The British Fashion Council has a plan to help small fashion brands

(Image credit: 2019 Milly Grange-Benett/BFC)
Penny Goldstone
By Penny Goldstone
published

It's no secret that independent fashion brands and small designers are struggling right now, however the British Fashion Council has come up with a plan to help.

It has created the BFC Foundation Covid Crisis Fund, which will make £1,000,000 of emergency funds available with the majority supporting designer businesses and through reserves from its Education Foundation, a portion of the funds allocated to students, underpinning the future generation of creative talent.

This was done by exceptionally pooling all of the BFC's talent initiative schemes, BFC/Vogue Designer Fashion Fund, BFC/GQ Designer Menswear Fund supported by JD.COM, INC, BFC Fashion Trust and NEWGEN.

Caroline Rush, the BFC’s Chief Executive, said in a statement, 'These are unprecedented times and now more than ever the BFC is committed to helping all the businesses and people making up the fashion industry. The BFC Foundation Covid Crisis Fund will support designer businesses and students during the crisis with £1m of emergency funds available. Simultaneously, we are launching a fundraising campaign to gather contributions crucial to the survival of our industry. Now is the time to come together and support each other and this is what the new Fund’s aim is.'

Applications for the fund will be open until 10th April.

Penny Goldstone
Penny Goldstone

Penny Goldstone is the Digital Fashion Editor at Marie Claire, covering everything from catwalk trends to royal fashion and the latest high street and Instagram must-haves.

Penny grew up in France and studied languages and law at the Sorbonne Nouvelle University in Paris before moving to the UK for her MA in multimedia journalism at Bournemouth University. She moved to the UK permanently and has never looked back (though she does go back regularly to stock up on cheese and wine).

Although she's always loved fashion - she used to create scrapbooks of her favourite trends and looks, including Sienna Miller and Kate Moss' boho phase - her first job was at MoneySavingExpert.com, sourcing the best deals for everything from restaurants to designer sales.

However she quit after two years to follow her true passion, fashion journalism, and after many years of internships and freelance stints at magazines including Red, Cosmopolitan, Stylist and Good Housekeeping, landed her dream job as the Digital Fashion Editor at Marie Claire UK.

Her favourite part of the job is discovering new brands and meeting designers, and travelling the world to attend events and fashion shows. Seeing her first Chanel runway IRL at Paris Fashion Week was a true pinch-me moment.

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