Manchester Fashion Week to return after a decade away

Manchester Fashion Week is returning in September, after a decade away, with a mission to spotlight emerging design talent, innovation and sustainability, while offering brands an opportunity to connect and shape the future of fashion.

The event will run from September 9 to 11, ahead of London Fashion Week, and will be centred around the vibrant St. John’s area of Manchester, with its official hub set in the newly refurbished Campfield, a new creative hub that has transformed one of Manchester’s oldest market halls.

With support from sustainability fashion media platform and consultancy Eco Age, which relaunched under new ownership in June as a communications agency for “future fashion,” Manchester Fashion Week will be spearheaded by some of the industry’s renowned thought-leaders, including Carry Somers, founder of global movement Fashion Revolution and Safia Minney, award-winning social entrepreneur and founder of People Tree, a pioneer of sustainable and fairtrade fashion.

Gemma Gratton, executive producer of Manchester Fashion Week, said in a statement: "Manchester has always led in music, in manufacturing, in movements. And now, it's time to lead again by future-proofing fashion from the ground up.

"Manchester Fashion Week is not just a celebration of style, but a cultural catalyst for people, purpose, and progress."

Manchester Fashion Week to champion sustainable practices and technological advancement

Manchester Fashion Week pledges to unite emerging designers and established brands on a platform that bridges Manchester's industrial heritage with cutting-edge innovation by spotlighting conversations around the city’s textile heritage and mills, sustainable practices and technological innovations to future-proof the fashion industry.

The inaugural pilot will be industry-led, with public experiences and cultural events, and will be focused around three themed days, “to merge fashion with conscious innovation,” explains organisers.

The first day will focus on ‘Heritage and Future-Proof,’ celebrating Manchester’s industrial heritage with next gen style and future innovation, while day two will showcase ‘Health and Wellness’ diving into a world where fashion fuels the “mind, body and soul,” spotlighting high-tech active-wear, colour therapy couture, and conversations about mental health in the industry.

The final day will highlight ‘Tech and Innovation’ and how the new era of fashion is “creative, conscious and circular,” showing how AI-powered design, 3D-prototype innovation, smart textiles and digital-only garments are transforming how we create, consume and circulate.

John Higginson, chief executive of Eco Age, added: “Manchester is Britain’s fashion mecca. Where else do you go where everyone walks around as if they are always on a catwalk? But there is a fight between crappy, flimsy fast fashion and the beautiful things you want to keep forever.

“Manchester Fashion Week is all about future fashion – forever fashion.”

Manchester Fashion Week to return September 9 - 11

Manchester has been dubbed the “rising fashion capital” of the UK, for launching and nurturing some of the UK’s most well-known fashion brands, as well as housing the UK’s first fashion manufacturing lab, pioneered by the Manchester Fashion Institute, which offers businesses and researchers access to collaborative robotic technology, ‘cobots’, that can create sustainable high value, low volume garments.

The city has also recently been spotlighted as the new UK home of Puma. The German sportswear brand is relocating its UK headquarters from London to Manchester’s technology, digital and creative hub, Circle Square, and has launched a new initiative, ‘R-City,’ geared at investing in the city’s youth with free gym memberships, music masterclasses, youth-led events, and product drops.

"This isn't just Manchester's moment. It's Manchester fashion's reset. And it starts here – right from the root," the organisers added.

The relaunch of Manchester Fashion Week follows the British Fashion Council’s chief executive officer Laura Weir pledging to promote and support the fashion industry across the whole of the UK, not just London, starting with its new creative education BFC Fashion Assembly pilot, which will take designers back to their old schools, so that young people outside of London can see themselves in this industry in the future.