Here’s a question with two answers: What do the 10 designers Simone Rocha, Jonathan Anderson, Kim Jones, Martine Rose, Grace Wales Bonner, Craig Green, Gareth Pugh, Roksanda Ilincic, Nensi Dojaka and Maximilian Davis have in common? You don’t need to be a Runway Genius to get the first answer, which is that they are amongst the most successful and stimulating designers to have come out of London in the 21st century. The second answer, however, is a little more niche: they all emerged with the help of the fashion incubator Fashion East.
Tomorrow night, Fashion East returns for its spring 2026 edition. The show will be held at London’s Institute of Contemporary Art, and mark the entrée of two new designers, Mayhew and Jacek Gleba, into the 140-something list of up-and-comers Fashion East has given a platform to since its foundation in 2000. Returning designer Nuba will be this season’s beneficiary of a further factor in Fashion East’s success: the organization tends to offer its chosen talents an at-least three-season opportunity to show under the FE umbrella. Alongside the show, the ICA will also be hosting an retrospective exhibition dedicated to the first quarter-century of Fashion East.
Many people have made significant contributions to the Fashion East story. It could never have existed without the philanthropic instinct and commercial vision of the Zeloof family (more later). Similarly, Topshop in its pomp—when run by Jane Shepherdson—was instrumental in pushing it to the forefront of the London Fashion Week calendar, a role Nike continues today. Insiders past and present including Beth Serota, Sophie Jewes, and the organization’s current Head of Projects Raphaelle Moore all deserve their flowers. And then, of course, there are the designers.
The undisputed chief protagonist of Fashion East, however, is Lulu Kennedy. Newcastle-born, Devon-raised, and shaped by formative cameos in Sicily, Ibiza, and Naples, Kennedy rolled up to London in the mid-1990s with no defined direction but a powerful supply of personal energy. In the run-up to tomorrow’s big Fashion East birthday show, we checked in with Kennedy at her office in Brick Lane’s Truman Brewery to talk through her long and lols-filled history as one of London fashion’s leading lightning rods. Below, with many edits, is some of the best of it.
Hello Lulu! So can we start with the origin story of Fashion East?
Lulu Kennedy: It began back in 1996. I’d just arrived in London, with no plan, but I’d got a job working in these artists’ studios that put on shows just behind this building, the Truman Brewery. It had shut down as a brewery in the 1980s and was bought in around 1995 by this local family, the Zeloofs. And one day a member of the family popped into the gallery space where I was, and he ended up offering me a job. And I said “brilliant—I’ve got nothing else to do with the rest of my life.” At the time they were still taking out all the old brewery machinery and thinking about what they could do with the site, which back then many people thought was a white elephant—but just look at it now! At the beginning my role was helping to run the estate, which meant renting out space. Then I got into putting on events.
But how did it develop into Fashion East?
Hussein Chalayan booked this huge warehouse space in the Atlantis building for a show that was the first show I ever went to—the one that went from fully clothed to fully naked, which is pretty good for a first show. And I remember Matthew Williamson booked a show too. And at that time there were a lot of off-schedule shows, and a long list of smaller less established designers who were looking to break through. And a lot of them were local, because the area was cheap to live in, so I’d know them
anyway from drinking in the local pubs like the Bricklayer’s. And they would come to me and ask if they could borrow a space for their shows. And I got more and more involved. So the guy who’d hired me got a bit fed up with me, I think. He said, ‘You know what? Let’s just do this as a proper project. Let’s allocate space, and budget, and it can become your job’. I know, I’m very blessed.
So this was the drumroll that announced the creation of Fashion East.
I actually hated Fashion East as a name! I wanted to call it Untold—so this is kind of the untold story! The first shows we ever had created a lot of excitement. Thousands of people came, or wanted to come, and there wasn’t really anything else like it at the time… I remember Sophie Ellis-Bextor was our very first model at our very first show… For me that excitement was to a large part because of House of Jazz. I was always hanging out with them in the Bricklayers, and they were the catalyst—it was almost because of them that the show got pushed over the line. I remember a PR agency was brought in, and they got Channel 4 interested, and Channel 4 wanted to do a whole project on the show. And it was the PR Agency that chose the name Fashion East. I mean, I guess it works—it describes the key ingredients of what we do—but I still like Untold…
Looking at the Vogue Runway dropdown I see that we only began covering Fashion East back in 2005 or so…
Because that’s when we went on schedule. And that was thanks to Topshop. They had seen what we were doing over here very much off schedule, very much pissing off the BFC in terms of scheduling and getting to us. And Topshop were like: ‘What you’re doing is brilliant. We think you should be on the schedule. We don’t know why or not. Let’s get you on the schedule. You can be sponsored by us in terms of money and also reutilizing our runway space after we’ve done our Topshop Unique show’. That was Jane Shepherdson and her team. She was just this brilliant dynamic woman, and they just got it.
How was the audience reaction at the earliest shows?
I think the audience has always tended to be coming open-minded and supportive. Because we would be showing them something maybe new, that otherwise they would have had to go and find off schedule in some far flung place. People love discovering, but it was also quite handy for editors and buyers to be able to come to a show where, thanks to Topshop, everything was professionally staged and you could meet the designers.
Who chooses the designers?
Me! But we also worked with a panel of experts and advisors who included editors and buyers. And I met really interesting people through that. And we would have designers on the panel as well, because I thought that point of view was crucial. And a lot of the designers we did choose were people who we would first encounter socially, because that real-life impact is so much more important than looking over someone’s curated Instagram.
What are some key crazy Fashion East show memories for you?
Well, there are so many! But 100% they include Gareth Pugh’s show at the Electric Ballroom in Camden, which is somewhere I already went clubbing, of course. I remember I was so excited to have that space, I was very hyped. And we were flying in Casey Spooner from Ibiza to DJ but there was a possibility that he might miss his flight. And then if he arrived there was the further possibility that the electric suit that Gareth had made for the finale might electrocute him, because the battery pack didn’t work so we ended up having to plug Casey in at the wall. I think that was as close to a clubnight as any show I’ve been to. And I remember there was this incredible combination because Marios Schwab was also showing these wonderful, unashamedly commercial but extremely sophisticated bodycon dresses that were so great and desirable and real. So there was this amazing mix of fashion fantasy and fantastic fashion product on the same runway.
I don’t want to make you choose too many memorable designers amongst so many but…
Craig Green! The plank face show. And of course that was menswear, which we’d started showing in the MAN showcase because of one of the greatest of all, Kim Jones. I’d met Kim and seen his work—it was just him and Lucy at the start, and we lent them a studio for their sales—but at the time we could only show womenswear. So I went into Topshop and told them I wanted to do men’s too. I remember I said: ‘Look at Kim Jones. He’s absolutely brilliant. So I really think there needs to be a platform like Fashion East for menswear.’ They directed me to Topman. And at Topman they said: ‘What a great idea—why aren’t we already doing this?’ And it was as easy as that. Thanks to the lovely Gordon Richardson.
Which leads us back to Craig…
Yes! I’d got chatting to him at CSM. And I remember, the way he talked me through his portfolio, I was basically on my knees hoping he would be part of Fashion East. He’s such a beautiful soul. And then there’s Matty Bovan, who works so on his own terms, and who’s just in his own flow at all times—he’s never not been in his own universe. There’s Jonathan [Anderson], who was actually selected through the Topman panel: rightly, everyone was right mad about him. Of course I’ll always remember the frilly shorts show. Plus you’ve got Simone, who has built this beautiful family business, and Martine Rose, who is so fiercely independent. I love Knwls, who work so hard and are doing very well. But there are so, so many… Cassette Playa, Ashley Williams, Nensi Dojoka, Karoline Vitto, Standing Ground, Richard Malone, Nasir Mazhar, Henry Holland, Johanna Parv, Charles Jeffrey, New Power Studio, Rottingdean Bazaar: I mean we could be here all day!
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It’s such a broad mix. Do you have any criteria when choosing designers?
No. It’s never as conscious or strategic as that. It’s never about choosing designers who we think could end up at big fashion houses, even if some of them do. It’s more just who has the whole package? Who do we like both for their designs and their personalities? If you look at our website, to apply you don’t have to have any stockists. One of the new designers at this spring 2026 show coming up on Friday is called Louis Mayhew, and he works full time as a painter and decorator. Making clothes is something he does in evenings and weekends when he’s not doing his job. And he’s awesome.
So what happened when Topshop dropped out of the picture?
We had a season or two where we didn’t find a sponsor that we gelled with, and our family from Truman looked after us. Then Nike came along, and it’s been just great ever since.
Do you still enjoy the process?
You can’t fake talent. And seeing it for the first time, and then being able to help bring real talent to wider attention is always satisfying. I’m not an emotional or sentimental person at all, but I cry at so many of the shows. Because you can just feel the triumph in the room sometimes, when people in the room have just seen something wonderful that they wouldn’t otherwise see.
Is this anniversary moment making you think about the future of Fashion East?
I’m always thinking about the future. Always asking if it still works. But I think it does. We’re not looking to scale, we’re non-profit, and it’s philanthropic. And that’s part of the beauty of Fashion East—we’re not locked into the impulse to do more and more and get bigger and bigger. We still go around to meet emerging designers, and sit with them in their studios, and do all the stuff we always have; talk through their work, connect them with stylists, work out how we can help them borrow shoes. In a way it’s like an extension of the education process, a kind of finishing school. And it’s always satisfying to be part of somebody’s realization about their future, whatever that might be. If we help them decide to build their own brand, or work for someone else’s brand, or even realize at the end of it that they’d be much happier painting or doing something else entirely, then that’s good for us. We just help people do their thing.