The last seams are being neatened and seating plans finalised – London Fashion Week opens tomorrow for another season of hype and delight. Next year’s event will be the 25th since it started as a few exhibition stands in a London hotel.

Now it’s a thoroughly professional outfit, with more than 50 official shows, nearly as many off-schedule ones and several major exhibitions – the showcase for a £750 million designer-fashion industry that exports £500 million worth of clothes annually, not to mention acclaimed designers to work worldwide. Even the Prime Minister’s wife is throwing a party.

Fashion Week is the subject both of effusive reporting and vexed debate – everyone agrees that London is inspiring and exciting, but short of funds and manufacturing facilities. In the words of Hilary Riva, of the British Fashion Council, it will “never be Milan or Paris, but its creativity and diversity are the best”.

The people who make it happen – from designers and models to editors and retailers – care passionately about it. We asked those who are most influential right now what London fashion means to them.

Times Online