Celebrating The Graduate GFW26 Industry Breakfast Welcome Speech

“Thank you all for joining us today, as we open the doors to Graduate Fashion Week 2026. This event marks our 35th anniversary. For 35 years, Graduate Fashion Foundation has been supporting multidisciplinary talent from across the globe, with a particular focus on creative young people regionally across the UK. 

Founded in 1991 by Jeff Banks CBE, Vanessa Denza MBE, and John Walford, Graduate Fashion Foundation  was established with a singular mission: to unify UK and international universities and create a pipeline for the creative industries to find the best emerging talent. Over 35 years, that mission has remained constant while its reach has grown significantly. To date, the Foundation has supported over 100,000 newly graduated and undergraduate students, providing them with the visibility, connections, and industry access needed to turn creative education into sustainable careers.

For our 35th edition, we have 16 industry talks, starting this morning in the GFW Live Space with Dr Samuel Ross MBE, a once in a generational mind and Graduate Fashion Foundation Ambassador - I would encourage you all to head to the talk space at 11am, where Samuel will be discussing ‘Thriving Against The Odds’. 

The talk space will welcome thought leaders from across fashion, such as Emma Hill, Chani Ra, Victoria Jenkins, Patrick McDowell to name a few, covering topics such as sustainability, scaling a fashion business, AI, the future of recycled textiles and the making of a campaign. 

Alongside the talk space, we have an exciting catwalk schedule running throughout the four days, including F&F curated catwalk, the Liberty Fabrics catwalk, GFW | MENS, curated by Way Perry, and the International Catwalk with universities from across the world including China, Spain, Italy, Columbia, France, South Africa, and Japan.

We invite you all to attend as many of these catwalks as possible, as well as discovering marketing, promotion, photography and communication disciplines in our exhibition. We have the Exposure Gallery, showcasing fashion photography, In Market, our marketing showcase, In Print, our magazine shop and Project Pitch, an area for fashion business graduates. 

If you would like a tour around the event, our wonderful industry and educational trustees are all in attendance, and would be more than happy to share their knowledge with you. Please don’t hesitate to speak to myself or one of our team, and we can arrange a tour with a Graduate Fashion Foundation trustee.

As we are all aware, the arts education in the UK is going through a tumultuous period, from budget cuts and downsizing in universities to removal of creative courses from GCSE and A Level curriculums. The UK has historically been known for its excellence in fashion education, attracting talent internationally to study design, textiles, marketing and more, producing some of the leading names in the industry today - from Stella McCartney and Kim Jones to  Clare Waight Keller and Louise Trotter. 

The Graduate Fashion Foundation has played a pivotal role in launching the careers of many of these names, providing showcasing opportunities, visibility and connection to industry that begins the journey into leading the top fashion brands around the world. 

In order to continue to do so for another 35 years, we need support from industry - this year, we’ve worked closely with Liberty, as they celebrate 150 years of Liberty Fabrics, designing industry briefs, a competition and distribution of their collection fabric to students across the UK. The 40 shortlisted designers will be a part of the catwalk showcase tomorrow at 7:30pm!

F&F, our principle partner for 2026, has represented a fantastic collaboration across design and marketing - inviting students to respond to briefs, attend a workshop day at F&F head offices,, alongside a curated showcase of commercial collections on the catwalk this evening.  The winners of these two competitions will receive internships in the brand - in real terms, this represents tangible results for young talented creative people, connections and experiences within a working industry studio. We thank the F&F team for their collaboration, and for providing opportunities for talented young people to discover more about the industry, launching their careers.  

This partnership represents the power of industry collaboration on young talent, elevating fresh voices and ideas into industry. Central to our strategy is to collaborate with industry to create opportunities, continue to decentralise regionally and we will work closely with all of you, to achieve this mission. We invite you to explore the member university exhibition, attend catwalk shows and meet with the fresh talent and exciting voices that will be the leaders of tomorrow, during our 35th edition!”

Discover the full Graduate Fashion Week 2026 schedule here.

Media and industry can attend at no cost by registering, and tickets for the catwalk and exhibition, are available now.