A few days ago the British Fashion Council and eBay announced the launch of an exciting new initiative called BFC Contemporary at The Arts Club in Mayfair. Its core aim will be to strengthen United Kingdom’s contemporary ready-to-wear through mentorship and strategic commercial opportunities for specially hand-picked fashion designers. Both British Fashion Council and eBay will work together to provide the designers with much needed support and help them build their strategies, with focus on brand concepts, production, budgets, scalability, online and offline growth and consumer experience. The programme is designed to address the specific needs of the designers and includes access to industry specialists.
This new project was put together to deal with the increasing demand for worldwide contemporary fashion, and the lucky designers chosen to become the recipients of the 2014 BFC Contemporary are: Alexis Barrell, Georgia Hardinge, Paper London, Prism and Zoë Jordan. To celebrate London Fashion Week SS15, you may be delighted to learn that each designer will be asked to create a limited edition product that captures the essence of their signature aesthetic, which will then be sold in a limited edition run through the first ever BFC Contemporary shop on eBay.co.uk to over 18 million online shoppers this September. So you will be able to get your hands on some one-off pieces that no-one will have. Exciting!
The announcement took place after key fashion industry insiders gathered bright and early at 8.30am to mingle and have breakfast. Caroline Rush, CEO of the British Fashion Council then gave us all a very warm welcome and told us all about the new scheme. “We are delighted to support and help accelerate the growth of these very viable fashion businesses. Each of the inaugural BFC Contemporary designers possess incredible creativity and strong brand concepts. With invaluable support from eBay, these designers mark a new wave in British contemporary design, the rise of which we aim to fuel with this new initiative”, said Caroline. It was an absolute pleasure to see her again in person, and she came over for a chat to ask about me.
This is not the first time the BFC has worked with eBay as back in 2012, eBay sponsored the BFC’s Fashion Forward initiative and supported House of Holland, Holly Fulton, Louise Gray and Mary Katrantzou.
I am very much looking forward to seeing the BFC Contemporary shop in September, and seeing what pieces of treasure it will stock!
