Leading article: The business of fashion

Each year, as the fashion shows reach their climax and their finale in Paris, we hear the cry of how good the British designers were, how fertile their ideas, how exciting their young talent. Absolutely right. Thanks partly to the art colleges and partly to the multicultural flowering of the country, Britain is peculiarly fecund in its design imagination. John Galliano showed for Dior yesterday; Vivienne Westwood follows after.

But it is worth remembering that for the French, fashion is "faire le business". Ideas make a splash but it takes devotion to the hard graft of fabric, detail, cutting and sourcing to make a business. Fashion remains an industry supporting thousands of small specialist businesses supplying everything from buttons to lace. In Britain that infrastructure is dying as the stores source from cheaper suppliers in Asia and the designers content themselves with one-off shows. Imagination is wonderful, but if it is jobs and skill we want, we should look to the French example.