Inside the Fashion Awards: The First Test of Laura Weir’s BFC
This year’s ceremony — the first under Laura Weir — offered the most honest snapshot yet of British fashion: awards glitz, fragile infrastructure, and a talent pipeline Britain still can’t hold onto.
Earlier this year, Dark Luxury ran a deep investigation into the British Fashion Council — drawing on interviews with a multi-award-winning female designer, as well as Patrick Grant, Oliver Spencer and Peter Howarth — to show how the organisation excelled at hype but was increasingly over-reliant on spectacle and struggling to support the businesses beneath it.
Now, about seven months into Laura Weir’s tenure as CEO, and with her first Fashion Awards behind her, it feels like the right moment to revisit the story. What’s changed? What hasn’t? And what did this year’s ceremony quietly reveal about the BFC’s future?
British Fashion Council: What Laura Weir’s First Fashion Awards Revealed
This year’s Fashion Awards — the first overseen by Laura Weir since she took over in April — offered the clearest picture yet of what she has inherited, how she might lead, and just how deep the structural problems run inside British fashion. The ceremony, long treated as the BFC’s calling card, exposed the organisation’s contradictions more starkly than any annual report.
The Fashion Awards Caste System
The loudest complaint this year was the Awards’ hierarchy: the people who actually power the industry — stylists, young designers, production teams, emerging brand creatives — pushed into the upper stands, while the premium tables and glossy dinner went to global sponsors, tech giants and anyone with a corporate cheque. In a room ostensibly celebrating British talent, a Google executive often outranked the stylists, designers and creatives who actually make the industry happen.
It’s also worth remembering that the Fashion Awards are one of the BFC’s biggest visibility and revenue engines: in 2022 the event generated more than £265 million in global earned-media value, according to the BFC’s own figures. With nearly two-thirds of the organisation’s income coming from London Fashion Week and the Awards combined, the ceremony simply has to monetise the room — through sponsors, corporate tables, premium boxes and the hierarchy that follows. Financially, it cannot afford not to sell out.
The optics didn’t help. JW Anderson’s third consecutive win — with Delphine Arnault, his boss, flying in to present the award — felt less like a celebration of British creativity and more like finely choreographed luxury-group theatre. Nobody doubts Anderson’s talent, but the impression that the Awards increasingly function as soft marketing for global conglomerates is hard to ignore.
What Weir Has Done So Far
Weir has already taken visible steps to shift the BFC’s focus away from pure spectacle and toward structural support. Since April she has:
• Waived London Fashion Week listing/show fees, reducing one of the biggest barriers for emerging designers.
(Fashion Network)
• Secured a three-year government funding commitment for NEWGEN, giving the BFC’s main talent pipeline more stability.
(Vogue Business)
• Expanded the BFC’s guest-programme budget, increasing the number of international buyers and press seeing British designers.
(Evening Standard)
• Launched Fashion Assembly, sending designers back to schools across the UK to broaden the future talent pool and decentralise opportunity.
(British Fashion Council)
These moves align with the ethos she developed at Selfridges, where she helped turn the store into a retail-meets-culture platform — giving younger designers meaningful visibility rather than just PR gloss.
(The Drum)
The fairest verdict at this stage is simple: encouraging noises, nothing concrete yet. Watch this space.
Industry Snapshot: The State of Big UK Fashion Firms (2025)
The wider industry backdrop remains fragile:
• Burberry has partially recovered from its slump. As of December 2025 its market cap sits around £4.23 billion, up ~39% year-on-year, with its first quarterly sales rise in two years. But volatility remains.
• ASOS continues to struggle: FY 2025 revenue fell ~14–15%, GMV dropped ~12%, and active customers declined again. Margins have improved, suggesting its turnaround programme may be stabilising — slowly.
It’s not outright collapse, but it underlines persistent instability across the UK fashion ecosystem.
What Four Industry Insiders Told Us
In our original investigation we spoke to:
• A female fashion designer and multi-New Gen BFC award winner who wished to remain anonymous
• Patrick Grant (Norton & Sons / E. Tautz)
• Oliver Spencer
• Peter Howarth ( CEO Show Media, former editor of Esquire, Arena and Man About Town)
Their consensus: the BFC excels at visibility and PR; it is far less effective at helping designers build sustainable businesses.
“A glorified party planner?” New Generation winner (anon)
The designer described the BFC as cliquey, opaque and overly dependent on high-profile events. Awards gave prestige but not the infrastructure — mentorship, feedback, scaling advice — needed to turn talent into lasting brands.
Sarabande, McQueen’s foundation, was repeatedly cited as the opposite model: real studios, real bursaries, real support. Not red carpets.
Noise vs infrastructure
Peter Howarth argues that Britain has designers and ideas but lacks the mid-tier manufacturing, retail structure and vertical integration Italy still possesses.
Patrick Grant points out that, without proper government funding, the BFC lives in a constant sponsorship-hustle — hence the event-heavy culture.
Oliver Spencer is more direct: both Conservative and Labour governments treat fashion as trivial while courting companies like Shein, ignoring an industry worth tens of billions.
Why Laura Weir Might Be the Right Correction
Despite everything, there is cautious optimism around Weir.
Unlike previous leaders from PR or institutional backgrounds, Weir comes from the point where ideas meet customers — the part of the industry where success or failure is real and measurable. Her Selfridges background means she understands both creativity and commerce. Her early BFC decisions suggest a shift toward lowering barriers, broadening access and rebuilding long-term pathways for designers.
If the BFC’s defining flaw is that it generates noise without building businesses, Weir is one of the few people in British fashion who could realistically rebalance that equation.
Whether she will be empowered — or funded — to do it remains the real question.
And yet, for all the fragility in the system, London still produces the most interesting designers in the world. Grace Wales Bonner heading to Hermès is only the latest reminder that the UK remains the industry’s greatest talent engine — even if that talent often has to leave to thrive. The problem isn’t what Britain creates; it’s what Britain can’t keep. If Weir can fix even a fraction of that, her impact will matter far beyond one awards night.
For now: early days, promising signals, nothing concrete yet.
Watch this space.
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