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Champagne and price cuts as West End joins a fashion celebration
Sri Carmichael, Consumer Affairs Reporter27 Jul 2009
All nighter: designer Roksanda Ilincic will be helping out in Browns
London is to take part in a global festival of fashion with hundreds of stores offering champagne, discounts and free style advice and workshops.
The event will coincide with celebrations in Paris, New York, Mumbai, Beijing and Moscow as part of a worldwide effort to lure shoppers back to high streets.
Leading clothes stores across 13 capital cities will host a shopping night out. In London's event, more than 125 stores along Oxford Street, Bond Street and Regent Street are taking part.
Fashion's Night Out on 10 September - organised by Vogue - will involve brands including Agent Provocateur, Alexander McQueen, Tommy Hilfiger and Topshop and showcase designers' talent as retailers struggle in the recession.
Liberty will stay open all night, offering customers a midnight feast from English restaurant Bob Bob Ricard in Soho and a scarf-tying workshop by boutique Hermes.
Browns has invited young British designers to take over the store, with Giles Deacon DJ-ing, Richard Nicoll working in the fitting rooms and Roksanda Ilincic wrapping purchases.
At Rupert Sanderson, customers will be asked to colour in a square on a giant paint-by-numbers drawing on the floor in Berkeley Square which will be photographed by satellite the following morning.
Topshop will offer champagne and canapés, and makeovers and stylists at a Vogue shop which will be created in-store.
At Burberry, the brand's creative designer Christopher Bailey will be in store with models and a Vogue editor offering style advice. There will be a prize draw to win tickets to the spring/summer collection London Fashion Week show.
Claridge's, Browns and The Dorchester are creating cocktails for the night and Claridge's will have room offers.
Although the British Retail Consortium says sales have held up in London, jumping by nearly five per cent last month, its director general Stephen Robertson said the fear of unemployment meant Londoners were still nervous about spending.
Sales are being buoyed by overseas visitors taking advantage of the weak pound but shops are still closing, leaving empty units in high streets across the capital, including the King's Road and Kensington High Street.
Alexandra Shulman, editor of British Vogue, said: "Retailers and shoppers will be brought together in central London for this unprecedented feel-good occasion. In these difficult economic times we want to reward the spirit of enterprise and imagination that the fashion industry encapsulates."
Fashion's Night Out takes place during a week of events promoting high street fashion in the West End.
Jace Tyrell, of the New West End Company which represents traders, said: "The Vogue event is very exciting and will showcase London's West End as a top shopping destination ahead of London Fashion Week."
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