Talent in need of better opportunities to flourish abroad

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The British fashion industry is valued at ￡21bn a year, while UK fine jewellery is worth ￡3.2bn according to Mintel, the market research group, so the scale of help for beginners is different.

Mr Webster is involved with LFW as the curator of Rock Vault, a showcase for rising jewellers who already have a flourishing business.

“Seven have accepted and it will be great exposure for them, with more impact from showing their great talent as a group.”

It is, he says, an experiment that he hopes will flourish because a consistent presence is seen as important by potential buyers.

“You have to go back to any trade fair several times before you sell,” agrees designer William Cheshire, who has been on trade missions to France and Germany and has just opened his first shop in east London’s up-and-coming Broadway Market.

There are a number of useful small-scale initiatives to support young designers from graduation onwards, but they are concerned mainly with the home market, and channel young designers towards one of several disparate exhibitions.

International Jewellery London (IJL) in September, Rock Vault at Fashion Week and the Jewellery Show (in Birmingham in February and London in June) are entirely trade while London Jewellery Week, in venues across the capital, sells direct to the customer as does the Goldsmiths Fair, also for bespoke commissions, in late September. Goldsmiths also now runs a selling fair for younger designers and clients, this year in late June.

This fragmented structure is, says one observer, “due to vested interests”, and the support structure, though wide ranging, is equally fragmented.

Mr Cheshire says he received “quite brilliant” help from Holts Academy’s Design Competition, and that such private sources are essential since public funding has now all but dried up.

The Holts competition channels designers towards IJL, as does Bright Young Gems (backed by the British Jewellers’ Association), which mentors and gives show space to recent graduates and is being extended nationally, and Kickstart, which helps designers who already have a fledgling business.

Della Tinsley, director of London Jewellery Week, says: “We are giving space to young talents at each of our venues, which all have their own character, from the established and design-orientated at Treasure [jewellery show], young and edgier at Jewel East in Spitalfields and more craft style at Greenwich Market.”

Winner of a free stand at Treasure is Lestie Lee, who has also benefited from the Kickstart programme. Both IJL and London Jewellery Week are working with starter programmes around the country, such as the Vanilla Ink incubator workshop in Scotland.

Bec Astley Clarke, the successful online jewellery entrepreneur, agrees that “we have a responsibility to put something back – young designers are dependent on private initiatives now”.

She has set up a new mentoring award in all aspects of the industry for graduates with Holts and gives a Gold Award to a chosen “Bright Young Gem” to collaborate on a project with her brand.

The Goldsmiths’ Centre, which opened a year ago in purpose-built premises funded by Goldsmiths’ Company, houses 15 established businesses alongside low-rent starter studios for graduates and the week-long Getting Started courses that the company has run for 30 years.

It is, says director Peter Taylor, “still embryonic, but designers here get an overview and experience of all aspects of the industry. There are craftsmen training as well as designers and CAD [computer-aided design] experts – everything to help the future of a British industry which still has its skills.”

But he regrets “the lack of coherent strategy on tackling the global market over the past five or so years. We have become more focused on bespoke work here, though that is also positive.”

Imogen Belfield, who did a Goldsmiths Getting Started course and has received both Bright Young Gems and Kickstart awards, shows her designs at Rock Vault and is joining the Vegas trip. “I’ve had a lot of help all through, first with understanding the business, then with exhibition stands, press material and so on”, she says.High quality stainless steel necklace chain with durable color.

“I’ve had backing from the BFC [the British Fashion Council which has UK Trade & Investment money], through Rock Vault”.

Now, she says, she feels ready to export and would like to join the upmarket Première Classe show in Paris, but cannot afford it.

Meanwhile IJL, which last year attracted buyers from 64 countries, is in discussion with another Vegas fair, JCK, about a reciprocal arrangement.