The world’s most exciting Fashion Show returns with it’s 15th show on Saturday 17th Feb 2018 during London Fashion Week. The show is raising funds in aid of Mental Health Charity MIND through their justgiving page – with official numbers showing that 1 in 4 people will experience a mental health problem each year, Live Fashion Official believes that mental health should be a priority for everyone!
The show features 2 talented designers who both produced outstanding collections at last year’s Graduate Fashion Week – Kelly Gilpin will be dressing the women and Susan Forrest will be dressing the men
The show starts at 1.30pm on the Southbank in front of the Royal Festival Hall then crosses Waterloo Bridge, turns right & heads towards it’s final destination for a show in front of 180 Strand (London Fashion Week venue) from 3.30pm until 4.30pm
All Welcome to come & interact, donate or just enjoy the unique energy of the show!
Series Background:
Dan Harley runs a fashion series called ‘Live Fashion’, conceived in Milan (while shooting fashion week) in 2012 waiting in a street with hundreds of people trying to get into the ‘Fendi ft Karl Lagerfeld’ show – “…it was a great show but there was so much fantastic energy left outside on the streets with most people who didn’t get into the show” – Dan thought then that social media would eventually have the power to change the traditional fashion week runway experience to make things a lot more accessible, interactive & immediate, as opposed to the closed off exclusive ticketed affairs they had historically been – as well as forcing the industry to be a lot more representative of the diversity of people consuming fashion, a lot of whom were waiting out in the street that day
Even now (5 years later) when Dan goes into high street fashion shops he sees a huge range of cultural diversity that’s not represented in the same degree on the global fashion week runways – He always thought it was strange that shows wouldn’t want to appeal to as broad a range of backgrounds as they could to reflect the range of backgrounds buying the end product in the shops or queuing to try to get into the showsDan felt like these 2 ingredients were missing from Fashion Week shows, so he started the Live Fashion Official series – so far he has produced a show in Paris & 13 shows over various locations around London
The series has evolved recently to add another dimension in the form of social messages based on issues that Dan has had personal experience with:
Live Fashion 13 was an Aids Awareness show for 56 Dean Street Sexual Health Clinic, inspired after Dan thought he’d been exposed to HIV earlier in the year & the relief on getting a clear diagnosis – having had a glimpse into the prospect of what a life of antiretroviral drugs & stigma might look like.
Live Fashion 14 was a Homelessness Awareness show for homelessness charity CRISIS, inspired by a group of homeless people Dan plays music with & has become friends with around East London & witnessing 1st hand how playing music can give people a sense of community & self-confidence.
The ‘Live Fashion’ show is unlike anything anyone else is doing, with it’s high energy interactions between the models, the crowds & the immediate environment – The series so far has seen models taking over the Apple Store in Covent Garden, Top Shop in Oxford Circus, drawing crowds in Leicester Square, stopping traffic in Piccadilly Circus, bringing Brick Lane to a standstill & hijacking a live chainsaw show in Covent Garden with Dan almost getting decapitated by a very angry chainsaw performer… & many more unique Live Fashion ‘Moments’
With good reason, Live Fashion Official is known as the ‘world’s most exciting fashion show’ !