The role of Manchester Fashion Week in building a modern regional fashion ecosystem

While globally renowned fashion weeks kick off their SS27 showcases, regional UK events are turning the spotlight toward local issues. Manchester Fashion Week (MFW) is leading this effort. Originally launched in 2011, the event went on a decade-long hiatus before returning under new ownership in 2025. Its most ambitious iteration yet took place from September 9 to 12, 2026, expanding across 12 venues with a four-day programme. Moving beyond traditional collection displays, the event prioritised industry challenges including nearshoring, supply chain resilience, synthetic fabrics, adaptive design, AI and creative economics.

Choosing Manchester as the site for these conversations is apt given the city’s long-standing manufacturing reputation. Once known as Cottonopolis due to its dominance in cotton processing and textile manufacturing, the Northern hub has a deep industrial heritage. The fashion week, however, is not simply about celebrating that history. Instead, it questions what comes next for retailers and brands as conversations move beyond ‘Made in Britain’ and towards the infrastructure required to make domestic production commercially viable.

The fashion week’s executive producer, Gemma Gratton, underlines that the goal is not to recreate Manchester’s historic manufacturing industry, but to consider what a modern regional ecosystem could look like using the infrastructure and expertise that still exists in the North.

“Manchester has manufacturing in its DNA, but we need to be realistic about what reshoring means today,” she told FashionUnited. “We aren’t going to recreate the industry of the past, nor should we. What we can do is look at the skills, infrastructure, technology and manufacturing capability that already exists across the North and ask how we connect it much more effectively to brands and the next generation of fashion.”

For Gratton, this is where MFW and its associated organisation, the Northern Fashion Collective, play a distinct role. The fashion week is positioning itself as a connector between manufacturers, skilled workers and production models and the brands that need them, while asking where domestic production makes sense alongside international sourcing. “One of our biggest aims is to put people in the same room who wouldn’t ordinarily meet – brands, manufacturers, universities, technology companies, policymakers, designers and young people,” Gratton noted.

This mindset took centre stage in the ‘Near, Far & Home Grown’ panel, which brought together; Upender Mehar of Manchester manufacturer Dolphin Star; Michael Conway of clothes2order; and Sophie Lane of The Lane Edit. The group examined the commercial case for manufacturing closer to home, where global supply chains still have a role, and why more fashion is not being made in a city with more than 500 active textile manufacturing businesses.

“Regional fashion hubs can help make that commercially viable by creating those connections year-round, not just during fashion week,” Gratton noted. “MFW is the shop window, but the work has to continue beyond those four days. I do think brands are looking much more seriously at provenance and proximity, but it has to make commercial sense. British manufacturing can’t simply be a badge. We need to demonstrate the value in shorter lead times, smaller production runs, skills, quality, transparency and resilience.”

Eco Age chief executive John Higginson echoed the point during the event: “Britain has the factories. What it lacks is the order book. A conversation about nearshoring is only worth having if it ends with brands placing work, and with the government treating domestic production as more than a unit cost comparison.”

For brands and retailers, British manufacturing is therefore not automatically commercially attractive simply because it is British. At the same time, manufacturers need consistent orders to retain skills, invest in equipment and plan capacity. “There is already brilliant work happening across the North. The challenge is connecting it, investing in it and, importantly, creating demand for it,” Gratton added.

The MFW discussion is taking place alongside a broader push around regional economic development and reindustrialisation. The fashion industry is also calling for textiles and clothing to be incorporated into the wider agenda of prime minister Andy Burnham’s government, with Fashion Roundtable among organisations calling for public procurement contracts, including NHS and Ministry of Defence uniforms, to favour UK-based manufacturing. MFW is similarly focused on creating stronger connections between brands and manufacturers, while recognising that a fashion week alone cannot rebuild domestic production.

“We would love MFW to be part of that catalyst, but it would be wrong to suggest that a fashion week alone can rebuild UK manufacturing,” Gratton said. “Manchester has an incredible ecosystem, but historically many of those different parts haven’t necessarily been connected. What we’re trying to do is create those connections and give people a reason to work together.”

The event is also careful not to frame localisation as a return to the past. “Manchester helped industrialise fashion and textiles, so I think we have both an opportunity and a responsibility to be part of what comes next,” Gratton noted. “But I’m not interested in looking backwards for nostalgia’s sake. Our heritage is incredibly important, but the exciting question is how we take that knowledge and combine it with technology, innovation, new materials, data and different manufacturing models.”

This year’s programme demonstrated that approach, placing manufacturing discussions alongside regenerative materials, animal-free innovation, circular systems and automation. “For me, that’s where Manchester becomes really interesting – when our industrial heritage meets what the future of this industry could look like,” she added.

Localisation beyond manufacturing

A regional fashion economy is not only about where products are made. It also relies on the businesses, retailers, repair specialists and educators that create local communities and cultural relevance. To extend on this, MFW’s Northern Quarter Mash-Up showcased independent retailers, vintage traders and creative businesses including Afflecks, Bound, Kiku Boutique and Nudie Jeans, which featured the Manchester Repair Shop.

“People want personality again,” Gratton said when asked what was driving this renewed consumer interest in local labels. “We’ve become surrounded by so much sameness that independents offer something genuinely different – a story, a point of view and, very often, a direct relationship with the person or community behind the business.”

She added: “For smaller brands, visibility is incredibly difficult and expensive. What MFW can do is create a collective platform – bringing together audiences, industry, press and businesses in a way that would be much harder for an independent to achieve alone.”

During the Mash-Up, Lucy & Yak also opened its new Oldham Street store, which includes a floor dedicated to pre-loved products alongside Re buyback, repair and customisation activity. The launch provided a tangible example of how retail can align with MFW’s wider focus on circularity and local communities. “The key is making circularity part of normal consumer behaviour rather than something that sits in a sustainability bubble,” Gratton said.

That principle also informed the fashion week itself. This season marked the first time MFW introduced a minimum materials standard, developed with Collective Fashion Justice, requiring participating collections to exclude fur, wild animal skins and wild bird feathers, with leather permitted only where it is already in circulation. “For me, this comes back to something we say a lot at Manchester Fashion Week: culture is created, not dictated,” Gratton said.

“If we’re going to have conversations about changing fashion, then we also have to look at our own decisions as an organisation,” she continued. “We don’t pretend that one policy solves the sustainability challenges within fashion – it absolutely doesn’t. But it moves the conversation from saying what we believe into asking what we’re actually prepared to implement.”

As MFW evolves, so will the standards, with Gratton noting that it was important to each year challenge the organisation and the wider industry. “The response from designers was really positive, and what was particularly encouraging was that many were already thinking deeply about materials, waste and how their collections were being produced,” she added.

Building the skills pipeline

The sustainability agenda also extends beyond the collections themselves, with MFW placing emphasis on education and the skills needed to support a future regional fashion industry. Through the Northern Fashion Collective, the organisation held 18 workshops across nine Manchester and Salford schools, reaching around 270 young people. Their work was then brought together into the ‘Universal Tee of Life’, assembled with University of Manchester students and exhibited as part of Interwoven: Threads & Futures Connected at Castlefield Gallery. Future Threads then worked with young people from Empower Youth Zones and Luke Iveson before bringing the resulting collection onto the MFW runway at Trafford Palazzo.

“Education is absolutely fundamental to what we’re building because we can’t talk about changing an industry without involving the generation that is going to inherit it,” Gratton said. “There are so many careers within fashion that young people simply don’t know exist. Fashion isn’t only being a designer or working in social media. We need pattern cutters, machinists, garment technologists, manufacturers, material innovators, data specialists and people working across an entirely new generation of fashion technology. If we want to retain talent in the North, young people need to be able to see those pathways – and believe they can access them.”

This makes the skills agenda closely connected to the viability of reshoring itself. While brands can express an intention to manufacture closer to home, the ability to increase domestic production depends on there being enough skilled workers to support it. For MFW, therefore, education is not a separate social initiative but part of building the infrastructure needed for a more localised industry. As Eco Age chief executive John Higginson put it during the event, “Skills are the binding constraint on this industry now, in manufacturing as much as design, and regional funding is not going to solve it on its own.”

A regional model

The same principle of connecting different parts of the industry runs through MFW’s wider partnership model. This year’s programme brought together designers and manufacturers with universities, technology companies, cultural organisations, retailers, youth organisations and commercial partners including St John’s, Eco Age, Cupra, Accenture and AO.

For Gratton, the diversity of those partnerships is one of the defining elements of the Manchester model. “Collaboration is absolutely fundamental to what we’re building. No one organisation, business or part of the industry can create meaningful change in isolation,” she said. “Not all of them come from fashion – and that’s actually one of the strengths of it. Manchester has an incredible ecosystem, but historically many of those different parts haven’t necessarily been connected. What we’re trying to do is create those connections and give people a reason to work together.”

That approach also provides a potential model for other regions considering how they can participate in the wider push to decentralise British fashion, an example of which will also become evident at the upcoming London Fashion Week, which is expanding its programme through the Fashion Britain initiative, bringing hundreds of fashion events to cities across the UK.

According to Gratton, the answer to decentralisation is not necessarily to reproduce Manchester’s approach elsewhere, but to identify the infrastructure and expertise that already exists within each individual region. “I also don’t think the answer for other regions is to replicate London, or even to replicate Manchester,” she said. “Every region should look at what it already has, its heritage, industries, universities, communities, skills and cultural identity, and build from there.”

For Manchester, that identity sits across several industries. “Manchester’s strength is that fashion sits naturally alongside music, culture, technology, manufacturing and education. That’s our identity, and that’s what MFW should represent,” Gratton explained. The fashion week serves as the space where those relationships intend to come to fruition, but longer-term value will depend on what unfolds beyond the four-day event.

“The fashion week gives us a moment when all of that becomes visible, but through Northern Fashion Collective we’re increasingly looking at how those relationships and conversations continue throughout the year,” Gratton said. That longer-term ambition reflects the role of regional fashion weeks as a convening platform, linking different organisations that need to participate to encourage wider revival.

For MFW, success is therefore not simply about becoming a larger event. Instead, Gratton said “it’s about what happens because it exists”. “If a brand meets a Northern manufacturer through one of our conversations and starts producing here; if a university collaboration becomes a commercial project; if an emerging designer gets access to an opportunity they wouldn’t otherwise have had; or if a young person we first met through one of our programmes eventually builds a career in this industry – that’s impact.”

The latest season therefore offered a more tangible interpretation of what regional fashion infrastructure could look like, connecting manufacturing conversations with retail activity, circular business models, education, technology and policy. The question now is whether those connections can continue to generate activity. Gratton concluded: “We’re only at the beginning, but we genuinely believe Manchester and the North have an opportunity to play an important role in shaping what the next chapter of British fashion looks like. And if MFW can help bring the right people together to build that, then we’re doing what we set out to do.”