Designers can learn from risk-takers in couture

Regarding your Vox Pop on London Fashion Week (DW 19 February), fashion is constantly re-inventing itself. Each new season brings new designers, new opinions and new takes on nostalgia.

There is an intense relationship between fashion and celebrity, a single dress can create a legend and make a designer: Marilyn Monroe’s swirling dress over the air

vent; Audrey Hepburn’s ‘little black dress’; Liz Hurley’s Versace gown held together with safety pins.

With such a powerful and emotive mix of glamour, money and the moment, fashion and the business that surrounds it naturally attract attention and generate news.

The whole industry is geared up to create gossip on a grand scale.

Other design disciplines cannot (and would not want to) emulate these qualities where they do not naturally exist, but they can learn from fashion’s insatiable appetite and support for the ‘new’ and the ‘creative’, which encourages and rewards risk.

This paves the way for great work, creates new legends and relevancy for audiences far wider than the industry itself.

Valerie Wickes

Chief executive and creative director

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London W3