Already pushed to the breaking point by the pandemic, designers, manufacturers and retailers claim the newly-negotiated Brexit deal is a disaster. …
Not long before the latest fully-digital London Fashion Week began on February 19 — with a pared-down schedule that reflected the ongoing fallout of the pandemic on the sector — more than 450 leading industry figures, including designers like Paul Smith, Katherine Hamnett and Roksanda Ilincic, sent an irate letter to 10 Downing Street.
In it, signatories claimed that the newly inked Brexit trade terms negotiated between the European Union and Britain could threaten the survival of hundreds of fashion businesses “disregarded” by the last-minute deal. The local industry, the letter said, was potentially facing “decimation” thanks to the newly redrawn geography of Europe.
Fashion contributes “more to UK GDP than fishing, music, film, pharmaceuticals and automobile industries combined,” stated the letter, addressed to prime minister Boris Johnson and organized by the think tank Fashion Roundtable.
BBC radio interview that her contemporary fashion label, Cefinn, was being hampered by post-Brexit “teething issues.”
“If you’re bringing goods into the country from outside the UK, and then trying to sell them back into Europe,” Ms.
