Tom Ford, Rihanna lead London Fashion Week lineup

LONDON (AP) -- Shorts and bare legs in February? A dark man's suit draped with baby blue fur? Gaggles of photographers on the prowl for a standout model?

All that action on London's streets can mean only one thing: Fashion Week is in town.

Friday's runway shows — the first of many in the five-day style extravaganza — may be relatively few, but the flocks of fashion editors, buyers and bloggers who have arrived in London for the trade event are only too happy to dress the part.

Hot on the heels of New York Fashion Week, the biannual event in the British capital boasts a lineup that features industry leaders Burberry and Vivienne Westwood, as well as young talents Christopher Kane, Mary Katrantzou and others.

This season they will be joined for the first time by celebrity designer Tom Ford, who's staging his first proper catwalk show in the capital; singer Rihanna, who will debut her first design collection for British high street chain River Island; and L'Wren Scott, the American designer and partner of Mick Jagger.

The newcomers certainly add star power to London Fashion Week, but it's the slew of exciting young designers based in the capital that keeps the international fashion pack coming back for more.

"The buyers who come to London don't go to just one or two shows — they go to nearly every show, every day. You miss the show, you miss the hot new trend," said Caroline Rush, chief executive of the British Fashion Council.

Fashion is a 21 billion-pound (US$33 billion) industry in Britain, and its significance has been growing every year. Last summer, models and designer clothes by the likes of the Alexander McQueen house and Victoria Beckham even got featured at the London Olympics closing ceremony — a show of how much emphasis officials are placing on the business.

Rush and her colleagues devote particular attention to nurturing ambitious, talented young designers in London. After all, they could be the next Kane or Katrantzou — young guns who have burst onto the international scene within just a few seasons.

The youngest of the "big four" fashion weeks, London had generally been regarded as the irreverent, idiosyncratic sibling to the slick productions in Milan, Paris and New York. For some time, it was more a place for edgy fashion college graduates than a destination for elite fashion buyers.

Yet these days London Fashion Week is a professional, pulled-together affair. Burberry packs in the crowds — and the celebrities — with an extravagant catwalk display, while growing corporate sponsorship has seen editors and buyers whizzed from show to show in shiny black Mercedes. The week generates over 100 million pounds ($160 million) worth of orders, and attracts some 5,000 fashion fans from around the world.

 "Before, people used to skip London. Now people make a point of coming," said Carmen Borgonovo, fashion director of luxury online retailer my-wardrobe.com.

 One of the highlights will be the first official catwalk collection by Ford, who has dressed everyone from Michelle Obama to James Bond star Daniel Craig. The former design chief at Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent had previously only staged exclusive presentations here.

Meanwhile, the British Fashion Council is calling Rihanna's designs for River Island the "most anticipated collaboration of 2013."

 "This has been something I wanted to do ever since I started loving fashion," the singer said in a video posted on British Vogue's website. "Every time I saw something on a rack there was something I wanted to do to change it, and so I thought that the only way I could do that is by designing the perfect thing for me."

 In all, almost 60 runway previews for autumn 2013 will run from Friday to Tuesday.

London Fashion Week will be followed by designer shows in Milan and Paris.