Designer says fashion industry is a stitch-up

The designer Wayne Hemingway has said that designer labels are nothing more than a costly stitch-up.

In an attack on the exorbitant cost of fashion, the man who set up the now defunct Red or Dead label says many designers are "really just conceptual artists pretending they know how to make clothes".

Mr Hemingway's comments come in a television programme, Revolt in Fashion, due to be broadcast later this month. In the Channel 4 programme he picks out many of the biggest names, including British stars such as Hamish Morrow and Julien MacDonald, as well as Versace and Giorgio Armani, whom he accused of talking "poppycock". "Designer labels are a rip-off," he says. "British fashion has been hijacked by global superlabels. Money has corrupted cool.

"Designer fashion is the emperor's new clothes. The majority of the people – the buyers, the designers, journalists – are all working in an ivory tower. They're part of the fashion conspiracy, spinning the hype.

"Spending £400 on a jacket that costs a fraction of that to make shows you have got more money than sense and you just like funding a big marketing campaign."

Mr Hemingway, 41, was once the darling of British fashion for his low-cost, street-cred clothing. He sold his company six years ago for £25m.

He goes on to accuse designers of putting high prices on clothes to give an "image of exclusivity" and that they "have no interest in what real people wear".

The last show of the designer Hamish Morrow, for example, included silver satin tracksuit bottoms and asymmetric canvas skirts. "Those clothes have no relevance to anyone I know, or would want to know."

He added: "I feel sorry for Hamish because he makes these clothes, thinking they'll get loads of coverage in the papers, but he doesn't realise that most people just laugh at them."