| COMB |

Maybe it’s the BBC America in me talking, but I believe in London Fashion Week.

I don’t think it’s a dying blip on the four-week fashion calendar, or a breather between New York and Milan to conveniently skip out on because, come Paris, names like Krystof Strozyna and Louise Goldin fall and don’t make a sound at Balenciaga, Givenchy, and Lanvin.

Too bad. Because if you really listen, you might hear notes you never knew were missing from the bigger capitals.

On the inside, London fashion has much to boast: strong multiculturalism, an often irreverent but ever gung-ho national spirit, and one the most accomplished design schools in the world, Central St. Martins.

But sometimes promise and pounds don’t equate. Sure London Fashion Week has a lot more going for it monetarily than, say, Karachi Fashion Week, but the collections go on, bless ‘em, with remarkably less funding and publicity than Milan, Paris, and New York afford their own shows. Additionally, with the recession I worry whether scholarships conceived for up-and-coming UK designers, such as the British Fashion Council’s New Gen, may have to pull funds at the expense of losing a talent with the potential to invigorate London’s week much like Hussein Chalayan and Alexander McQueen did in the 90’s.

But even if new designers receive the funding and support they need, what’s going to keep them in London? There are reasons, after all, why so many successful British designers, including Chalayan and McQueen, soon make that exodus to Paris or New York: UK manufacturing facilities pale in comparison to those across the channel, and commercial-minded New York is just the place for proving brand-power to critics who call your London collection, however brilliant, a one-off byline.

For proof, consider the buzz Scottish-born designer Jonathan Saunders has received since settling in NYC this season. With training focused in printed textiles, his extraordinary eye for transforming colors and shapes on simple silhouettes has Vogue critic Nicole Phelps speculating, “[h]e’d be a smart pick for the position that’s said to be open at the Italian print house Emilio Pucci now that Matthew Williamson’s contract is expiring.” Such a leap could be quite the coup professionally.

As for the approximate commercial value of his brand, the coming month should be especially revealing. Like fellow UK émigrés Luella Bartley and Alice Temperley before him, Saunders will unveil a capsule collection for Target’s GO International series on October 5th.

Of his move, Saunders told The Guardian: “The American market is so big that, although the buyers for the main stores do travel to London, you will automatically reach so many more by showing in New York. Despite the industry being an international one, there is a lot of editorial and financial support for New York fashion week that London just can’t compete with, because a lot of the biggest houses and magazines are there.”

So why can’t London compete? Beyond lackluster funding and manufacturing resources, I think the very thing that makes London exciting–that ballsy, experimental, fashion student mentality, so rousing one moment and off-putting and trying-too-hard the next– is also jeopardizing it.

Maybe it’s something that can only be learned in time, but the fuck ‘em all swagger only works for so long. Just ask Marc Jacobs, who declared bankruptcy several times in the 90’s before finally getting hip to the business and building a coherent identity in an industry that now pays him millions for that same quirky swagger, but, ahem– receipt in the trademark bag, please.

Yes, you may get lucky like Benjamin Cho and premier your witty “knitting” dress in a Colette storefront window. Yes, the late Isabella Blow (her ghost?) may just attend your senior Central St. Martin’s show, buy the whole she-bang, and nurture your enfant terrible career in her rocking arms as an influential industry muse. But it isn’t likely. The consensus: head east, or head west, but don’t head to London (at least right now) if you want a real, live brand.

Which is why even McQueen, as well as Chalayan and now Saunders, show elsewhere, away from their student roots. (Is it something of a coy St. Martins graduation cheer: Hey, hey, if McQueen makes it à Paris, why oh why can’t we?)

But I’m seeing change. I’m seeing the fade of the fuck ‘em alls and a How do you do? Have a look at my humble (but quietly brilliant) collection? troop emerging. In other words, I don’t quite see the experimental edge dying, but I do see a more sophisticated approach to it growing. Soon enough, given other improvements, the New Gen recipients may be able to bloom a brand right where they’re planted.