When Laura Weir made her first speech as the British Fashion Council’s new CEO this summer, she put inclusivity at the heart of her mission. She addressed issues that have long been discussed among the city’s fashion designers: whether it is possible to run a viable brand if you don’t come from money.
A lack of funding in the creative industries following the UK’s exit from the EU in 2020, coupled with prohibitively expensive studio hire and the astronomical cost of putting on a catwalk show, are among the factors that have made it more challenging for working-class designers operating today. Those from ethnic minority backgrounds face even greater challenges due to systemic racism and the barriers that come with it.
Weir intends to reset British fashion, making it more accessible for all. Working with Sarah Mower, a veteran journalist and the BFC’s ambassador for emerging talent, Weir has launched a program that takes designers back into their schools to connect directly with students and show them that a career in fashion is possible, regardless of background and geography. She has also waived fees for designers who are BFC members staging runway shows at London Fashion Week in September (brands listed on the official schedule previously had to pay participation fees of up to £30,000 ($40,683).
“It is profoundly difficult to be working-class in Britain,” Weir told CNN in an interview. “The barriers are numerous, and they are not unique to fashion but symptomatic of the wider inequalities in this country.”
Weir’s goal, “to make the pathway easier and fairer, particularly for those from working-class backgrounds” begins with “decentralization” and ” widening access,” she explained. “By taking fashion to where young people live, we hope to make a creative career feel less distant and more achievable. The challenge then becomes ensuring that there is a thriving creative fashion economy and jobs for those young people to enter in to” — a task that requires the support of the government, she noted, which until recently has been under conservative rule.
Indeed, the barriers faced by British fashion designers are part of a wider problem. The UK’s arts industry is largely dominated by those from affluent backgrounds. A recent report by British newspaper The Guardian found that almost a third of major arts leaders were educated privately. According to research by The Sutton Trust, 43% of Britain’s best-selling classical musicians and 35% of Bafta-nominated actors were alumni of private schools. Among classical musicians, 58% had attended university, as well as 64% of top actors, the data showed.
These are challenges that the UK government has also recognized. In the days ahead of London Fashion Week, Rosie Wrighting, a Labour Party politiciant and former fashion buyer, voiced her concerns that fashion was increasingly inaccessible for young people who did not come from privileged backgrounds, and applauded Weir’s initiatives, which “leveled the playing field for independent designers and small brands that have been priced out of participating in recent years.” She added that Weir’s decisions would “directly benefit children who grew up in situations like me.”
British fashion wasn’t always as inaccessible. The UK is known for having produced internationally acclaimed designers who didn’t come from affluent backgrounds, including Alexander McQueen, John Galliano and Vivienne Westwood. There is an argument that these designers might not have achieved such success if they had faced today’s hurdles.
“McQueen wouldn’t have made it today,” said the London-based fashion stylist and consultant Jeanie Annan-Lewin. “He needed a benefactor which he had in Isabella Blow” — the legendary fashion editor who bought McQueen’s graduate collection and continued to support him as a mentor throughout the early part of his career.
“She not only gave him financial support but also burst down doors and put him in rooms with other influential people,” Lewin continued. “There aren’t that many people like Izzy kicking around now. If you cut that person out, there’s social media. Unless you’re someone who’s really skilled in that area and know how to build a business online, there’s limited options.”
In 2025, there is a still a portion of British designers from lower socio-economic backgrounds making it work, including Tolu Coker, Steven Stokey-Daley, Aaron Esh, Bianca Saunders and Saul Nash.
Also among them is the Liverpool-born designer Patrick McDowell, whose environmentally conscious womenswear has garnered celebrity fans including Sarah Jessica Parker. McDowell credits their art teacher, Ali McWatt, for encouraging them to keep honing their design skills (they started making school bags using unwanted materials at the age of 13). “It’s so important for young people of all walks of life to know that it’s an industry that they’re able to go into,” they said.
When McDowell secured a place on Central Saint Martins’ Fashion Design Womenswear BA course, they applied for a student loan, but found that the £15,000 ($20,342) figure didn’t cover everything and ended up juggling three jobs while studying. “I have always felt that where there’s a will, there’s a way, but at a certain point you have to ask yourself should this be as hard?” they said.
In the UK, tuition fees — which have risen by 41% in the past 10 years — for a standard full-time degree course are currently priced at £9,535 ($12,932) per academic year. Meanwhile, living costs for a year in London, where many of the UK’s best arts schools are located, are estimated by Kings College London to run over £20,000 ($27,126).
Adding to that is the price of materials, which fashion design students are required to independently source to make their final ready-to-wear collection, which is then presented to editors and buyers via a catwalk show. McDowell financed theirs by using leftover Burberry stock through an internship they had completed at the British fashion house. They were also awarded a £4,000 hardship fund grant from the British Fashion Council. “I remember weeping when I was given that money,” they said.
The eponymous menswear designer Christopher Shannon, who comes from a working-class family, says it’s not just financial disadvantages that make it hard, but also the micro-aggressions that come with being from a lower socio-economic background. “I remember when I started being interviewed in magazines, my mum would ask why they always mentioned that I’m from Liverpool. They don’t talk about everyone else’s hometown. It felt like I was a novelty. The tone was odd,” he said.
Shannon added: “Whenever I won an award or was given a grant, there was a tacit expectation that I should be grateful all the time for it. If I’m good enough to win that prize, why isn’t that enough? These small things are just ongoing ways to belittle in a passive aggressive way.”
To show or not to show
For designers already working in the industry, the post-Brexit and post-pandemic world brings a new set of obstacles, including increased tariffs, customs checks, and delivery delays, which have made UK-made products more expensive to produce and ship overseas to stockists and shoppers. Not to mention, living costs in London are already significantly higher than the rest of the UK, with one report suggesting a decent standard of living can cost up to 58% more than in other urban areas.
For many designers, London Fashion Week remains an important platform to showcase their talent and gain global visibility among influential editors, who might publicize the clothes in their magazines, and buyers, who might buy the clothes for their stores. Yet, it remains an exorbitant yearly expense for brands. While participants are no longer required to pay to be on the official schedule, the cost of putting on a show — which involves paying for a venue, model casting, hair and makeup, and other production costs — can run into the tens of thousands.
For some designers, it can lead to debt. In 2023, Dilara Findikoglu was forced to pull out of her scheduled show just days before it was due to take place after realizing she didn’t have the budget. “I talk to my designer friends, and everyone is in the same boat,” she told CNN at the time. “We do one show, get into so much debt, and then we keep paying it until the next show.”
“So many designers I know ended up with tens of thousands of pounds of debt by the time they were in their mid to late twenties,” said Shannon, who moved back to his hometown in 2019 (Shannon stopped showing at London Fashion Week two years earlier). He now sells limited drops on his e-commerce website, while working on various visual arts projects and teaching part-time at different universities including the University of Chester and Manchester Metropolitan.
Some London-based brands like Rejina Pyo and Stefan Cooke have since pulled back on fashion shows entirely, opting instead to invest in pop-ups and intimate community-led events, while other labels such as Conner Ives, Chopova Lowena and Knwls only take part in London Fashion Week once a year.
Shannon hopes to inspire his students to explore alternate ways of working. “Designers are led to believe that if you stage a catwalk show then success will come and that just isn’t true,” he said. “My students don’t feel the need to play into that traditional model, they know they can make their own e-commerce platforms and not have to sell at Net-A-Porter.”
Alleviating the “enormous financial pressure” of a runway show is top of Weir’s mind. “In a post-Brexit landscape, the cost of staging a show should not be so prohibitive that it shuts out working-class voices,” she said. “We are actively exploring how we can make participation more accessible, so that opportunity is based on talent, not on means.”
For now, McDowell is viewing the new initiatives with some optimism. “There’s an intention for it to be better,” he said. “No one’s pretending it’s not a problem anymore, which is the first step forward.”