London fashion week is really in the entertainment business these days. The livestreaming of Burberry’s upcoming catwalk show on Monday evening is being trailed with the kind of full-page magazine advertising that would befit the pilot of a buzzy new TV drama.

The extra-wide pavement outside the new Aldwych catwalk venue has been commandeered as a stage on which street style stars parade for their insatiable Instagram audience.

Zayn Malik, the former One Direction singer recently tapped by Donatella Versace as a guest designer, is expected to watch his girlfriend Gigi Hadid open the Versus – Versace’s younger line – show on Saturday night.

Versace, who has taken over the first floor of the nearby Hilton hotel as a pop-up atelier in the run-up to Saturday’s show, took inspiration this season from new generation supermodels Hadid and her sister Bella (“they always like to show their abs”) and from the Lady Gaga fans she saw at this year’s Super Bowl (“I was watching them and I love how each one celebrates her but in their own way, not by imitating her look.”)

New for both men and women on the Versus runway will be scuba fabric biker-style boots. Versace, dressed for fittings in a colourful parachute-silk parka over a curvy purple cocktail dress, described them as “super comfortable – but not for me. For Versus, I think about how the young people get dressed.”

But this is also an industry which has been politicised by the sharp impact of Brexit and tuition fees.

While the average heel height (10cm/4in) and earring length (ditto) at the breakfast launch event seemed to signal cocktail chat, anyone looking for light relief from the world’s political, economic and moral issues would have been disappointed.

After the shock and panic that hung over September’s shows, the industry’s ideological opposition to Brexit now comes with a side order of pragmatic spirit.

Dame Natalie Massenet’s speech at Friday’s launch event began with how “inclusivity is at the heart of British fashion, and London fashion week is a brilliant example of the diversity of this city”, but challenged designers to be bold in business in times of upheaval.

Tariffs and the international nature of the fashion workforce are the most pressing concerns.

Designer Anya Hindmarch, who attended the launch, said: “Talent is the key issue. The tariffs we will find a way to cope with. Around 20% of my team are not British, so that is what feels most important to us.”

John Davidson, co-founder of British luxury leather goods company J&M Davidson, said: “We should have stayed in. But now, to be honest, I’m feeling pretty confident.

“We’re in business, we have to move on, and a trade agreement with America could be a good thing.”

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