The East London Fashion Cluster

Refashioning East London. Revitalising the UK.

The East London Fashion Cluster

Draft for Discussion

Refashioning East London. Revitalising the UK.

Executive summary London is one of the world’s top three most visible fashion cities. The UK fashion industry is a global powerhouse. But there are many challengers and our supply chain is vulnerable. To maintain our influence, we need a decisive move.

Our aim? To bring the ‘Made in Britain’ label back by creating an industrial fashion cluster, based in East London. This will deliver benefits for the whole of the UK fashion industry. We want to help British fashion designers and brands work with British suppliers and creative tech, with a free choice based on proximity, price competition and skills.

The East London Fashion Cluster will bring together manufacturers, surface decoration textile studios, garment technology labs, designer showrooms and ateliers, digital creative agencies, journalists, stylists, media labs, technology providers, and entrepreneurs. Living, working and meeting in an environment built by master planners, place makers and engineers. Supported by a hybrid fashion business incubator and accelerator.

In the 1970s and 80s, offshoring destroyed the historic manufacturing base in East London and eroded the UK’s craft skills. Over the last 10 years, fashion has returned to East London, with significant growth in design, wholesale and retail.

East London is now unquestionably the UK’s centre for fashion designers and ateliers. Hackney has specialised in fashion ateliers and internationally renowned designers have located their business there. Green Street in Newham is an Asian fashion phenomenon and the newly opened East Shopping Centre is touted as Europe’s first Asian and Muslim boutique retail environment. Specialist universities are moving into East London -- University of the Arts London is moving its giant London College of Fashion to Stratford.

This is where Olympicopolis at Queen Elizabeth Park in Stratford makes its huge contribution to the competitiveness of East London and the UK over the next decades. Not just a cultural magnet, the Olympicopolis scheme will be critical industrial infrastructure for the creative economy.

Already, East London contains around a third of the capital’s fashion SMEs. Across the capital, there are 135 high-end fashion manufacturers. Many are less than five years old and they are increasingly based in East London, with networks to businesses in Essex, Kent and the northern corridor between Liverpool, Manchester, and Leeds.

But there still aren’t enough UK manufacturers who can compete. Designers are forced to turn to offshore supply chains and emerging markets to satisfy production demand. In a climate of economic turbulence, that’s becoming trickier.

What will our world-leading designers do in the future? Make it in Britain. Because our East End Fashion Cluster will have revived UK fashion manufacturing. East London is a hothouse of SME talent, ripe for investment, and for big businesses to build on, on an industrial scale.

In bringing our working city to life, we’re not trying to reinvent the past. We’re redefining the industry’s future – its products, technology services, and business to consumer relationships.

Support is already on the way. The European Commission has identified Creative Industries as one of seven emerging industries to target in their H2020 programme. New London-based investment funds have been created to discover and invest in the next big fashion tech innovation. East London is pioneering tech in fashion, and that’s only going to make us more visible, and more successful. Global investors will catch on quickly.

The Fashion Cluster allows us to dream big and scale up. Disney could set up an innovation studio in East London. H&M, the world’s biggest fashion retailer, could move its design room to London. Investment would follow. East London would become the most powerful fashion industry driver in the world.

If you’re a politician, business owner, manufacturer, local authority official or investor, please help us create the East London Fashion Cluster as an industrial centre of global fashion.

1. Our vision puts East London at the forefront of fashion.

Imagine a world-class industrial fashion cluster in East London – one that rivals New York. A cluster that builds on the region’s centuries-long fashion heritage, boosts surrounding businesses, and delivers the Olympic legacy as part of Olympicopolis at Queen Elizabeth Park in Stratford. One that leads Europe in the research, design, development and production of high-end designer fashion and next-generation fashion tech.

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It’s already begun – from the ground up. Over the past ten years, the fashion industry has converged on East London. Hackney is creating a major fashion hub of retail and workshop ateliers. Leading designers like Erdem and Christopher Kane now call it home. And University of the Arts London (UAL) is set to move its entire London College of Fashion – 5,700 students, specialising in all parts of the industry – to Stratford.

Our strategy? Act now. Build on these developments. Accelerate them tenfold.

It begins with decisive, strategic intervention by the Mayor and government, supported by the UK fashion industry, and by educational, creative and cultural stakeholders. Together, we’ll encourage creative entrepreneurs and SMEs to move to East London. We’ll start training local workforces. We’ll plan affordable spaces, facilitate investments, and build factories and workshops – large and small.

Our aim? It’s ambitious. A cluster of fashion manufacturers, surface decoration textile studios, garment technology labs, designer showrooms and ateliers, digital creative agencies, journalists, stylists, media labs, technology providers, and entrepreneurs. All living, working, and meeting in an environment built by master planners, place makers and engineers. All supported by a hybrid fashion business incubator and accelerator.

As the distinction between technology, engineering and creative sectors becomes more blurred the potential becomes even more exciting. This intersection between disciplines could re-invent the future of retail or take more UK brands into the smart materials market. Whatever is born from this convergence we know it will be invention at its best. And we know it relies on an infrastructure to enable collaboration, new thinking, new business models, social and sustainable planning and, of course, a will to succeed.

A recent report on designer fashion, digital technology and business growth commissioned by the British Fashion Council states:

“…the industry needs to take a proactive approach to working with public bodies to identify and resource the research programmes that will shape the fashion industry in the 21st century and which will help ensure that the UK maintains its leading position in the years ahead.”

With this approach in mind, our vision is a thriving ecosystem of manufacturing, research, retail and distribution that connects the

whole country to the industry, and nurtures its finest talent. A re-fashioned East London – and a revitalised UK.

2. What clusters are. And what our fashion cluster could be.

Industrial clusters are geographical concentrations of firms from related sectors that collaborate and compete with each other, and have links with local institutions – particularly universities. There are now 40 clusters in the UK, 20 in London. Some are long-established, like the ‘golden triangle’ of research between Oxford, Cambridge and London. Or the Scotch whisky industry. Or the South Yorkshire metals industry. Others are new, like the industrial concentrations across Bristol, Bath and Swindon, and the Midlands’ Motorsport Valley.

Clustering is a high-level strategy. A cluster brings expertise, skills and specialties together, joining up businesses to create an industrial ecosystem with widespread competitive advantages. Wherever they spring up, clusters bringing jobs, revenue, and new value chains for future growth.

The numbers say it all. The UK’s 31 biggest clusters contain 8% of the UK’s businesses. But those 8% contribute 20% of the nation’s GVA.

And it’s time for a fashion cluster in East London.

Fashion clusters are increasingly how countries across the world choose to develop their fashion industries. In Johannesburg and New York, they protect and stimulate fashion districts through cross-sector funding that encourages manufacturers, designers, colleges and retailers to work together.

In a fashion cluster, every part of the industry is represented. That means increased investment in R&D. Manufacturer collaboration gives designers freedom to take risks – experimenting with craftsmanship and technology. Innovation accelerates. Independents influence traditionalists. They also stimulate established companies to innovate and influence the supply chains and distribution channels.

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Most clusters only create knowledge jobs. But fashion clusters create blue-collar jobs as well, and offer local, social and community benefits alongside commercial ones.

East London is the perfect setting. A creative environment for creative people, primed for all the benefits clusters can offer. London itself is an influential fashion city, known for its originality and entrepreneurialism. In its multicultural population, a diversity of unique histories and skills come together to enrich and reinvent fashion. Creativity thrives here.

Clusters usually start by building on what’s already there – people meeting by chance as well as by design. That’s happening in East London right now: exciting artists have made it their home, workshops are being founded left, right and centre, and LCF is moving its campus to Stratford.

We have an incredible opportunity here. Together, the London boroughs of Hackney and Newham, the Mayor of London, and the European Commission together with the British Fashion Council, UAL’s London College of Fashion and key industry leaders can develop a world-leading industrial fashion cluster in the heart of Hackney. An intersection of industry, SMEs and academia – bringing fashion design and manufacturing, digital technology, ateliers and factories together.

Innovative cross-sector partnerships are already being developed by UAL’s London College of Fashion and the transformational Hackney Fashion Hub. This cluster will amplify that. Intriguing partnerships are opening up with Birkbeck University of London, University College London, and Loughborough University all set to be positioned nearby. What would fashion look like, if infused with innovative thinking from engineering and architecture?

We can glimpse ahead already. Professor Helen Storey has been experimenting with catalytic clothing that purifies the air. Iris van Herpen has been pioneering industrial stereolithography techniques.

3. Olympicopolis: The cultural powerhouse of the cluster.

Clusters usually manifest as science parks, with good transport links, next to a technology campus. But creative clusters need more than 8

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that. Creative people are super-consumers of culture and fashion, who work where they play and live – often in exciting, multicultural urban areas.

This is where Olympicopolis makes its huge contribution to the competitiveness of East London and the UK over the next decades. Not just a cultural magnet, the Olympicopolis scheme will be critical industrial infrastructure for the creative economy.

Sadler’s Wells, the powerful and inspiring V&A and the Smithsonian Institute archives are all setting up bases in Stratford alongside University College London and UAL’s London College of Fashion. Joint projects will blossom as culture meets education in close proximity.

We could create a shared performance facility: a multifunctional space that adapts to become a dance studio, a gallery or a media studio. We could open it up to students, researchers, artists, and professionals alike – to try new ideas, challenge existing traditions and practices, foster collaboration, and share knowledge.

4. Universities: champions of business.

Clusters usually start from the bottom-up. Government lends its support informally, sending senior ministers to support key moments in the cluster’s growth – and occasionally through targeted capital investment or regulatory reform. But the real boost often comes from champions at a local level. Local government and local enterprise partnerships, or local industry-funded campaigners.

More and more, those local champions are universities. Universities have been playing a critical role in both city-scale and wider economic development.

UAL’s London College of Fashion, University College London, Loughborough University and Birkbeck will be our fashion cluster champions and facilitators.

London College of Fashion will bring specialist fashion sector knowhow. Partner universities will bring tech knowhow, others will develop knowledge transfer offices – creating links with venture

capital and entrepreneur communities to stimulate innovation and create schemes to support start-ups.

Universities often mean incubation – offering space and support to new companies. London College of Fashion launched their pioneering incubator, the Centre for Fashion Enterprise, in 2003, and set the standard for incubation worldwide. But as other cities emulate us, we can learn from them. In Istanbul, In Cube’s fashion design SMEs benefit from a strong manufacturing base nearby. In New York, the Council of Fashion Designers of America’s incubator has a retail infrastructure. And at Boras University in Sweden, the incubator model involves co-located fashion SMEs alongside R&D labs to stimulate innovation across the fashion community.

We can be inspired by these international models to promote manufacturing, retail, and innovation across East London and the UK.

5. Bringing Made in Britain back.

The East London Fashion Cluster will be good for East London, for London, and for the UK.

Our interested stakeholders have supply chain networks that could carry the cluster’s benefits to the whole country. It could become an industrial centre of global fashion– an engine for the UK.

Over the past ten years, fashion’s been coming back to East London, with significant growth in design, wholesale and retail. That’s despite a huge setback in the 1970s and 80s, when offshoring destroyed our historic manufacturing base and eroded UK’s craft skills, so even designers who wanted to make in the UK were forced to move manufacturing overseas. In high-end fashion, there still aren’t enough UK manufacturers who can compete. Designers turn to offshore supply chains and emerging markets to satisfy production demand. But in a climate of economic turbulence, that’s becoming trickier – not to mention less attractive to consumers. Cross-border communication is a problem. And even offshore, prices have risen. New designers or designers looking for new suppliers don’t know where to begin.

What will they do in the future? Make it at home. Why? Because our Cluster will have revived UK fashion manufacturing.

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We want to see the ‘Made in Britain’ label back. We want to help British fashion designers and brands work with British suppliers, with a free choice based on proximity, price competition and skills. In fact, there are already fashion supply chain jobs returning to us: to East London, Essex and Kent, and perhaps the northern corridor between Liverpool, Manchester, and Leeds. We’re seeing new small-scale added value manufacturers setting up business in these proximities.

East London is unquestionably the UK’s centre for fashion designers, fashion ateliers and added value fashion manufacturing. It’s a hot house of SME talent, ripe for attracting investment, and for big businesses to build on, on an industrial scale. In bringing our working city to life, we’re not trying to reinvent the past. We’re redefining the industry’s future – its products, technology services, and business to consumer relationships.

In a new industrialized zone, we could dream big. Disney could set up an innovation studio in East London. H&M, the world’s biggest fashion retailer, could move its design room to London. Investment would follow. East London would become the most powerful fashion industry driver in the world.

And we wouldn’t forget our emerging designers. The British Fashion Council (BFC) would continue to support upcoming fashion talent and business with schemes and platforms like the BFC/Vogue Designer Fashion Fund, BFC/GQ Designer Menswear Fund and New Generation; alongside Fashion East, MAN and Fashion Scout.

Amazing things are already happening in East London. Green Street in Newham is an Asian fashion phenomenon and the newly opened East Shopping Centre is touted as Europe’s first Asian and Muslim boutique retail environment. This multi-million pound investment by developers ACR Investments has put Green Street well and truly on London’s retail map. Hackney has specialised in fashion ateliers. Internationally renowned designers have located their business here – like J W Anderson, who’s lived and worked in Dalston since an investment by global fashion conglomerate, LVMH, in 2013.

In the past two years alone, UAL’s London College of Fashion has incubated and supported 485 SMEs in Hackney. Across the capital, there are now over 135 high-end fashion manufacturers, many of them less than five years old.

Phase one of the ambitious Hackney Fashion Hub has launched in Morning Lane, and Phase two has attracted a huge investment. Close by in Old Street, there’s a proliferation of micro, small and medium digital tech businesses, many working in fields related to fashion. Investors are watching!

And in five years, London College of Fashion is moving to Stratford. The college already has three sites in East London– in Shoreditch, Hackney and Old Street, specialising in footwear and leather goods, fashion design, garment technology and jewellery design and making. Now the college’s business and media schools will join their design and tech counterparts in East London.

Over five and a half thousand talented students and 110 years’ expertise in education, employment, training, skills, and industry knowhow – within a creative and entrepreneurial culture – coming East.

6. Fashion – makes our economy look good too.

Almost 850,000 companies. 5 million jobs – And 3% of EU (non economical) GDP – The European fashion supply chain is huge – and it’s transforming.

It’s a complex transformation. In 2004 to 2009, the number of fashion manufacturing jobs dropped from almost 2.9 million to 1.9 million – but fashion distribution jobs grew by 500,000.

And while East London’s fashion garment district had diminished, London is now waking up to the value of the UK fashion industry. An industry that supports 797,000 jobs, with direct contributions of £26 billion and wider contributions of £46 billion to the UK economy. If we increase support and infrastructure, we can increase this economic impact.

Support is already on the way. The European Commission has identified Creative Industries as one of seven emerging industries to target in their H2020 programme. That means more funding for fashion.

Revenues will also increase for the city as the city becomes more visible. With the showcasing activities of London Fashion Week and London Collections: Men, the capital put itself on the map. That means a potential bigger stake in the global fashion industry – worth $662 (£448) billion for womenswear and $440 (£298) billion for menswear in 2014.These markets grow at 3.7% and 4.5% each year.

And let’s not forget the spill-over effects of huge revenues in fashion magazines and media, cosmetics, shopping, and creative and cultural tourism. Or the spill-over into broader creative industries – industries worth £71.4 billion a year to the UK economy.

In the UK, high-end fashion manufacturing generated a turnover of £1.76 billion, equivalent to 15% of the total output of the UK’s textiles, clothing and footwear manufacturing sector. These businesses employed 8,750 workers and made a direct contribution of £732 million to GDP.

We can’t precisely pin down the scale of the sector in East London, but we estimate that it contains over 30% of London’s fashion SMEs. In 2010, research demonstrated a strong tendency for high-end manufacturers to cluster in the East End. The ERDF put strategic funding into UAL’s London College of Fashion to set up our Designer-Manufacturer Innovation and Support Centre.

And our East London cluster will have a positive impact on smaller regional clusters, too, adding value to UK PLC. Already, creative clusters in Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, Bristol, and the Liverpool-Manchester-Leeds corridor are in early discussions with UAL to share best practice. These include consultancy support from London College of Fashion to Manchester’s Alliance Project, focusing on repatriating UK textiles manufacturing, providing mentors to talented fashion designers in the northern corridor through the ‘Leeds Fashion Initiative’ scheme, and some early discussions with Creative Scotland.

People are waking up to this. London’s looking more and more attractive. More and more companies, both small independent designers and bigger fashion businesses, are looking to manufacture here. It’s a positive cycle of creativity, investment and growth.

7. London. It’s London, look. London London.

We’re in the top three most visible fashion cities, worldwide.

The fashion city league table is produced by Global Language Monitor and updated each year. They use narrative tracking technology to analyse the internet, blogosphere, the top 250,000 print and electronic news media, and live social media sources. 14

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London, New York and Paris sit at the very top.

We have a lot of people to thank for that. The British Fashion Council marketing efforts make a massive contribution. So do UAL’s giant fashion colleges: Central Saint Martins and London College of Fashion. As do the Royal College of Art, the fashion collection teams in London’s museums, the V&A, the Fashion & Textile Museum, the Museum of London, the Courtauld Institute, the fashion festivals – like the Vogue Festival and London Fashion Weekend – and the city’s retail destinations.

But fashion moves quickly. There’s a crowd of fashion cities jostling for top place. To stay visible, we have to innovate.

London Fashion Week has always been innovative both in its events and marketing, and early adopters of a digital strategy. Our innovation has meant that though New York Fashion Week gets 135,000 visitors each season, and London gets 5,000, our visibility equals theirs, and puts London in the spotlight the world over.

Other innovations in the city include the first dedicated fashion business incubator, London College of Fashion’s Centre for Fashion Enterprise. This was launched 12 years ago, and now recognised as an international leader – and a regular topic for conference case studies. In 2010, it was praised by the London Mayor’s Office, which highlighted how the Council of Fashion Designers of America was trying to replicate the model.

In 2010, the UK Fashion & Textile Association (UKFT) launched Phase 1 of ‘Lets Make It Here’: an online searchable database for UK producers of apparel and textile products. In partnership with CFE, Creative Skillset, BFC, Grant Thornton, and NESTA, Phase 2 scaled it up to include high-end manufacturers. Again, our international competitors took note, and in 2012, we saw New York launch a similar initiative: ‘Maker’s Row NY’.

Our next innovation? The East London Fashion Cluster. It’ll make the world sit up and pay attention.

8. Technology, meet fashion. We think you’ll get along.Digital innovation has stormed the fashion sector, and East London is ready to take advantage. Next generation fashion tech is making headlines as fashion and technology converge – to make everything from high-tech watches and eyewear to digital business solutions and systems, and to ecommerce platforms.

London’s tech cluster started in Old Street, and now – in search of more space for its start-ups – it’s spreading east. New research from Future Fifty and job search engine Adzuna predict that in 2015,20,000 newtech jobs will be created in the UK, with an investment in tech worth £1.3 billion. 51% of these new jobs are likely to be in London. Fashion businesses that contribute to the European Community’s strategy for job creation and growth by adopting digital tools are rewarded: they grow faster, and integrate new practices throughout their business.

Technology could seriously benefit fashion business. 17% of all purchases in the UK are now online. 70% of UK Internet users buy clothing and footwear online. New London-based investment funds – like ASOS Technology Ventures and Frederic Court’s Felix Capital Partners – have been created, to discover and invest in the next big fashion tech innovation. Court was the first investor in e-commerce platform Farfetch back in 2010, valued earlier this year at $1 billion.

East London is pioneering tech in fashion, and that’s only going to make us more visible, and more successful. Global investors will catch on quickly.

9. Investors, walk this way.

Talent is converging on East London. Technology is developing. It’s time for London to capitalise on this, and form a compelling partnership and inward investment strategy to create a new value chain for fashion.

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New fashion technology investment funds are an exciting opportunity – but on their own, they’re not quite enough. We need to attract and create more, and that’s where UKTI can help.

East London already has an excellent track record of securing European funding to support fashion projects. During the 2007–2013 London ERDF programme, nearly £12.5million in ERDF funding was matched by nearly £12.5million of private and public funding for 11 projects accessible to East London creative businesses.

The 2014-2020 London European Structural and Investment Fund (ESIF) programme has just been launched. It prioritises start-ups first, then high-growth and international companies. East London’s fashion cluster will be able to deliver on all three.

Start-upsFashion start-ups are now recognized as a leading growth area in the Creative Industries sector. A recent survey reported that six months after graduation, 1,302 UAL students (20% of them) were either self-employed, running their own business or freelancing – that’s compared to the national average of 18%. To support this, LCF places nearly 500 students into internships with SMEs each year.

And London College of Fashion helps creative individuals become professional and successful business owners through a series of comprehensive programmes. It offers skills and resources in financial and business planning, sales, production sourcing and planning, marketing, IP protection, digital strategy development, investment readiness and scaling up. 85% of the businesses supported are still trading two years after that support.

As the London Fashion Cluster builds, London College of Fashion will scale up this success rate to address a new range of needs.

High-growth and internationalA ‘high-growth’ company is one that doubles its revenues, three years in a row. High-end fashion designer businesses can often be on this trajectory during their first year of trading, thanks to the opportunities to internationalise quickly provided by London Fashion Week, London Collections:Men and Paris Fashion Week.

A recent study of 25 businesses incubated by London College of Fashion from 2005-2013 showed a combined turnover of £19.7 million. During the two-year incubation period, 80% of business increased their turnover by a collective total of £3.2 million, and 40% doubled their sales.

The European Commission Horizon 2020 Programme is a great opportunity for East London. Creative industries (which encompasses fashion design) are one of the seven priority cluster industries for Europe confirmed by PWC and the European Cluster Observatory.

London College of Fashion is already delivering two projects through the European Commission Competitiveness of Enterprises and Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (COSME) programme. With these projects – YOTA and WORTH – the university can increase its capacity to promote best practice, SME collaborations, cross border knowhow and international partnerships with other European universities, clusters and networks.

All this enhances London’s reputation as a world-leading fashion centre.

10.Fashion tourism: here to stay.

In addition to manufacturing, the new East London Fashion Cluster will be a retail destination, a leading fashion college, and a thriving community of creative businesses and cultural attractions like the V&A, the Smithsonian Institution, and Sadler’s Wells. No wonder we’re expecting thousands of new tourists.

Business tourism will rise as a steady flow of supply chain stakeholders – buyers, press, agents – visit our fashion businesses here, and they attend our trade fairs and fashion events. Even now, the Manufacturers’ trade fair run by UAL’s Designer-Manufacturer Innovation and Support Centre Manufacturers trade fair attracts at least 500 trade visitors to each event, twice a year.

Shopping tourism will rise, too. Hackney’s Fashion Hub will be going head to head with Bicester Village. It’s barely launched, and it already welcomes around one million visitors a year, compared with Bicester’s six million.1 In Western Europe, tourists account for up to 50% of luxury good sales. Worldwide, as much as 30%.2 Boosting tourist footfall in Hackney means boosting the fashion sector in East London and the whole UK economy.

Local economies will benefit a lot, too – especially through creative tourism, as creative people from across the UK and abroad start to explore the creative buzz of East London. Local retailers, public ateliers, cafés, bars and restaurants will benefit. In collaboration 18

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with cool brands like Dazed and Confused and local designers – like Henry Holland, Piers Atkinson and Holly Fulton, who all appear in the promo – Hackney Fashion Hub will be perceived as a cool place. Visitors will want to stay a little longer and sample the vibe.

London has seen a recent spike in fashion tourism. The Alexander McQueen ‘Savage Beauty’ exhibition at the V&A has already attracted more 340,000 people since it opened. So great is the demand that the museum had to open its doors for 24 hours a day – a move which could see visitors exceed half a million visitors by the end of its run. It is set to become the UK’s most popular arts exhibition of all time. Autumn 2015 also sees the history of Chanel coming to London’s Saatchi gallery.

So the demand is there. And we’ll create a rich programme of cultural events in East London too – drawing in cultural tourists.

In fact, so enticing is the promise of tourism that we’re already seeing other cities around the UK develop their own fashion tourism products and services. There are at least ten fashion festivals outside of London right now, and the British Fashion Council are actively developing opportunities to support more regional activity.

1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicester_Village

2 The rise of accessories tourism; FT.com ,October 13, 2011 by Vanessa Friedman

11. Local and national government: here’s what we need from you.

So far, initiatives in East London have focused at local council level. Now, we need an area-wide intervention to bring these together.

We need a suite of policy incentives, including dedicated business rates and tax breaks for investors. We need planning interventions to zone land for the Cluster. We need affordable office, incubation and studio space – with protected rents. And we need a range of resources, like a dedicated apprenticeships scheme.

Let’s build on the success of UAL’s London College of Fashion from 2011 to 2015 in helping new entrants set up high-end manufacturing in London, making SME manufacturers more efficient, and teaching designers to source manufacturing. It makes good economic sense to 20

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invest in infrastructure, which increases domestic capacity, access and profitability for all.

We must act on rising rental prices in East London. In 2013, rent was £22 per square foot. In 2015, it’s already reached £60 psf. This could be catastrophic for small businesses, pushing them out into the M25 corridor. We want to keep a balance of small business and residential property. Let’s create community – as well as commercial – engagement.

Let’s bring the European Commission, government, boroughs, investors, property developers, housing associations and landlords together, wake them up to the crisis, and resolve this now. In collaborative formal partnership, we could create a strategic East End roadmap that recognises the area’s property needs, so we can deliver a forward-looking clustering strategy for it.

Property and rental costs will continue to surge and the pressure on London’s creative pool will remain. We need a live/work strategy that secures a solid infrastructure for our developing ecology to prevent this. And we need a genuinely protected property backdrop of affordable living and working space. Let’s stop further exodus of our artists and creatives who currently make East London the inclusive community we are so proud of.

London needs its creative community just as it needs its key worker community. We have a responsibility and an opportunity to uphold the idea that property is more than just space and buildings. It’s what we foster in those spaces and buildings that really matters.

East London sits at the intersection of other major urban economic sectors – including design, film, advertising and the digital economy – with ready access to finance. Our manufacturing could reach into Kent and Essex. We can boost the economy, acquire inward investment, and attract international companies. We can elevate London’s global competiveness.

But to get there, we need strategic interventions by local and national government and industry players working together. Like the Mayor of London’s Regeneration Fund, which has been created by the London Enterprise Panel (LEP) and aims to make the most of the city’s wealth of talent in creativity and technology. More than 90,000 square feet of affordable studios have been created through the fund already and there is a £20m scheme which will further support creative workspace.

The LEP has also invested £1.5 million into the first phase of the Hackney Fashion Hub, a major regeneration project on the edge of Hackney Central town centre.

12. You can help us create the East London Fashion Cluster. Here’s how.The fashion value chain includes ideas creation, design, material development and identification, garment manufacture, communications, distribution, retail and investment.

Many of these are here in East London already. And we’re working on the rest. If you’re a business owner, manufacturer, local authority worker, or investor, you can help.

Everyone’s playing their part.

Leading firmsCommitment from major businesses is vital. The high-end fashion industry, like creative industries in general, combines a large number of very small businesses (in the atelier model) with global players, like Kering and LVMH. UAL brings to East London an existing relationship with Kering and Liveries. ASOS already manufactures at medium scale in the London area and John Lewis is a major retail player at Westfield with a clear interest in fashion.

Local manufacturersThere are 135 high-end manufacturers in London supporting the designer sector. And the success of new entrants proves growth is possible. For a fashion designer, creativity and sales may drive business, but working closely with manufacturers, and understanding production – that’s what maximises profitability.

Other local sectorsLinking up with other sectors is important both creatively and commercially – a source of novel ideas through innovative interpretation and combinations. Wearable devices, for example, arose through a fusion of fashion and technology. East London is full of innovative sectors – like Tech City and the area’s thriving artistic, design and media community.

The Mayor of LondonWe plan to work with the London Legacy Development Corporation and the London Enterprise Panel. Our cluster would deliver intervention within the Panel’s strategic area of digital creative, science and technology. Alongside local authorities and partnerships, 22

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London Legacy Development Corporation and the Local Enterprise Partnership should develop a local fashion action plan to evaluate the size and impact of the fashion sector in their localities – which would open up the potential to strength it even further.

Local authoritiesThe Fashion Hub, an extensive London Borough of Hackney development, is designed by the Manhattan Loft Corporation and part-funded by the European Union. The plan: open 100 designer fashion retail outlets, pop up stores, and manufacturing workshops in the next seven years. Turn Hackney into a fashion retail destination. Hackney’s Burberry outlet store already sees one million tourists each year, including many from Asia.

Until recently, Hackney, Dalston and most other East London areas were a vibrant SME community of fine artists, small manufacturers and designer ateliers. But now rising rents is driving them out.

The right thinking, together with the right partnerships across boroughs could reverse this trend.

University of the Arts LondonIn five years, UAL will be moving London College of Fashion and its 5,700 students to the Olympic Park in Stratford.

No other university is so central to the fashion industry in the UK. The college’s curriculum emphasises design, innovation and the business of fashion. Its college in the fashion cluster will be highly business-focused: spinning out university research into new businesses, generating research partnerships with international universities, investing in new alumni businesses and in structural support for East London entrepreneurship, and working with local schools and colleges to create a strong base of skilled workers. n graduation, most of our students will move directly into the creative industries.

The college will also act as a networking hub for the cluster – especially with UAL’s Central Saint Martins just a seven-minute train ride away.

Industry organisationsOrganisations like the British Fashion Council, UKFT and UKTI – amongst others – can both support and benefit from the Cluster.

The BFC could use it to extend its showcasing reach across wider London. In September, London Fashion Week will be moving close to London’s West End retail district. We could create a showcase in East London, bringing visitors into an exciting area with its own distinctive buzz.

UKFT and UKTI could have satellite offices in the East End to make sure cluster businesses are supported with advice on export, legislation, and anything else they need.

IncubatorsBased at UAL, the Centre for Fashion Enterprise is the pioneering business development platform in London for emerging micro and small fashion designer businesses. It’s incubated some seriously high-profile fashion designers, including Peter Pilotto, Erdem, Mary Katrantzou and James Long, who’ve all launched their business in East London. Now, it is ready to share best practice with emerging fashion centres in the rest of the country – helping more and more designers succeed.

InvestorsThe cluster will be near the City. Working together, fashion and finance can benefit each other. There’s a huge business opportunity for banks willing to learn the language of the fashion industry. Right now, most small fashion businesses are under-capitalised – and that’s because most major investors don’t understand their needs. Because of that it can take five years for a fashion design business to establish itself and scale up –a lot slower than in other sectors.

To create this cluster, we need you all. Then its benefits – revenue, footfall, buzz, renown, events, and activities – are all yours.

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PhotographyThomas Zanon-Latcher

DesignThe Studio of Williamson Curran

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Our vision: A cluster where fashion, technology, business and education meet. Where companies compete to out-innovate each other; where they collaborate to turn heads, all over the world.

A cluster that enlivens our culture and expands our economy. And builds on our industrial heritage and the Olympic legacy new life to London.

This is our blueprint for how we make it happen.