Fashion Scout Celebrates 20 Years of Discovering the Names That Come Next
This September, Fashion Scout celebrates 20 years as one of London’s most influential platforms for independent and emerging fashion talent. Founded in London in 2006, the organisation has supported more than 1,500 designers from over 70 countries, giving UK and international creatives access to the visibility, infrastructure and industry audience of London Fashion Week.
Over the past two decades, Fashion Scout has helped launch and nurture the careers of designers including Iris van Herpen, Peter Pilotto, David Koma, Eudon Choi, Phoebe English, Tolu Coker, and a newer generation that includes Maximilian Raynor, Kazna Asker and AGRO Studio.
For its 20th anniversary season, Fashion Scout is looking both backwards and forwards. September 2026 will see the platform present an expanded programme featuring three Ones To Watch catwalk shows, the largest emerging-talent showcase in Fashion Scout’s history, alongside standalone designer catwalks, exhibitions and international collaborations.
The anniversary season returns to Fashion Scout’s founding purpose: identifying creative potential early and giving designers the professional platform, visibility and industry access needed to move their careers forward.
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From First Collections to International Careers
The story of Fashion Scout’s first 20 years is best told through the designers who came through its programmes. For many, the platform provided a first London Fashion Week show, a first wholesale order, a first buyer meeting or the confidence to build a brand beyond graduation.
Iris van Herpen, who showed with Fashion Scout in 2012, reflects on the timing of the platform’s early support:
“Fashion Scout has been around almost as long as the Maison; our 20th anniversary is next year too. It’s wonderful our beginnings started at the same time, and that Fashion Scout supported my early transformation as a brand.”
For David Koma, winner of the Fashion Scout Merit Award in 2009, the platform came at a defining point in his career.
“Fashion Scout and the Merit Award came at such an important moment in my career. Winning in 2009, straight after graduating, they gave me the confidence and support to present my work at London Fashion Week for the first time. It was incredibly special to come back years later and support the next generation of designers in the same way. Platforms like Fashion Scout are vital to the creative pulse of London because they give young talent the opportunity to be seen and, just as importantly, to believe that they can build something of their own.”
David Koma
Eudon Choi also credits Fashion Scout with giving his fledgling label a vital early stage.
“19 years ago, I launched my label on courage alone. With no roadmap, I entered Fashion Scout’s Ones To Watch competition and landed with a catwalk show during London Fashion Week. Winning the Merit Award soon after allowed me to present three consecutive solo seasons. It has been an incredible rollercoaster ever since, with countless LFW shows along the way. I am forever grateful to Fashion Scout for believing in me, pushing me to evolve and standing by my side from day one.”
For Phoebe English, Fashion Scout helped transform a graduate collection into the beginnings of a business.
“Fashion Scout was very much the start of things for us after I graduated. Being given the opportunity to make another collection after my Final Collection was so exciting and gave me the drive to continue making work during the confusion and overwhelm of graduating. Then being given the opportunity to be part of their showroom, where our first ever wholesale shop order was placed, was the driving force that led us to register as a company. It was those very first steps that Fashion Scout and Martyn gifted us that helped to get us here all those years later.”
The platform’s influence has also extended to a newer generation of designers. Maximilian Raynor describes Fashion Scout as a vital support system for emerging creatives.
“Fashion Scout are a pillar of the emerging designer network. Fresh off my BA Grad Show, I was lucky to be selected by them for a trip to Rwanda where I met King Charles and worked with a network of designers from across the world. This experience and travel was a formative boost of validation at just the time I needed it. Graduating can feel like plummeting off a cliff edge into the unknown, but Fashion Scout helps to catch us and fan our wings to fly. I am forever grateful for their ongoing support of my work, but also deeply in awe of their steadfast commitment to discovering, nurturing and platforming global talent.”
The Designers Who Built Their First Global Platforms
Fashion Scout’s role in supporting international fashion careers is central to its legacy. For Adebayo Oke-Lawal, founder of Orange Culture, the platform offered an important bridge into the UK and European fashion landscape.
“Fashion Scout will always hold a very special place in Orange Culture’s journey. Being selected as one of the winners of their Ones To Watch programme gave us the opportunity to present our first show in the UK and Europe, at a pivotal moment for the brand. That platform opened doors, introduced Orange Culture to new audiences and helped us begin imagining the possibilities of an international future. I’ll always be grateful for the belief Fashion Scout showed in us and for being part of a journey that genuinely helped shape what came next.”
For Leaf Xia, being selected for Ones To Watch marked a turning point.
“I still remember sitting in my bedroom in downtown New York on Skype and finding out I had been selected for Fashion Scout’s Ones To Watch. I was so happy. I think that moment changed my future life. I spent that summer after graduation knocking on factory doors in Midtown asking if they could help me sew my designs, and working with my friend to prepare my very first capsule collection for Fashion Scout. I will never forget those golden memories. They gave me huge courage to face all the difficulties that came afterwards. Fashion is for fighters, for lovers, for people with dreams.”
Anna October recalls Fashion Scout not only as a showcase, but as an educational platform that helped her understand how to build a fashion business.
“I actually created my brand after attending a Fashion Scout lecture on how to build a fashion brand. I followed everything step by step, and by my second season a buyer from Kuwait wrote asking where she could see and order my collection in Paris. So I reached out to Fashion Scout, and that’s how I started showing my collections in Paris. In the beginning, I knew absolutely nothing; they even taught me how to write follow-up emails! I wanted so much to become part of this professional fashion world. Fashion Scout became a real platform for the beginning of my journey and my business and an incredible source of support. I have such warm memories of those years.”
Together, these reflections reveal the less visible but essential work of fashion’s early-career ecosystem: helping designers move from creative promise to professional practice.
A New Generation Shaping What Comes Next
For its September 2026 anniversary season, Fashion Scout’s programme places a strong emphasis on designers working with cultural memory, inherited craft, regional identity, faith, architecture and material experimentation.
Following his Ones To Watch debut in February, Adolf Maldonado returns to Fashion Scout with growing international attention. His sculptural approach to menswear couture was praised by Forbes as having “wowed the crowd”, with subsequent features in FAULT and looks worn by Ayra Starr.
Serina Lee, winner of the Harper’s BAZAAR Asia NewGen Fashion Award, brings Chinese painting, calligraphy and hand-worked textiles into dialogue with digital technologies. Yukito Lim arrives after receiving the FASHION NOW Pioneer Designer Award at AW26 Beijing Fashion Week.
Kyiv-born Anastasiia Pozhydaeva of ACIDSIIIA, previously featured in Dazed, reinterprets Ukrainian craft through sculptural womenswear. Meanwhile, 2026 London College of Fashion graduate Tyler Von Greenston, a UK semi-finalist for the R|Elan Circular Design Challenge, combines zero-waste principles with sculptural craftsmanship.
Chatchai Chaitrakulthong of CHATCHAI C. brings a refined approach to modern menswear, informed by training at Westminster, Istituto Marangoni Shanghai and the Savile Row Bespoke Academy, alongside experience at Givenchy Paris.
South African designer Tadiwanashe Karen Kaparipari of TADI wa NASHE joins the programme following her South African Fashion Week debut, where TimesLIVE named her “One To Watch”. Irish designer Niamh McGovern of NMCG, listed by IMAGE among its Irish designers to watch in 2026, explores personal memory, Irish cultural imagery and the tension between tradition and contemporary youth culture.
Beyond Ones To Watch, Haus of McLees brings Shoshone heritage and traditional beadwork into a contemporary fashion context, with designer Mclees Mantegazza previously highlighted by Forbes. The wider programme also includes the tenth anniversary edition of FJU Talents, continuing its long-running platform for Taiwanese design talent in London.
Across the season, designers explore Gurunsi architecture, Asturian craft traditions, West African textiles, Indian handwork, tailoring, reconstruction and new material processes. Rather than approaching heritage as nostalgia, this generation uses culture, place and memory as active tools for contemporary fashion design.
Twenty Years of Creating Access
Fashion Scout was founded in 2006 by Martyn Roberts and John Wolford with a clear mission: to help talented designers access the visibility and industry audience of London Fashion Week without having to independently build the complex infrastructure required to stage a professional catwalk show.
“We started with a very simple belief: brilliant designers should have the opportunity during London Fashion Week, with access to the professional infrastructure and support needed to present their talents at its best,” says Martyn Roberts, Founder and Director of Fashion Scout.
“Twenty years later, what remains most exciting is that moment before everybody knows the name. Our role is to recognise that potential at a pivotal moment in their careers and enable it to be seen around the world.”
What began as a London Fashion Week showcasing platform has since grown into an international creative network spanning mentoring, business acceleration, cultural exchange and sector development. Fashion Scout now collaborates with fashion organisations, governments, universities and cultural institutions across Africa, Europe, the Caucasus, the Balkans and Asia.
“London remains our home and an extraordinary meeting point for international creativity,” says Biljana Poposka-Roberts, Managing Director of Fashion Scout. “After twenty years, what excites us isn’t simply looking at where Fashion Scout has been. It’s seeing another generation arrive with completely different experiences, cultures and ways of making. Our role is to create the conditions for those new ideas to enter the conversation and see where they go next.”
The 20th Anniversary Season
Alongside its expanded catwalk programme, Fashion Scout will present BEYOND LIMITS: Polish Visionaries, a three-day exhibition bringing together 12 Polish fashion and jewellery creatives working across experimental fashion, wearable art, contemporary jewellery and upcycling.
The exhibition explores cultural heritage, identity, technology and new approaches to making, with GQ Poland as exclusive media partner.
Fashion Scout’s anniversary season also strengthens its ongoing partnership with Sally Beauty, one of the UK’s leading professional hair and beauty retailers. As Official Hair Partner, Sally Beauty brings UNITE Hair to the Fashion Scout catwalk, with Narad Kutowaroo, UK Creative Director and Ambassador for UNITE Hair, leading hair across the programme.
Fashion Scout also continues its long-standing partnership with AOFM Makeup Academy, with international make-up artist Mandy Gakhal leading make-up for the anniversary season.
Twenty years after Fashion Scout first began creating space for emerging designers at formative moments in their careers, its anniversary season reaffirms that mission. The programme celebrates the names that came before while placing more new talent than ever at the centre of what comes next.
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Event Information
Event: Fashion Scout 20th Anniversary Season
Location: London
Date: September 2026
Occasion: London Fashion Week
Website: https://www.fashionscout.com
Instagram: @fashionscout
Happy 20th Anniversary from the FashionEVO team.
