When Laura and I went to the Warehouse press event recently we were surprised to find a bona fide professional catwalk show. It's not that we expected a shambles from a UK high street retailer but the masses of champagne, cocktails, djs and the cast of Holby City was a little unexpected to say the least.
The high street is more important in fashion than it has ever been and is increasingly turning to designer tactics to sustain this status. This London Fashion Week Jaeger is having a catwalk show for the first time and I'm interested to see what they show and how it compares to the regular shows.
Once the preserve of the intimidating boutique designer names like Giles Deacon, Stella McCartney and Karl Lagerfeld can be bought from your high street shop. In addition to this high street prices have been creeping up for so long narrowing the gap between designer and chain store even further.
According to Dana Lewis' recent book even high-end designer brands with labels stating 'Made in France' or 'Made in Italy' will have been mostly made in a factory in China and hand-finished in the European countries. 'Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Luster' shows hows the gap between designer and high street is closing, the outsourcing of once crafted designer good means that distinguishing between the two is becoming increasingly difficult.
Topshop the fashion vanguard of the high street, is moving away from their high street roots with their New Gen designers at London Fashion Week and their Boutique, Unique and Premium ranges all of which are far costlier than your average high street purchase. Today marks the release of their successful Design ranges, with clothes from Todd Lynn, Richard Nicholl and Christopher Kane but to name a few of the designers. A few years ago diffusion ranges from avant-garde designers like Marios Schwab would have been unthinkable.
Fashion is big business now and high-fashion trends filter down to the general public a lot quicker than they ever have. The high street collections are arriving with the same fanfare that ready-to-wear or Couture shows have and I don't think it's going to be that long before Warehouse's flashy catwalk show become the norm for the high street every season.
