What The BFC Foundation Is Doing To Support Independent Brands

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The British Fashion Council (BFC) has announced the nominees for this year's Foundation Award: Newgen designers Aaron Esh and Tolu Coker, BFC Fashion Trust recipient Labrum London, BFC/ GQ Designer Fashion Fund 2024 winner Bianca Saunders and BFC/ Vogue Designer Fashion Fund 2024 winner Chopova Lowena.

"The Foundation Award gives us an opportunity to celebrate the designers that are supported through the charity," BFC CEO Caroline Rush tells Vogue Business . "The Foundation Award is a way of tying together The Fashion Awards, which is about celebrating incredible creativity, putting British designers on a global platform, and of course it's quite often our biggest fundraiser for the BFC Foundation charity."

Fashion has a stream of talent incubation schemes and prizes, but emerging designers still struggle to move to the next level. Experts say it may be time to rethink the system.

Prizes like those awarded at The Fashion Awards and programmes like those offered via the BFC Foundation, represent important opportunities for independent designers, but are not enough on their own to guarantee success . It's been a tough few years for independent brands: the traditional model is under threat, with wholesale market challenges mounting, Brexit adding complications for UK brands trading with Europe, consumer habits changing, and rising costs weighing on independent brands — many of whom have gone into administration over the past two years.

Beyond the awards, the BFC Foundation funded research on the business models and principles needed to sustain a commercially viable designer fashion business . A report, titled ' Commercialising Creativity 2.0: Creating a Success Model for British Fashion Designers ', was published on Wednesday in collaboration with the London Business School. It's the second iteration of the Commercialising Creativity report, which was first published in 2014.

The report outlines two phases for designer fashion businesses. The first phase, "build and thrive", involves defining your vision, the founder's role in their business, knowing your customer and developing solid cash flow management and operations. "Having control over our cash flow means we have options — without it, we're stuck in survival mode," says one designer quoted in the report.