We will continue to report on London Fashion Week, despite the risks fast fashion poses to the planet

London Fashion Week is traditionally a showcase for the very best of British talent, a colourful and entertaining distraction from grimmer news items (no shortage of those), and a way for websites, newspapers and magazines to fill otherwise dull pages with arresting and thought-provoking images. Sometimes, as with the famous slogan T-shirts designed by Katharine Hamnett, the catwalks can be a bit political.

Now, however, fashion and London Fashion Week itself are under attack. Fast fashion has already been identified as an enemy of the planet, wasting precious resources on here-today-chucked-away-tomorrow clothes, and Extinction Rebellion are promising an “RIP London Fashion Week Funeral March” on Tuesday: “We call on all citizens, including the industry itself, to demand an end to London Fashion Week.”

Taken entirely at face value, the response to the Extinction Rebellion rallying call would be to simply ignore London Fashion Week and, for that matter, ban any coverage of fashion and eschew fashion advertising as well.

But of course journalists are not simply propagandists for Extinction Rebellion, or any other group for that matter. We rightly reported on the Extinction Rebellion story but we do not take our orders from them. There comes a point when the demands of a group such as Extinction Rebellion become so impractical that they cannot be acted upon in any case, notwithstanding the imperative of saving the planet, which is the most important issue of all.

Demands to bring the date at which Britain will go carbon-free closer and closer, for example, start to defy common sense, because no economy can be reformed that rapidly, even by a disaster.

Much the same, in fact, goes for fashion; it is impossible to imagine the whole fashion industry, driven as it is by intense demand and shifting public tastes, being transformed and, in effect, shut down in a matter of years, let alone months.

Journalists and publishers, no different to consumers or politicians, have to practise the art of the possible, and so it is with the climate emergency. There are two sides to every story, and we will be covering London Fashion Week, and the protests.

Yours,

Sean O’Grady

Managing editor