The new CEO of the British Fashion Council (BFC), Laura Weir, is bringing in some key changes to London Fashion Week (LFW) as runway events and the designers who show at them face bigger challenges than ever.

The BFC said designers physically showing at LFW in September won’t have to pay participation fees to be on the official schedule, a crucial development, particularly for smaller labels.

There will also be a doubling of the BFC’s investment in LFW’s international guest programme as the body works hard to ensure the attendance of international buyers, press and cultural influencers.

The changes come after Weir — a former journalist who immediately prior to the BFC was in charge of the creative, marketing and comms teams at Selfridges — took up her post at the helm of British fashion’s organising body a little over two months ago.

“Fashion week is a valuable piece of national IP and our shop window for what creative Britain looks like,” Weir said at the BFC Summer Party at the Serpentine Gallery in London.

But she also made it clear that the BFC’s focus won’t simply be LFW-centric. She said that “fashion is not just about shows and clothes. Fashion gives us a preview of society’s next chapter. It’s time to write a new story together”.

And other news that came with the developments around LFW itself included a three-year extension of the BFC’s NEWGEN government-backed funding programme to 2029; increased scholarship funding to boost opportunities for the designers of tomorrow; and the BFC Fashion Assembly pilot under Sarah Mower to get designer role models into schools across the country and reduce the heavy bias towards London for UK designers.

Weir is particularly concerned about the loss of design talent in the UK to cities like Paris, Milan and others, and said it’s “not because of a lack of creativity, but because of a lack of infrastructure to support our designers to make, create, show and importantly to scale in this country”.

And she called on retailers to step in saying “designers need you not just as stockists, but as strategic partners. You are the enablers”.