Nostalgia vs nouveau at London Fashion Week

Two of the most iconic labels of London in the "Swinging Sixties" - Ossie Clark and Biba - will return to the catwalk at London Fashion Week, which opens today.

	Reincarnated: updated Ossie Clark [left] and Biba

The brands will set the stage for a fashion battle between two strikingly different fashion moods: nostalgia and nouveau. Up against the vintage brands are a tribe of young, thrusting fashion creators, all under 30 and all intent on success, including Christopher Kane, Gareth Pugh, Henry Holland and Marios Schwab.

The "oldies revolution" will be boosted by the return of the high priestess of punk, Vivienne Westwood, who is showing at London Fashion Week for the first time in eight years, and another fashion radical, Katharine Hamnett, renowned for her protest T?shirts, is also returning to the event.

Showing today is Biba. Originally founded by the style and retail icon Barbara Hulanicki, it has been through several reincarnations and is now in the hands of a team of young British fashion graduates, under the artistic direction of Hector Castro, a former fashion editor and stylist at Italian Vogue.

"We've been through the archives and we're concentrating on the 'Biba Shoulder' and her famous cloche hat," says Castro. "But there is a mix of inspirations, such as Victorian bird prints, dark forests and a contemporary update with laser?cutting techniques."

The Ossie Clark label - named after one of the most illustrious designers of the 1960s and 1970s, a tragic drug addict who was stabbed to death by his gay lover in 1996 - will be relaunched tomorrow. It is the first time the label has been seen on the catwalk for nearly a quarter of a century.

Its revival has been masterminded by the fashion entrepreneur Mark Worth, who two years ago sold his WGSN news website for £170 million to the Emap group.

"It's a fantastic challenge, and now seems the right time for the relaunch of a vintage label," he says.

Worth is investing £3 million in the Ossie Clark relaunch and plans to build it into a global fashion brand within three years, with a young fashion team headed by the Central Saint Martins graduate Avsh Alom Gur, who previously worked for Donna Karan and Nicole Farhi.

"It's the first in a stable of young talent I'm building," says Worth. "I want to prove British fashion can be a global fashion success."

This season's London Fashion Week, in a tented village at the Natural History Museum, features 57 catwalk shows over six days and more than 200 ready-to-wear and accessory designers.

The event is expected to attract more than 5,000 visitors, inject £20 million into the London economy and generate £50 million in global media coverage.