Fashion Update: Spirited sponsorship

Esprit, the San Francisco-based high street fashion company, announced last week that it is to sponsor Graduate Fashion Week, to be held in June at the Business Design Centre in north London. Forty different colleges will take part in the catwalk show, which has previously been sponsored by Smirnoff and the BBC's The Clothes Show. Esprit's mission statement is 'be informed - be involved - make a difference' and so the company has decided to give something back to this country's fashion colleges, which provide designers who go on to work for fashion houses worldwide.

Esprit's sponsorship deal is for the 'forseeable future', and comes in the wake of Vidal Sassoon's funding of the established designers' London Fashion Week. Graduate Fashion Week, which now spans a longer period than this month's London Fashion Week, is open to the public and last year attracted audiences of more than 25,000.