the value of fashion

London Fashion week justifies its funding with a document called "The Value of Fashion", written for them by Oxford Economics. Flicking through the pdf pages, it becomes obvious that they're about the value of clothes shops like the ones that sponsored the document. A bit like writing a report called "The Value of Banks". Another odd thing about the document is that it got some public sponsorship from UK Trade and Investment, who pay for some visitors to go to London Fashion Week, and the bit of the Greater London Authority that was then London Development Agency. I don't think taxpayers got good value from the report. For example you can't claim that Sports Direct is part of some specially useful or beneficial industry that deserves government encouragement and subsidised trade shows.

Meanwhile, if clothes shops really do contribute a lot to the economy, some of them find ways of not paying tax. Monsoon Accessorize PLC have called for clothes shops not to be taxed if they use the word "ethical" occasionally (this is from a firm that pays its UK suppliers late and breaks minimum wage law in both India and the UK) and Arcadia Group pays its tax in the boss's wife's name, at the Monaco income tax rate of zero.

https://web.archive.org/web/20140414223637/http://www.ukuncut.org.uk/targets/3 has some background:

The Value of Fashion: Sir Philip Green

Philip Green is a multi-billionaire businessman, who runs some of the biggest names on British high streets. His retail empire includes brands such as Topshop, Topman, Dorothy Perkins, Burton, Miss Selfridge and British Home Stores.

Philip Green is not a non-dom. He lives in the UK. He works in the UK. He pays tax on his salary in the UK. All seems to be in order. Until you realise that Philip Green does not actually own any of the Arcadia group that he spends every day running. Instead, it is in the name of his wife who has not done a single day’s work for the company. Mrs Green lives in Monaco, where she pays not a penny of income tax.

In 2005 Philip Green awarded himself £1.2bn, the biggest paycheck in British corporate history. But this dividend payout was channeled through a network of offshore accounts, via tax havens in Jersey and eventually to Green’s wife’s Monaco bank account. The dodge saved Green, and cost the tax payer, close to £300m. This tax arrangement remains in place. Any time it takes his fancy, Green can pay himself huge sums of money without having to pay any tax.

Before the election, the Lib Dems liked to talk tough on tax avoiders. But as soon as they entered the coalition, this pre-election bluster became just another inconvenient promise they quietly forgot. In August David Cameron appointed the country’s most notorious serial-tax avoider to advise the government on how best to slash public spending. Not a single Lib Dem minister uttered a word of complaint. A Guardian editorial denounced this as “shameful”.

Philip Green’s £285m tax dodge could pay for:

• The full, hiked up £9,000 fees for almost 32,000 students
• Pay the salaries of 20,000 NHS nurses

And if that’s not reason enough to take action against Sir Philip, it is worth noting that he has built his £5bn fortune on the back of sweatshop labour, using Mauritius sweatshops where Sri Lankans, Indians and Bangladeshis toil 12 hours a day, six days a week, for minimal pay.

Arcadia Group isn't singled-out for being a bad company like its rival, Sports Direct, but the practice of using minimum wage zero hours contracts is common in retail.


More than 1 million British workers could be employed on zero-hours contracts, new figures released on Monday reveal, suggesting that British business is deploying the controversial employment terms far more widely than previously thought.

The Value of Fashion: Sports Direct

Sports direct admit that 90% of UK staff are on zero hours contracts.

Three staff at the department for business are trying to think of an answer according to the minister. Oh and Sports Direct make no statement about the conditions in their Vietnamese factory suppliers. Oh and no badness is meant towards the lawyer who got IP work for sports direct and volunteered for a few board meetings at Ethical Fashion Forum after offering free IP surgeries to UK business at a neighbouring project called own-it.

The Guardian have a page about Sports Direct
One of the articles lists accusations, but leaves one out: the company is less hypocritical than others. It offers fake markdowns and says that's legal. It pays less than the minimum wage and maybe that's not quite legal but it has a defence in saying that some hours are spent waiting to be haranged and searched. It has a staff handbook which states you can be sacked for more or less anything, and, if no reason can be thought of, most of the staff are from two rival temp agencies anyway so a word can be had with the agency. This again might not be quite legal but is common enough. Most of us have had jobs a bit like this, but Sports Direct forces politicians to think about it, rather than hiding the facts in detail and denying them as adult social care providers do for your granny's weekly visit from a care assistant.

Here is the quote:

Ashley’s Sports Direct chain has made him the 22nd richest man in Britain, estimated by the Sunday Times Rich List to be worth £3.5bn. Temporary workers at his warehouse, by contrast, get paid hourly rates that work out below the minimum wage and suffer the kind of indignities – including rigorous harangues over the public address system to work faster – that come straight from a dystopian novel. Ashley, as well as being very rich, is also the unpopular owner of Newcastle United. The items he sells are made cheaply in east Asia. His warehouse depends on cheap eastern European labour. Few individuals so neatly encapsulate the fortunes, in both senses, of modern Britain.

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To do list and note to self: try to catch-up with this stuff. Those who read more newspapers and belong to trade associations probably find them a year earlier, but hey.

http://www.policyconnect.org.uk/apmg/events/launch-alliance-report-repatriating-uk-textiles-manufacture

The Alliance Report - repatriating UK textiles manufacture

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http://www.policyconnect.org.uk/apmg/home

All Party Manufacturing Group

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High End Designer Manufacturing

A report on Protecting Existing Resource and Encouraging Growth and Innovation

Report commissioned by the British Fashion Council, UK Fashion & Textile Association, Creative Skillset and Marks & Spencer Research by Oxford Economics and Glasgow Caledonian University

Steering Group
Introduction by Caroline Rush p4
Executive Summary p7
Key Findings p8
part 1
Introduction p10
CASE STUDY 1: Mulberry p14
part 2
Background Context p16
CASE STUDY 2: John Smedley p28
part 3
Survey Results p30
CASE STUDY 3: Sourgrape p34
part 4
Modelling Results p36
CASE STUDY 4: Private White V.C. p40
part 5
Conclusions, Challenges & Recommendations p42
part 6
Methodological Appendix p46
part 7
Acknowledgements p50

Update: last year the British Fashion Council commissioned a new report, with the usual bias towards people who talk about fashion, and high fashion, but with two sets of economists instead of one and some attempt to contact real manufacturers among the list. One of the sets of economists work at a college that runs London fashion courses, rather than factory training, but at least the use of two should encourage them to spot each others' special effects. There are even a couple of shoe factory people interviewed on the list from - Norman Walsh and Grenson.
Note to selt: read the report, which is called High End Designer Manufacturing
http://britishfashioncouncil.com/uploads/files/1/BFC%20Initiatives/manufacturing%20report.pdf

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Planb4fashion is a blog by Veganline.com which is a vegan shoe shop

UK Journalists paid by government to promote Chinese goods out of UK taxes

A government programme paid over £550 each in subsidised trips to sixty journalists & buyers every six months to report on shoes and clothes made overseas for London Fashion Week. MPs with shoe factories in their constituencies - Peter Bone in Wellingborough and Patricia Hewitt in Leicester East - did not write a single letter to protest..

Peter Bone MP is an accountant and MP for Wellingborough. His constituency has more shoe factories in it than anywhere else in the UK, but when the Sanders and Sanders factory was running-up to closure last year he showed no sign of knowing that the department for Business Innovation and Skills was subsidising the competition by sending buyers and journalists to report on glossy shows of Chinese shoes such as Terra Plana at London Fashion Week. If he did know that his constituents were paying taxes towards putting themselves out of work, he certainly didn't write a letter about it to the UK Trade and Investment, a ministerial agency which funds this joint scheme with London Development Agency. The department's only correspondence with him or the now-closed factory was a series of email tip-offs about export opportunities, such as overseas trade shows. They sent fifteen over about four years.Patricia Hewitt MP is MP for Leicester West, another shoemaking area with an unemployment rate of 13.8% . Equity Shoes was a major local employer until closure in January 2009, with a recent payroll of 200 and a 100 at closure. Like Sanders, it was a tenacious company - Sanders was a family trust and Equity was a staff co-op, so neither closed lightly. Patricia Hewitt had every reason to know about the scheme to put her constituents out of work because she had to sign for it: she was secretary of state for trade and industry (now the department for Business Innovation and Skills) between 2001 and 2005. She could have picked-up the phone during any of those years and asked

"why are we subsidising the competition?".

It is not revealed what she said in the office when she was minister, but a recent freedom of information act request that she did not write a single letter on the subject of Equity Shoes to the department between 2005 and the end of January 2010, even after being tipped-off in November that the question was going being asked.

"We have completed a search of our electronic information management systems and we do not have any record of UK Trade & Investment having received letters from the MPs for Leicester or Rushden on the subject of UK shoe manufacturers. "

Published freedom of information requests & replies on Whatdotheyknow.com describe a scheme that UK Trade and Investment call the International Buyers Programme, funded over roughly four years and still in place.

"since September 2005, UK Trade & Investment have paid British Fashion Council £215,555. This funding is for the international buyers programme for London Fashion week. The aim of the programme is to bring the most significant and influential buyers and press to London Fashion week each season."

London Development Agency quotes "£120k more than budgeted for 2008/9 was spent on LFW support as funding was allocated to support the International Guest Programme to cover reduced funding from UKTI", but it still got "UKTI support during 2008/09" of £33,000. Some of the money may be counted twice as British Fashion Council is also sponsored by the Mayfair Hotel and British Airways "The official airline of London Fashion Week", which are both likely to have catered for these expenses-paid trips: ""The LFW International Guest Programme, supported jointly by LDA and UKTI, saw 60 key, targeted international press and buyers assisted in their visits to LFW, through flight subsidies and accommodation. These visitors are given welcome packs and are accompanied through their stay as they visit the exhibition, catwalk shows and showrooms. Feedback on media coverage generated and orders placed is collected after their visits."

Did the money achieve anything good?

There are attempts to quote outputs on the projects report to the London Development Agency, but the list omits manufacturers. The only figures broken down in any detail are figures of media coverage, reported by an agency paid for by British Fashion Council. And there are anecdotal quotes. It's not often that Vogue is quoted on Indymedia but we may even add to the list of outputs by repeating this quote:

""The Season London Shone" wrote US Vogue's Sarah Mower. "Who'd have thought that London would shine at its brightest during a crisis. London's Designers squared up to the fall with an exceptional out-flowing of creativity and polish ... that made Fall 2009 this city's most dazzling performance for years."

...ends. Sources:
"Record Figures for London Fashion Week"
 http://www.londonfashionweek.co.uk/news_details.aspx?ID=86

"AGREEMENT FOR FUNDING RELATING TO CREATIVE
SECTOR SUPPORT - DESIGNER FASHION Parties: LDA / BFC
Ref: 23300 QUARTERLY REPORT 2008/9: Q3&4 [biannual update]"
 http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/london_fashion_week_biannual_upd#comment-7716

"Consultation re closed UK shoe factories" information request and reply on Whatdotheyknow.com:
 http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/consultation_re_closed_uk_shoe_f_2#comment-8530

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leicester_West

Pictures of Equity Shoes buildings post closure:
 http://www.28dayslater.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=40786
software too.

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This blog is by a vegan shoe company called Veganline.com that sells vegan shoes boots & belts

Correction: there was a debate "supported by..."

http://www.britishfashioncouncil.com/news/197/Tax-Breaks-for-Eco-Fashion-Businesses "This call for action follows this week’s RE: Fashion Summit and the recent British Fashion Council’s Estethica debate [^] on the promotion of ethical fashion and consumer engagement.  The campaign, supported by Monsoon, Vivienne Westwood, Edun, George at ASDA, From Somewhere and London College of Fashion’s Centre for Sustainable Fashion, calls on all parties to recognise that to effect change, sustainability and ethical fashion also needs to make commercial sense."

So European regional development money is not investing in my future or my region, as the label on Centre for Sustainable Development says, but on a press release by taxpayer-funded people asking for them to be exempt from tax. Along with their other sponsors, of course, who make things in other parts of the world.

"RE: Fashion Summit", is just the usual suspects under another name. This is Ethical Fashion Forum's web site: "Launched the RE:Fashion Awards- the official awards for ethical fashion, creating a platform for best practice across the supply chain. Held the RE:Fashion summit bringing together industry leaders and initiated the RE:Fashion manifesto, setting out sustainability parameters and targets for the UK industry." The link is to a google for "RE:Fashion manifesto", which finds two references, both on the Ethical Fashion Forum web site.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="240"] Centre for Sustainable Fashion is paid for by the European Regional Development Fund 2007-13[/caption]

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This blog is by a vegan shoe company called Veganline.com that sells vegan shoes boots & belts

Monsoon called for tax breaks on itself, after doing this to others...

What Monsoon said after a debate calling for tax breaks:
"We need ethical fashion to become part of the mainstream if the industry is to play its part in a more sustainable future" - Peter Simon,Chairman

What Monsoon suppliers say about being paid by Monsoon
Anonymous on Drapers' record | 27 February 2013 9:17 am
"We have worked with Monsoon in the past. The ruthlessness has always been there... unfortunately this is not a "one of a kind" example from the High Street."

Anonymous on Drapers' record | 8 June 2013 11:05 am
"Drapers should investigate Monsoon more carefully they have now asked each supplier to fill out a costing form to show how much they are making. They want a detailed breakdown of overheads and % profit! This along with their terms of payment and discount makes them one of the most unattractive retailers to work with.

I always thought it was a partnership supplying a retailer but Monsoon are incredibly ruthless and someone needs to speak up and investigate."This is a press release promoted by Monsoon.

PRESS RELEASE

Industry Calls for Tax Breaks for Eco Fashion Businesses

Harold Tillman, Chairman of the British Fashion Council is spearheading a campaign that will incentivise fashion businesses to work in a more sustainable way and to make eco fashion more affordable and accessible to consumers.

This call for action follows this week’s RE: Fashion Summit and the recent British Fashion Council’s estethica debate on the promotion of ethical fashion and consumer engagement. The campaign, supported by Monsoon, Vivienne Westwood, Edun, George at ASDA, From Somewhere and London College of Fashion’s Centre for Sustainable Fashion, calls on all parties to recognise that to effect change, sustainability and ethical fashion also needs to make commercial sense.

Maybe they want to get the money back that they donated to a political party. Everybody knows that multinationals channel payments through different countries and claim that the profit was made in the one with the lowest tax - Luxemburg for example - but Monsoon wants to save the costs of putting the money through somewhere like Luxemburg and to take the tax break right here in the UK. Oh here is a bit more about ethical fashion.

Monsoon Accessorize has been ‘named and shamed’ by the government for failing to pay the minimum wage.

The retailer was found to have owed £104,508 to 1,438 workers - putting it at the top of a list of 115 companies published today.

Monsoon said the failure occurred between 2011 and 2013 because of its policy of offering staff discounts upwards of 50% on its clothing, which they are encouraged to wear to work.
For a proportion of its 5,000 UK store employees the discount was mistakenly deducted from their wages, bringing them below the minimum wage threshold.

The issue came to light when HM Revenue & Customs reviewed Monsoon’s payroll system.

Staff parking space outside the Monsoon office .

Disambiguation: Monsoon Accesorize PLC is real

Whoops! page needs sorting.
It was just a line to say that Eddie Monsoon of Absolutely Fabulous is fiction, while Monsoon sponsors of the Estethica room at London Fashion Week, members of the Ethical Trade Initiative who have had their corporate responsibilility statements rejected by the organisation, Conservative Party donors who got a plug for their Indian-made garments for sale in Indonesia at the UK embassy in Indonesia, and occasional platform speakers at Ethical Fashion Forum alongside Futerra the advertising agency - that Monsoon is real. I think that was the gist.


Here are some other disambiguation aids for telling fact from fiction

You see much better dress sense on the tube going home from London Fashion Week than you do at the event. The first photo is fact: a downing street reception for fashionistas. The second photo is fact. Better dressed people on the tube. The third photo is fiction but quite similar to the first one.

 

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This blog is by a vegan shoe company called Veganline.com that sells vegan shoes boots & belts

PlanB4fashion.blogspot.co.uk can be read on one long page about ethics fashion and trade

Disambiguation: Eddy Monsoon of Absolutely Fabulous is fiction; Monsoon is fact

Absolutely Fabulous - Wikipedia, the free encyclopediahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absolutely_FabulousAbsolutely Fabulous, also known as Ab Fab, is a British sitcom created by Jennifer Saunders, based on an original idea by her and Dawn French, and written by Saunders, who plays…

Fair access to subsidies

PlanB4fashion wants fair access to subsidies. London Fashion Week offered subsidised stallls for 3 shows starting February 2008 to Ethical Fashion Forum, who's first archived web page of October 2007 shows connections with other exibitors. EFF were also keen to turn-down members who might be troublesome.

London Fashion Week is funded by the Greater London Assembly (London Development Agency in 2007-8) out of European Regional Development Grant. In other countries like Portugal it is used to help local manufacturers co-operate, train and export.

UK government spends the money in a different way. Centre back at London Fashion Week is Gallahad Clark selling his "arguably more democratic" shoes made in China and centre forward is probably Elizabeth Laskar of Ethical Fashion Forum turning-down awkward members. The money is syphoned-off to promote Chinese factories rather than develop any region of Europe.

How to reduce poverty

PlanB4fashion wants government to realease more tax data to help people who produce trade directories in the UK; at the moment, you could have a factory a bus-ride away and not be able to find out what they make or the minimum order. There are plenty of wholesalers and consultants willing to help you get stuff from Bangladesh because the margin allows more people to be involved, but if you want to buy from the UK you have to do a lot of homework.

Fashion Capital | Ethical Manufacturing - Right Here in the UK - Ethical Manufacturing - Right Here in the UK ?... | Manufacturhttp://www.fashioncapital.co.uk/News/25974-ethical-manufacturing-right-here-in-the-uk.html Leading the way is our very own FashionCapital factory based in North London. Due to increased demand in production the factory recently moved from 4,500 square foot which…

Redundancies and food poverty encouraged by fashion pundits

Last night on telly was a programme about food poverty in the UK and the difficulty of many people in the UK to afford meals from our run-down welfare benefits in a run-down manufacturing economy, broken down by unfair exchange rates, neglect, and lack of respect for the extra costs involved in making something in the fairer working conditions of the UK.

It would be easy to estimate the number of jobs lost in Leicester directly as a result of people like Ethical Fashion Forum and London Fashion Week and Estethica - often job lossses that they have engineered on money paid to them by Greater London Authority, Defra, or Department for Business, out of taxes paid for those who are being put out of work. One of the worst offenders Orsulanda de Castro is speaking at the moment to I am typing this rather than listen!

I just saw a slight glimpse of the world that I recognise overlapping with Ethical Fashion Forum's world when a guest speaker about closed-loop polyesters needing a larger investment than UK textiles mills could afford; about the way production management has usually been removed from college corriculums in favour of design or "fashion"; prioduction people are scarce at large company head offices. There was a great quote "production people are the brokers of fair relationships" in industry.

plan B 4 fashion manifesto

4-point manifesto from the blog at https://facebook.com/planB4fashion .
Points 1 & 2 are about fashion production in the UK.
Points 3 & 4 are about reducing poverty in the far east - for example Bangladesh.

1.
UK government can help UK factories compete, by releasing tax data to say what factories exist.

Data could be made-up into trade directory by anyone who wanted to do the work as happens already with simlar data. Some companies would find ways of covering their costs and cross-selling other services. If not, perhaps a small grant of a volunteer effort could get good directories written.

Better trade directories are a very cheap way of re-balancing the UK economy so that it begins to pay enough taxes and employ enough people. Factories help money circulate around the UK, bringing taxes back into government, and creating jobs in run-down areas. Factories also have to be very lean to pay the costs of paying for a democratic welfare state with a UK living-standard and rents. They don't all have staff for sales or PR or tendering for contracts or submitting entries to competitions. Some don't even have office or reception staff. They need terse orders from well-informed customers who know exactly what the factory makes, the technique used, and maybe the minimum orders for free set-up or free UK delivery.

2.
UK government can change the fashion week that we pay for in taxes (through Greater London Authority and Department for Business' UK Trade and Investment).  It can insist that exhibitors are nominated by UK or European factories & display the names of the factories. This would get better value for UK taxpayers' money: UK taxpayers pay to promote employment amongst other UK taxpayers. UK taxpayers promote a clothing brand and a factory for the same budget that just paid to promote a clothes brand in the past; it's two results for the price of one.

Factory-vetted designers are probably reasonable to work with, from a factory's point of view.
At the moment London Fashion Week pays for extra coaching for designers who aren't businesslike - even some in the past who didn't have a way of making the clothes they put on show! There is an export guarantee system that insures their bad debts from overseas buyers,  who sometimes take advantage by not paying. So, in the worst case, a fashion week and UK Trade and Investment subsidy can promote a designer who is hard to work with, then pay the bad debts when the designer isn't paid, and put rival producers out of work because they're not in the PR business and get overlooked. An example is Equity Shoes of Leicester who were overlooked as ethical footwear producers while Terra Plana, who bought shoes from China, got the PR. Both are now closed.


For a long time there was only anecdotal evidence that London Fashion Week helped taxpayers. Now they have a 50 page "Value of Fashion" report in very small print which seems to show huge returns. We know from the Olympics' effect on London tourism that these reports are partly a sales pitch; they are not impartial. Read closely, the report admits the opposite of what the headline summaries say. Estimates of how money circulates are based on decades-old data about how many shoe factories existed in the UK, including many like Equity Shoes that have now closed. Most of the money circulates amongst people who could get other jobs in PR and fashion journalism. And no estimate is made of the cost of crowding-out UK apparel suppliers from the market.

3.
Bangladeshi, Pakistani, Indian & Chinese governments can reduce poverty.
The methods that worked in the UK 100 years ago were universal schooling and national insurance. Schooling for girls helped them become more assertive and reduced the rate of child birth. Pensions helped parents plan for old age without having to have as many children as they possibly could.

The first modern national insurance scheme was introduced in Germany, just before its industrial revolution.  It is not too early for Bangladesh to start one now.

The difficulty is how someone in the UK can effect government in Bangladesh, beyond a few factory checks or a fair-trade scheme. This is the next point.


4.
European and US government can change the tariffs that tax trade from countries without democratic welfare states like Bangladesh or China.
This helps people in Bangladesh as well as their cousins in Bolton. There is a consensus.
A formula for tariffs be worked-out over time.

• More democracy earns a lower tariff - there is already a democracy index that could help this one get started.


• More of a welfare state earns a lower tariff.


• More human rights earn a lower tariff. And the reverse could also be true, so a country with more expensive exports because of the cost of a welfare state can still compete on price with China; the worst country no longer sets the market price for garment production.

Western governments are already trying to help eastern ones become more stable and better governed, if only to prevent the tide of misery reaching Europe in the form of wars and refugees. Search "Bangladesh" on gov.uk and find this...

"we are working with Transparency International Bangladesh and other civil society organisations to generate more debate between the government and citizens about progress in improving the providing services like health, education and legal services, and to beat corruption."

Unfortunately, western governments are also paying Bangladesh to keep its poor, with grants, development work and tariff-deals that depend on there being a lot of very poor people in Bangladesh. The rich in Bangladesh do very well out of this system. Their government even has enough free cash to pay for an export subsidy in a country that gets aid from the UK. Factory owners now get some free training for their staff paid by the UK taxpayer. With luck, the firm consistent pressure of conditional tariffs would change their minds and the way they run government. If not, the tariff system would raise some money towards the 0.7% that UK taxpayers pay in aid, to pay for Pakistani healthcare when the Pakistan government only pays 0.8% on health.

http://www.vogue.co.uk/news/2010/10/12/applications-open-for-lfw

Ethics of Estethica

If anyone really understands the ethics of Esthetica, please send them on a postcard or write them on our facebook page!

Design Calling

Applications for LFW’s most coveted schemes are now open

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Planb4fashion is a blog by Veganline.com which is a vegan shoe shop

Fashion Week subsidy for the UK, not China

Fashion Week subsidy for the UK, not China. A proposal

The circulation of tax money spent on London Fashion Week should benefit more taxpayers and help rebalance the economy. The money should not just go to big business, London service industries, and Chinese factories. Think of this like a manifesto idea.

Current estimates of where the money goes are based on decades-old figures about how many factories make things in the UK. Now there are less. Other money circulates to PR agents, photographers, and the London parts of international fashion operations. These do not help to rebalance the economy towards the regions and manufacturing.

How?
UK factories should nominate and have their names quoted

Reference requests. Subsidise only the fashion companies that can get a reference from a UK or European factory.

Publish the names of these factories during the fashion week.

Hold the event in Leicester or some town with clothing factories in it and cheap hotels, rather than an expensive and over-crowded town like London.

Who?
Taxpayers pay London Fashion week via the Department for Business and Greater London Authority

London Fashion Week is subsidised by the Department for Business, The Department for Culture, and the Greater London Authority who pay a trade association called British Fashion Council to organise it.

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Planb4fashion blog posts are by Veganline.com which is a vegan shoe shop