Designer exports from the capital set to soar on the back of London Fashion Week
London's high-end fashion brands are in high demand – and London Fashion Week is expected to boost exports even further.
According to the Department of International Trade, the sales of UK designer clothes have grown by 20 per cent in the last decade and are now worth between £2.5bn and £2.9bn.
As a whole, the UK fashion industry provides 800,000 jobs and is estimated to be worth £26bn.
Read more: Kanye West has helped boost Adidas' fashion sales by 50 per cent
London Fashion Week – which started on Friday and ends tomorrow – will showcase the capital's designer talent, and is expected to help designers export their goods.
Parveen Thornhill, London regional director at the Department for International Trade, said: "As one of the 'big four' fashion festivals along with New York, Milan and Paris, London Fashion Week is a huge opportunity for budding fashion brands.
"We expect to see a lot of London Fashion brands making useful connections that could well turn into new export opportunities. Just last year 5,000 people attended Fashion Week, many of them buyers, and not just buyers from the UK."
Tonight, Burberry, one of the UK's biggest fashion houses, will show off its new collection. But fashion shows are no longer an exclusive event for press and buyers – the event will be broadcast live on Facebook, bringing the brand onto laptop screens throughout the country.
To keep up with an industry moving at lightning speed, Burberry now puts its entire collection for sale online as soon as the models hit the runway.
Shoppers could get the clothes from Burberry's last show – A Patchwork – hours after seeing them broadcast.