The British Fashion Council’s last widely quoted figures are a decade old; Roper Penberthy asks how you measure a wardrobe
Fashion Was a 28 Billion Pound Business in 2016. What Would Anyone Count in 2026?
The British Fashion Council’s last widely quoted figures are a decade old; Roper Penberthy asks how you measure a wardrobe
By Roper Penberthy, fashion and style correspondent, London
An Old Figure Still in Use
Every autumn someone quotes a statistic about fashion’s contribution to the British economy, and the number is usually the same one. The Industry Fashion reported in September 2016 that the British Fashion Council, with calculations by Oxford Economics, put the industry’s contribution at 28 billion pounds, up 2 billion from the previous estimate two years earlier. The industry’s 8 percent growth outpaced GDP’s 5 percent over the same period.
Employment in the sector rose from 790,000 in 2014 to 880,000 in 2016. The figures were released before London Fashion Week, which is a habit of the industry. A statistic is also an accessory.
Why I Would Treat It Carefully
That report is ten years old. I have not found a newer figure in the sources I used for this series, and I will not guess one. What I can say is that the pound, the high street, the way people buy clothes and the way they sell them have all changed since 2016.
For instance, Retail Week reported in February 2026 that Vinted has more than 17 million UK customers and is the country’s third-largest fashion retailer. A secondhand sale does not appear in a retailer’s new-clothes revenue in the same way, and it is not always clear how a study should count it.
What Is a Fashion Job?
The 2016 jobs figure covers an industry from designers and pattern cutters to retail staff and warehouse workers. It is a wide definition, which is fair, because fashion is a chain and every link is paid. But it means that a headline about jobs can hide very different working lives. A pattern cutter in a Hackney studio and a seasonal assistant in a department store are both in the number.
I have always thought that the most useful question about any economic statistic is to ask who is in it. The honest answer is usually more interesting than the total.
The Calendar Counts Too
There are other indicators. The September 2026 Fashion Week schedule, as The Industry Fashion reports, includes established houses, three NEWGEN debutants, Marks & Spencer’s first exclusive runway collection and eBay’s pre-loved show. Those are not statistics, but they are signs of where businesses think money will come from.
Laura Weir of the British Fashion Council says the schedule reflects the confidence and momentum of British fashion today. Confidence is a mood. Momentum is a measurement, and I would like to see it measured.
The Resale Gap
The largest blind spot in any figure for fashion is resale. A garment sold twice contributes to the economy twice, but only the first sale tends to be counted as retail. A platform like Vinted handles millions of such transactions, and the revenue is mostly commission, not the value of the goods. The Retail Week report gives no revenue and no market share, so I cannot put a number to it.
What matters is that a modern measure of fashion would have to decide how to treat a coat that has had three owners. It is a good question, and the answer would change the story the numbers tell.
Independent Designers
The next gap is the small designer. A label that employs two people and sells through a website is easy to miss in a national total. The NEWGEN scheme and Fashion East exist because the British Fashion Council knows that these labels are where the next generation comes from, and the September schedule names three NEWGEN debutants by name.
A fair count of fashion jobs would include the freelance pattern cutter, the sample machinist and the model who is paid in dresses. Their incomes are the least stable in the industry, and their numbers the hardest to find.
What I Would Like to See
I would like an updated, public, carefully defined figure for the industry’s contribution, with a separate line for resale, one for independent designers and one for the jobs that are insecure. I would like the methodology printed in plain English. And I would like a note on how many of the clothes that Londoners wear were bought in London.
None of that is glamorous, and all of it would help a young designer decide whether to rent a studio in Hackney or to move to a cheaper city.
Until then, I will continue to dress as if the number is large and the shop assistant is well paid.
Property Nerves, Seen From Elsewhere
Fear of a market travels fast. The same jitters turn up in the comic dispatches on the Cebu condominium story: a Manila News report on a Mactan broker with three brochures, a London Prat account of the references demanded of British retirees (direct link: https://prat.uk/cebu-estate-agents-demand-character-references/) and a Bohiney piece on two-hour open houses. Read them for the human detail a market report leaves out. The wider network is at prat.uk and bohiney.com.
Note: Philippine authorities are examining unproven allegations about Thomas Markle Sr., who lived in Cebu until earlier this year, as GMA News and the Guardian have reported. No charges have been filed. Child protection is a serious matter; the jokes here are about wardrobes and a property market.
For the lighter side of the news, there is always The Daily Mash.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/cebu-realtor-cant-sell-beachfront-listings/