News Coverage:

London Fashion Week Opens With Silence

LONDON, Sep 17, 2001/ --- London Fashion Week opened today with a minute's silence in honor of the thousands of victims of Tuesday's devastating terrorist attacks in the United States.

61 designers are still showing at London's Natural History Museum this week, though six major names have pulled out. Burberry, Nicole Farhi, Justin Oh, Paul Smith, Katharine Hamnett and Clements Ribeiro all decided to cancel their shows in light of the tragic events.

British Fashion Council chairman Nicholas Coleridge spoke from the foot of the catwalk this morning: "One cannot begin to imagine the devastation and sadness felt by the American people and we join them in their mourning. However, to give up would be to give in to these perpetrators of evil, and that we must never do."

He noted that fashion is Britain's sixth largest industry. "We can't walk away from it, the show just has to go on."

The British Fashion Council plans to make a donation of "several hundreds of thousands of pounds" to the American Red Cross.

Jasper Conran and Julien MacDonald are among the 61 designers staging presentations this week in 152 exhibitions and 52 catwalk shows. All festivities accompanying the events were cancelled last week.

Click on links to view the runway shows for London Fashion Week Spring 2002