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The British Fashion Council launched the ‘Future of Fashion – Strategic Considerations for Growth’ report on Friday at a press conference, hosted by Sir Philip Green and Harold Tillman CBE, to open London Fashion Week February 2012.
 
The UK fashion industry is worth £21billion to the UK economy and makes a vital contribution to the global reputation of Great Britain as a leader in creative excellence.  Much more can be done to drive the sector forward, however, and contribute to much needed growth for the UK economy. In this document The British Fashion Council lays out its vision for the sector, identifying five areas which it believes have great potential and highlights the action required to ensure this potential is met.  Spanning skills, training, education, job creation, talent development, retail, manufacturing, philanthropy and sponsorship.  The considerations offer inspiration and hope for the future of this great industry and for the UK economy.
 
As part of the conference, Sir Philip Green announced Topshop’s plans to sponsor NEWGEN for a further 10 years. He stated that it is his personal goal to mentor at least a further 2 or 3 designers from the ground up to the world stage to emulate previous successes.
 
Over the past 10 years, 120 designers have been supported by the NEWGEN scheme. 49 shows out of the 95 on the LFW schedule have been supported NEWGEN, this equates to 52% of the LFW schedule.
 
Harold Tillman CBE, Chairman of the British Fashion Council, said ‘We believe that fashion can do so much to drive growth in Britain.  By presenting this opportunity, whilst highlighting the challenges, we hope to unite the industry and government in doing everything possible to drive that growth.’
 
A copy of ‘Future of Fashion – Strategic Considerations for Growth’ is available as a downloadable document from www.britishfashioncouncil.com/futureoffashion

Thousands of entrants vied for the ELLE Beauty Breakthrough dream internship. After months of tasks, pitches and interviews, one talented entrant won a year-long paid placement split between PZ Cussons Beauty, House PR and ELLE magazine. Click the link below to watch the video and find out who won…

http://www.youtube.com/user/ELLEUKTV#p/a/u/2/TUTtkARgNHg

Polly Norton is a 22 year old from North London who has the likes of Eliza Doolittle blogging about her artwork. She was recently profiled by The Cut online and has produced illustrations for RWD magazine.  

A recent graduate from Loughborough University, she has a strong following on her blog showcasing her unique artwork that takes inspiration from stories, music and her own life experiences. Not only is Polly an incredibly talented illustrator she is also a photographer and has a keen interest in fashion styling. With her talent we have no doubt you will be hearing a lot more about her projects in 2012…

To view more of Polly’s art and her contact details for freelance work or collaborations see her tumblr page here…http://pollynorton.tumblr.com/

JU

Last week the interns went off to Westminster City Council to be involved with a press launch at Exhibition Road.  The highlight of their day - meeting the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson.

In celebration of the first anniversary of its Care & Style professional range, Wella Professionals has signed TV presenter and celebrity stylist Grace Woodward as a new ambassador for the brand. Launched in January 2011, Care & Style professional products contain high performance technology and specialist ingredients such as diamond dust. In addition to the new appointment, Wella Professionals has introduced two new styling essentials; Shape Shift Moulding Gum and Enrich Repairing Mousse.

www.wella.com

Out last week, the stunning new ELLE Collections rounds up the best of this season’s trends in a visually stimulating way. Take a look here: 

Elle Collections Spring/Summer 2012 from Susie Bubble on Vimeo.

http://my2012byadidasbystellamccartney.tumblr.com/

The last month has seen some big developments in Social Network platforms, so here are a few key changes we think you should know about!

First up, Twitter has had a makeover, and it’s quite significant. [Watch] their introduction.

The changes to the brand pages are important. Firstly, there is the opportunity for a bespoke designed header, allowing prominence for a logo and tagline, for example. Check out launch partner Coca-Cola’s page. Secondly, brands can now highlight any of their own tweets to stay at the top of the page, ending the issue of tweets becoming diluted with subsequent comms.

Thirdly, tweet conversations are now grouped, so in theory, brands will be able to better manage customer services. Fourthly, a new intelligent ‘Discovery’ feature (pushing content depending on your footprint), could well be ‘steered’ by savvy marketers. In summary, it presents a new range of opportunity and challenges for Social Media managers and Strategists. The brand pages won’t come to the UK ’til 2012. Prepare thyselves!

Facebook, still to launch its Timeline update (we suspect there are bugs and perhaps even some nerves at play, ahead of its imminent IPO) made an interesting move with their purchase of location-based network Gowalla, which will be shut down next year.

Having quietly closed Facebook Places recently (but still allowing users to add a location to status updates) Facebook clearly intend to compete with Foursquare in a big way, and with this move, have hired some big-guns to do so.

Facebook also announced a subscribe button, their answer to the Twitter ‘follow’, which can now be embedded into websites. It’s designed to position Facebook’s News Feed as a central competitor to Twitter.

Foursquare is happily pushing along on its own path. It’s just announced there are 15million users, and they’re now looking to increase their presence on websites, by adding a button to sit next to Facebook’s Like, and Twitter’s Tweet button. This will allow users to get aligned tips from major review sites – such as Timeout, for example.

Perhaps more importantly, Foursquare are looking to improve one of their features called “To Do List”, by creating a “Save” button for websites, allowing users to add various venues to their ‘To-Do’ list direct from surfing the web. This means users can receive notifications when they’re close-by to a ‘saved’ venue, and to receive addition content after checking-in.

This month Foursquare hit the 15m users benchmark – at exactly the same time that Apple’s app of the year Instagram announced the same figure. That took them roughly one year, and with a staff of just 10. An Android app for the photo-sharing platform is imminent.

Google + is not to be outdone, and had 2 pretty big announcements of its own: Firstly, opt-in Facial Recognition photo tagging (i.e. not imposed, à la Facebook!) called Find my Face. And Secondly, a very interesting new project called Schemer. It seems to be a service for sharing ideas with friends, recommendations for activities in the city, potentially locations etc – but we won’t know more ’til they give us all access. [Watch]. The next big thing?