Fashion Foundry visit Trade Shows in London and Paris
In September and October, Fashion Foundry visited London and Paris to take a look at some trade shows and showrooms to work out what kind of brands were showing at each and compare the two cities.
The first stop was London Fashion Week Showroom. Held at The Store Studios,180 Strand, there were over 150 brands on show, split into sections: Ready to Wear, Jewellery, Accessories, Body, Headonism, British Fashion Council Show Space and NEWGEN pop-up. After browsing ready to wear and accessories, we came across Emerging Designer Mentor William Chambers Millinery stand in the Headonism section alongside Stephen Jones Millinery and the BFC Millinery Initiative where he first showed as a young brand seasons ago. The Body zone – housing lingerie, swimwear, athleisure and loungewear – is a growing section due to more people freelancing and working from home.
Two weeks later, we were on the pink carpet in Paris at the first of three Tranoi venues, Palais de la Bourse. The venue was beautiful and housed womenswear, accessories and shoe brands over two floors. We then worked our way to Carrousel du Louvre and finally Galerie VNH where BFC were showing some of London Show Rooms again. Between all three venues, 450 designers were on show.
Lorrian Davies sat with us at the UKFT stand and discussed how to get stand-out at a trade show with hundreds of other brands and the pros and cons of private showrooms. Alongside BFC, Lorrian researches and compiles a list and map of all the private showrooms and pointed out all the British designers showing, including Folk, Cats Brothers and Roberts | Wood. We followed her recommendations and visited D/ARK where Roberts | Wood showed alongside five others.
Visiting trade shows and showrooms is an essential way to work out what show is right for your brand. Seeing both London and Paris in a short period of time was great to be able to compare the two.
When visiting a trade show:
- Research brands who are showing
- Look at how brands are displaying their work
- Contact the organizers before you go
- Talk to us
To hear more about trade shows:
- UKFT http://ukft.org/
- British Fashion Council http://www.britishfashioncouncil.co.uk/
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