Style City: How London Became a Fashion Capital

The book explains and explores in a critical as well as a celebratory way the birth of today’s London Designer identity and the evolution of London Fashion Week. It starts in the mid-Seventies when the cultural recognition of British fashion designers scarcely existed. It covers the rise of Vivienne Westwood, John Galliano, Katharine Hamnett and many others who were to become household names. But at the same time, it relates the persistent failure of the British government and the clothing industry to respond to successive opportunities, leaving designers to create an industry for themselves. It ends with British designers established worldwide and London Fashion Week as one of the world’s four premier fashion events.