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[title]Visit the Clothes Show Live’s abandoned social media and you will see hundreds of comments pleading for its return. ‘Will this amazing fashion event ever return?’ one Facebook user asked. ‘I used to go every year when I was a kid. Now I would love my daughter to experience the same,’ commented another.
For those that aren’t familiar, this event was an expo of sorts. It evolved from the classic TV show of the same name, which ran on the BBC from 1986 to 2000 and each week presented a concoction of news from the catwalk, affordable clothes and celebrity guests. At its peak, the show was attracting nine million viewers per episode.
For the live event, beauty and fashion brands would set up shop on the floor of Birmingham’s National Exhibition Centre (NEC) arena for a day of pre-TikTok glitz and glamour. At the centre of it all was an extravagant fashion slash dance show that ran every 90 minutes with shiny topless male models, gawping adolescents and whirling strobe lights. Throughout the day, tween girls were subtly putting their best blue steel on as whispers of model scouts circulated and reports of Joey Essex sightings spread.
I attended Clothes Show Live in 2014 in the era of side fringes and peak American Apparel. Aged 15, carrying a pair of embroidered shorts and a goody bag of makeup I would only use once, I remember giggling with excitement at seeing Jamie Laing and squeezing into photobooths at any given opportunity.
The whole thing was a dizzying bonanza of clothes, make-up and B-listers. But after running for almost 30 years and making an unpopular move to Liverpool in 2017, the beloved event vanished without explanation. When former organisers, Haymarket, sold the rights to events company SME London, it announced that the event would be ‘taking a break’. A return was promised for 2021 but then a little thing called Covid happened and there has been radio silence ever since.
When it launched in 1989, Clothes Show Live was held at Earls Court in London and attendance was unprecedented. Former editor of i-D magazine Caryn Franklin co-presented the show with designer Jeff Banks and recalls being ‘gobsmacked’ at the queues of people hoping to get in: 50,000 showed up and some were waiting for up to four hours. The show was forced to move to the NEC in Birmingham the following year to meet the massive demand.
London Fashion Week is not for us – the Clothes Show Live was more accessible for the person on the street
‘People didn’t have access to internet shopping back then,’ Franklin explains. ‘They didn’t have fully formed high streets and they didn’t have a community to talk to about fashion apart from their school friends. So the Clothes Show Live did something really, really clever.’
In the show’s first few years, frizzy hair met frilly sleeves and neon skirts and big fashion names showed up including Julien Macdonald and Mary Quant. The noughties saw the arena laced with indie sleaze staples (think chunky Docs and ripped tights) and in 2006 it hosted a performance from little-known artist, Amy Winehouse. Although the TV show ended in 2007, its live version continued into the 2010s when the event was awash with Paul’s Boutique bags, Barry M crackle nails (if you know, you know) and appearances from bonafide huns like Alexandra Burke and Gemma Collins. What a time.
Comedy writer Esyllt Sears, who presents podcasts for nostalgic ‘xennials’, attended the show on a school trip from Aberystwyth in 1995, and agrees that the Clothes Show Live brought something fresh to the fashion scene. ‘[London Fashion Week] is not for us, it’s not for civilians,’ she says. ‘The Clothes Show Live was more accessible for the person on the street.’
Though she only went one year, Sears was a dedicated fan of the TV show and reminisces on her time at the live event with a giddy glow in her voice. ‘It was so vast, you couldn't take it all in.’
Now acting digital editor of Cosmopolitan, Anna Cafolla remembers her weekend at the 2011 Clothes Show Live as ‘frazzling, overwhelming, consumerist chaos’. Aged 17, Cafolla caught a flight from Belfast with her mother and sister to attend the show after being shortlisted in a fashion writing competition. ‘I remember buying so much crap there and really being wrangled in because I thought if it’s at the Clothes Show then it is certified cool,’ she says, recalling the thrill of being in such close proximity to celebrity and contemporary fashion.
As the years went on though, the show’s certified coolness waned and the growth of the high street – big Topshop was basically a London landmark at this point – and the emergence of internet shopping meant that attendance was dwindling. Franklin admits that the show simply was not needed in the same way as it originally was – people could access brands and inspiration elsewhere.
‘It’s such a relic of its time,’ Cafolla says when I ask if she thinks the show could come back. ‘It feels like a historical artefact in the same way a Victorian expo is. Do brands need to engage with people in those physical settings anymore? Not so much because everything happens on Instagram and influencers direct to consumers.’
I remember buying so much crap there because I thought if it’s at the Clothes Show then it is certified cool
Tim Etchells, SME’s managing director, bought the rights to the Clothes Show brand and suggests over the phone that he doesn’t regret the hiatus.
‘I decided to just kind of sit on it, so I’ve done nothing with it for the last four or five years deliberately, just to get a bit of distance’, Etchells says. Although his background is in organising events, Etchells says that he wants to prioritise reviving the TV show before bringing back its live counterpart.
‘One feeds off the other,’ he tells me. ‘The live show suffered a bit because the TV show wasn’t on air anymore. The live event was no longer a brand extension and struggled to work without the awareness the TV show created.’ Franklin echoes this sentiment, telling me that big name designers lost interest in appearing at the event when they could no longer be promoted on the TV show. Having now met with a number of TV production companies, Etchells assures me that moves are being made.
But moves are also being made elsewhere. Franklin knows that the event would have to look very different if it did return and tells me that it would have to be about giving our garms a second life. ‘[CSL] would need to empower consumers to become citizen participants,’ she says. ‘To vote with their purse and vote by engaging with brands that are transparent.’
Weeks after we chat, I receive an email from Franklin teasing a development in the Clothes Show saga. And it seems that this year the hundreds of prayers to the social media gods may finally be answered, sort of.
Franklin reveals that she will be returning to Birmingham’s NEC to present Clothes for Good, a new fashion event supposedly with a conscience. While the event will not be affiliated with the Clothes Show brand, she says she sees it as ‘the Clothes Show coming back, but as a different vehicle showcasing the good that clothes can do but also the bad that clothes do when we are mindless consumers.’
That means that it’ll probably look a little different to the O.G., which was inundated with products and cheap knicknacks. Clive Morton from ‘Clothes For Good’s organising team told Time Out to expect ‘thought-provoking talks, the chance to meet makers, explore thrift shops, discover brands and of course take a seat at catwalk shows in a celebration of feel-good fashion.’ The show is set to take place at the NEC from December 1 to 3.
So, while it’s still early days, we can guess that Clothes for Good probably won’t satisfy the nostalgic craving of millennial Clothes Show fans. But with the majority of young people now declaring an end to fast fashion, it might be the next generation’s antidote to the consumption encouraged by its predecessor.