From 9 to 12 September, Manchester Fashion Week returned for its second edition, bringing together designers, activists and industry leaders across twelve venues throughout the city and for the first time, EMPOWER Youth Zones’ own young people were part of the story.
This year every collection scheduled was required to meet a new minimum materials standard, developed in partnership with Collective Fashion Justice, banning fur, wild animal skins and wild bird feathers, and permitting leather only where it is already in circulation. It is one of the first standards of its kind to run across an entire Fashion Week programme, and it set the tone for a week built around a bigger question: what does it look like when an industry chooses to grow responsibly, and who gets to be part of that growth?
For EMPOWER Youth Zones, the answer included our own young people.
Our runway Future threads, ran on Saturday the 12th of September at Trafford Palazzo, and gave young people from EMPOWER Youth Zones the opportunity to showcase their pieces fully designed and created by themselves, in front of an audience that had come specifically to see what they could do. Sharing the day with them was Luke-Matthew Ivenson, winner of BBC’s The Great British Sewing Bee, who followed with a runway presentation of its own.
The main topic this year was part of a wider ambition to decentralise UK fashion and open the industry up through access, education and community, and Manchester Fashion Week has clearly demonstrated that talent and craft do not begin at a professional level, and that a Fashion Week can hold space for both established names and young people just starting to find their voice.
For our members this was a genuine platform and a real opportunity to show what they can create when give the space, support and standards to do it properly.
“I aspire to be a fashion designer and help people with bigger sizes and disabilities. I aspire to be different and beat society norms with my clothing. (…) Empower has given me the opportunities I need to build my career and my future, and I am really grateful for them”
Nevaeh Redmond, senior member of EMPOWER Youth Zones
A special thank you for Manchester Fashion Week’s Gemma Gratton and Hayley Shaw for bringing the MFW second edition to live and making us part of it.
Confidence in creative people starts with opportunities like this.
Manchester Fashion Week has said this standard is only the beginning, with ambitions to build on it in future editions. For EMPOWER Youth Zones, Future Threads marks the start of a relationship we hope to build on too and continue to give young people real platforms, in front of real audiences, to show what they are capable of.
If you are part of the fashion or creative industries and interested in supporting young people’s access to platforms like this, we would love to hear from you.