London Fashion Week is often seen the most prestigious event of the year for fashion loving freelancers. Creative freelancers from all over the world scramble to get work at the capitals number one fashion event. The main reason for finding work at London Fashion Week is the prestige, experience or the buzz of being apart of LFW. What does working at London Fashion Week actually get you as a working freelancer and why are so few jobs paid during this money making fashion extravaganza?

It's true that the experience of LFW is one-of-a-kind and that the fast-paced nature of backstage work is something that's hard to replicate. It's also said that the prestige of having London Fashion Week on your CV or website will potentially enhance your brand and attract certain clients to use your services in the future. This, however, can be a red herring. PR agencies tend to use interns or students to help with the running of their show while hundreds of MUAs, Stylists/Dressers and Hair Stylists get to 'work' at the event through their course. This often results in a LFW credit on their site or CV that isn't a true reflection of their experience and employers know this. 

With so many designers, PR agencies and art directors advertising roles that are unpaid, the value of working at London Fashion Week for nothing often results in just that - nothing. Many freelancers will be promised goodies, sponsor products and/or a copy of images in return for their services. The value of such promises can often be far less than your time and frequently don't get paid so tread carefully. The bigger issue is that if you accept unpaid work - even if it is London Fashion Week - it greatly devalues the services that our freelance community provides and is clearly taking advantage of the London Fashion Week brand to source the finest freelances for free work. 

We love London Fashion Week and we love that it's such an important part of the freelance community but that doesn't give it the right to exploit freelancers. This season we're asking creative freelancers to say NO to unpaid work at LFW and help raise awareness of our #NOFREEWORK campaign. 

For a quick WIN, sign our petition to stop unpaid work in the industry.