Celebrating 40 Years: An Oral History Of London Fashion Week

'My first ever show was to watch Agyness Deyn walk for a designer called J Maskrey in 2004. I was at uni, so snuck in and stood at the back – I was so nervous watching her I almost threw up. It was before social media so all I had seen of fashion shows was runway pictures, so I loved the glamour of it all, but also I’d never seen anything like the scrum to get in and out. I was also shocked it was in a tent!

'My stand-out fashion week memory, however, has to be my first ever show with Fashion East. It was at the BlueBird on the Kings Road and I was so naive and excited I didn’t even really realise the gravity of what was going on. Seeing the pictures in the newspapers the next day was like living on a different planet for a week. At the Fashion East shows all three designers shared a backstage area and we had one model who had been booked for two of the three shows. She walked in the first show and then had to be in different clothes, hair and make up within about five minutes for my show, which was the last. The poor thing had her shoes cut off, 20 hairdressers braiding her hair and three makeup artists on her the minute she finished one walk. I remember telling her to walk with a closed fist because we didn’t have time to do the nails.

'In the 2000s there was more room for experimentation and less pressure on the commerciality of everything. I mean I showed a T-shirt that said “flick yer bean” on it! I definitely think we used to let loose a bit more at the parties too. Less camera phones and social media meant we were too busy having a good time to make it look like we were having a good time on Instagram.'

'I was on the cover of a design magazine in the US, wearing my carbon fibre sprinting legs, and Nick Knight gave the issue to Lee McQueen. Then I received a letter from Lee which in essence said: "I love what you have to say about what it means to be beautiful, will you get on a plane to London and meet with us?" I didn’t know anything about fashion or who they were, but a makeup artist said to me “prepare to walk on the razor’s edge.”

'I flew to London, arrived at a studio and was presented to Lee – he was very shy, but he gave me a big bear hug. It was an instant feeling of being seen and known. He had architectural drawings of three different types of prosthetics which he unfurled onto a table – a wooden one, one in high-polished mirrored chrome and the last one was covered in feathers. He asked if I would open his next show and so I had three months to transform from an athlete into a runway model. I remember I practised this stalky walk around Georgetown University and even the mailman was giving me tips like “you need to swagger more!”

'The legs were finished seven hours before the show and weighed about ten pounds each. The stakes felt really high as nobody knew that a girl with prosthetic limbs was going to be walking this show and it had never been done before. The models backstage didn’t know and the crowd didn’t know – it was only later when Lee said they were prosthetics. The aim wasn’t to shock people, but to present something beautiful and to create an object of art.

'The actual catwalk had wooden spinning discs in it – imagine a Lazy Susan submerged and flushed in the floor. I was in a laced-up corset, couldn’t look down, could only move one arm, and it was hard to move in the wooden legs, and so I was in absolute panic right before the show. I thought it’d be either a huge breakthrough for diversity, or I would fall into the spinning discs because people would think that I was the girl with prosthetic legs and I couldn’t do it. I remember saying to myself: "I ran in an Olympic stadium, I can do this". Erin O’Connor was so kind to me, she positioned my arm on my hip and put her hand on my back before I headed out and that was it.

'For years I received letters about what that show meant to people. Having someone say: "I see you and you are allowed to feel beautiful" is very powerful. We should be able to do that for ourselves, but it’s harder said than done, and it is different when someone else who is a growing titan in their field gives you their blessing and says: "you are beautiful." Lee did that for a lot of women.'

'Fashion was always in our lives when we were kids because my aunty is Neneh Cherry and Judy Blame was my uncle. It was a time when fashion week had a very different energy to it, and there were shows in Deptford. It had an anarchic spirit before everything got commercialised. My family were always involved in the makings of London Fashion Week and part of the scene, but when I was first a presenter I was absolutely terrified of fashion week.

'When I started working again five years ago I wanted to embrace it as I love clothes. It was a real full circle moment for me. I think my most special season was February 2022 – there were eight of us in my team, so we got a big hotel room and did fashion week like crazy animals, with three or four shows a day for four days. It really does take a village to do it like that. I went to the Supriye Lele show and it was everything that embodies the multiculturalism and diversity of London. I can just tell that we are the same age and both grew up in London in the 1990s by looking at her clothes, but she brings in all her own heritage, family and individualism. Being asked was a real honour and moment for me, and a feeling only fashion week can give you – suddenly you are there and part of something you have admired. We went to Roksanda, Supriya and Rejina Pyo in one day, and I watched three brilliant women, having commercial success and creating beautiful clothes and it made me feel so filled up. I am very proud of our city and the way we continue to do fashion week our way.'

'I remember working on the very first London Fashion Week that was organised by Lynne Franks, who was my first agent at the time in the mid 1980s. For that first Katherine Hammett show we did a James Bond Miss Moneypenny hairdo and we set the wigs on rolled-up magazines, so the girls had these 1960s flick ups with headbands. Back then it would have been 15 models and three assistants and now it’s at least 50 models and 25 assistants. It was like a trade show, whereas now it is a huge public extravaganza and organised chaos.

'I generally have a lot of freedom. It’s a collaborative process with the designer, stylist, makeup artist and nail artist and we have the space to interpret the designer’s ideas in our own way. Ashish always has fun – one season we created oversized and exaggerated wigs and another season he said he wanted joy, 1960s and sexy, which led to voluminous shapes adorned with neon braids as headbands. London is always a hotbed of creativity; designers are never afraid to push the boundaries and it is much less corporate.'

'I was a booking Editor at ELLE UK from December 1998 until 2007, and my job was to go to fashion month to spot up and coming models to have in the magazine before anyone else. At this time in fashion we embraced weirdness and people who were less obviously beautiful were making their mark. Difference was starting to be celebrated and it was a privilege to book models who didn’t conform to supermodel beauty standards. You could tell someone was a star straight away on the catwalk by the way they moved. I remember Alek Wek was new at that time and her walk was almost like an alien or a gazelle.

'One special memory is when I was asked to cast for the Julien MacDonald show and because everybody wanted to be in it, I was like a demigod for the weekend. It was at the time that people were just starting to use celebrities in shows, and I cast both Jodie Kidd and Amber Valetta.

'Our fashion director Iain Webb was happy for us to be ambassadors for ELLE UK by having free reign of the fashion cupboard, and so we used it as our toy box. Iain used to sit on the front row and sketch all of the looks, which never happens now – it was so wonderful to watch him create this art as models walked.'

'My greatest memory will always be my first London Fashion Week. I’d always watched from afar and suddenly the doors opened for me and the next thing you know I’m walking for Richard Quinn in front of Kate Moss on the front row, who I absolutely adore. It was a surreal experience, but one I’ll never forget. That, or Katie Grand’s wild Perfect magazine parties. Think dancing drag queens on the table while people secretly smoke under the table of some fancy place in Mayfair. Debauchery!'