exposure — you knew all the buyers and press were going to come. And it meant I didn’t have to spend time trying to find an offbeat venue I could afford for my own show. There was already so much to organise; being part of Fashion East enabled me to focus on the collection. And you had a community — you could call Lulu or someone from the team and be like, ‘Oh God, my sewing machine’s broken.’ And they’d say, ‘Don’t worry, get over here to this studio.’ You really felt like you were in a movement, which is important because it’s quite lonely, slugging away at 4am with some rollies and some coffee in a warehouse, designing your collections.
I didn’t expect to end up where I am. My dad had market stores all over London, selling vintage clothes. And so when I left Central Saint Martins, I started my own thing — it was what I knew. None of my family worked in a corporate environment. But at the start, the brand wasn’t making much money, so I was also working as a consultant and freelancer. Stella McCartney was starting her line and I interviewed to help her with the Adidas collab. I worked on that for the first four years. I didn’t realise at the time that it was quite disruptive to the sports industry. Even the colour palette we created was quite radical.
It got to a point [after Fashion East] where I was consulting, doing Newgen, and selling my own line to all these really cool Japanese stores and some in Europe. And then I had a fitting in Nuremberg in Germany, the day before my London Fashion Week show. I worked through the night, and the show was great, but it was seven minutes and I came out of that and I was like, ‘Holy cow, I’ve now got credit card debt, I’ve got models to pay.’ It was exhausting. And the business model wasn’t viable: you’d ship the product without any initial down payment from the buyers. Sometimes, you never got paid. Then, the credit crunch hit in 2008, and I drew a line in the sand and decided to consult. I worked for Katie Hillier on her luxury brand consultancies, while doing a lot of freelancing. And then I was hit up in around 2012 by Nike. I thought, well, it could be exciting to move to Portland and experience a different thing. None of it was planned. Careers in fashion aren’t linear anymore.
I was hired at Nike to bring a creative viewpoint. They were turning the company around and they wanted to be more design led. It’s hard bringing creativity to the forefront in these big cruise ships run by merchants. In my leadership roles, I bring the designers together so they feel part of a community, and I try to protect their time, to engage them with what’s going on in culture. I also tend to hire diverse teams, which is still very unusual. Looking back at Fashion East, there is a strong correlation: it promoted diversity and new thinking. I think that’s what’s lacking in the industry today.
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