Show Report: The word from Moda x Pure at Autumn Fair

Exhibitor confidence was high on day two of Moda x Pure at Autumn Fair, where fashion mixes with home and gifts from 7-10 September at the NEC Birmingham, as buyers from a wide range of outlets - from boutiques and department stores to garden centres and museums – are busy sourcing new products for both AW25 and SS26.

Soraya Gadelrab, Event Director of Autumn Fair, said: "Day two at Autumn Fair has been fantastic, with retailers diving deep into new product discoveries and making meaningful connections. Feedback has been incredibly positive, and the show floor has been very busy, with exhibitors happy as they are writing orders. The international element has also been very exciting and continues to offer newness.

"Overall, the energy and optimism on the show floor are clear signs that this season holds great promise for independent retailers and established chains alike."

With some brand exhibitors talking of new avenues for growth - such as increasing demand from large garden centres that are upping their fashion offer and areas - it’s little wonder that the garden and outdoor leisure show Glee is to join with Autumn Fair at the NEC, with two cross-over days next time around (on 8-9 September 2026).This collaboration could spell even more opportunities for fashion and accessories brands, as TheIndustry.fashion explored the aisles to discover insights from key exhibitors.

Karl Hutchings, Director, Goose Island

We exhibited at Pure (in London) for many years and we used to do Moda before it became part of Autumn Fair. To be honest, I’ve not seen a lot of difference because the brands that used to do Pure were here (at Moda) anyway. But it made sense in the end to put them together. I’m also hoping that the Glee show merge with Autumn Fair 2026 at the NEC will bring new buyers from different avenues.

Garden centres have become a big part of the fashion industry these days, such as Haskins - a nice chain Hampshire way - and the Blue Diamond group, which has 45 garden centres across the UK and is a big stockist of ours. A lot of the bigger players have fashion departments now. And, when I say fashion departments, they are set up like an H&M or NEXT. However, they’re not targeting the young, they’re targeting the older garden centre customer, and even mothers on maternity leave as they have play areas in them.

So, I think the reason they are now so popular is they have become ‘destination days’ rather than just garden centres. They do amazing restaurants, which are usually located right at the back, so you’ve got to walk through the garden centre to get there. Customers then realise how good the products are as they walk through.  The merchandising is normally very good too. It fits with our core demographic of ‘ladies who lunch’ over the age of 50. If we can provide an impulse buy by keeping the prices down, then the volume in sales equates to that.

We also still supply a lot of independent boutiques. We want to support the high street as we’ve got two stores ourselves – in Mumbles, Swansea and Cowbridge, a market town in between Swansea and Cardiff. We do some furniture in our stores as well, so we try to make them quirky and different.

We’re an in-season ‘free size’ range. Everything is one size, like our jumpers can fit anyone from a size 12 to 18 and our trousers go from a 10 to 18. Everything you see is in stock. If a buyer places an order today it can be in their store within a week or so.

Our hero pieces are our mohair jumpers and our alpaca jumpers, and we certainly focus on impulse buy price points. We have ponchos, oversized jumpers, cardigans and trousers that retail for about £25.

So far, so good for this show. We like a Sunday and a Monday because all the independent stockists come out, which means footfall is strong. Our stand has been busy, we’ve had a good response and we’ve been writing orders, so we’re very happy. We’ve taken on a number of new accounts in the first couple of days, and that’s why most exhibitors come here, as it’s hard to pick up new accounts if you don’t show.

Louise Collins, Sales Manager, Alice Collins

I’m actually Alice’s mum – we named the brand after her. My grandfather was a knitwear manufacturer in the west coast of Scotland, who started in menswear just after WWII in 1946. Then my father went into it. He brought myself and my brother, Matthew, into the business and we started the Alice Collins womenswear brand in the late 80s, mainly making intarsia knitwear. Then we brought out the first applique embroidered sweatshirts with attached collars, and also added trousers. That’s how we started in casualwear really.

We have independent stockists all over the UK and we’re in some great independent department stores such as Austins in Newton Abbot, Devon, which is fabulous. Our offer is smart casual, a bit different to the mainstream, and it’s well priced, but good quality. The retailer gets a good margin from us. We’ve got printed shirt dresses and lots of knitwear – that’s really come back for us. We’ve also got stretch jeans in four lengths, in every colour to mix in with the rest of the collection.

We’ve sold out of our knit with embroidered sausage dogs for AW25. The whole picture thing has come back again and follows through into SS26, so we’ve continued with the sausage dog design and now added knits with elephants on, and also penguins. Our geometric print shirt dress is another key piece, as is our ‘Nicola’ pullover with two patch pockets and polka dot intarsia detail.

Overall, our collection is quite ageless. It’s all in colour stories, so retailers can make a good colour story that’s very visual in the store when customers go in. Green and yellow are key colours for SS26. There’s also lots of pastels, neutrals and nautical navy, white and red looks. The pink mixed with green story has been very strong, as has the butter lemon pieces – mixed with sky blue.
We’ve taken extra space this time, so we can show our product properly. We’re mainly showing our SS26 collection, which is a lot bigger than we’ve done before, but we’ve also brought a small selection of what’s still available to buy for immediate delivery for AW25. We’ve actually sold a lot of that here with existing customers wanting top-ups.

We started showing at Autumn Fair just after Covid, but we did show at Moda for years prior to them merging. This is now the second show also combining Moda and Pure, and I think it has benefitted as it draws more retailers to one show.

We find this to be a really good show, as we see customers from all over, including Scotland and Ireland. Day one was very busy for us.

In terms of the mood of retailers, earlier on in the year they seemed pretty down, perhaps effected by the cost of living, the impact of wars and the weather wasn’t great early on (last spring). But then the warmer weather came, people were feeling better, and we’ve had no negativity at all buying forward for next spring/summer. In fact, many underbought a bit for AW25, so they are topping up now. What’s more, it’s selling - and that’s all you can want.

Mark Hunt, Sales Manager, Ashwood Leather

Everything we’ve brought to the show is for this autumn/winter. We’re predominantly leather goods, bags and jackets, but we also offer a range of sheepskin products, and we have reversible lambskin women’s gilets - with a range of new colours for AW25 here. We carry a small amount of stock in certain colours and sizes, but generally all the gilets are made to order – taking seven to 10 days to make.

The company has been going for almost 40 years, having started on the markets in Birmingham where the brand is based. It’s a family run business. The leather and products come from India, where the family also own a tannery. The Ashwood brand has been established for about 20 years.

Ashwood is predominantly known for its leather bags; however, the company started out making leather jackets under the name of Fonz Leather Styles, which also still exists. There’s a mural of Fonzie from 'Happy Days' in the office!

Our leather cross body bags and holdalls are always great sellers. It’s been predominantly men’s, but our women’s fashion side has really grown over the last couple of years. We’ve now got some vibrant leather colours which appeal on that front, including pink, mustard, green, white and orange. The cross body styles and the phone bags are doing very well for women.

Day two of the show (8 September) was busier than day one which was a bit up and down, peaks and troughs. We tended to be either extremely busy or very quiet yesterday but today has been very consistent as we haven’t stopped from about 9.30am this morning. It’s a nice mix of new and old customers, which is great. That’s what you want from a trade show.

Our customer base is a real mix, as we supply garden centres and stately country homes alongside independent fashion boutiques. Garden centres are doing particularly well with our products, because they’re not just garden centres these days, are they?

We introduced a Harris Tweed collection last year, using our leather with their Harris Tweed fabric designs for trims, which we’ve continued. People think the price points will be more [than our regular lines], but they’re not, with the larger barrel bag wholesaling at £28 (offering a 2.5x mark-up). The Harris Tweed barrel bag has actually done really well for us, as has the shopper bag and small cross body. We’re finding a lot of the smaller bags are selling very well this year.

In terms of outlook, we’re going into our busiest period now. We always find that in the lead up to the Christmas period people are optimistic as they expect people to spend, so they place orders accordingly. Accessories-wise there’s been growth. We’ve had a very strong August, and we do most of our business in the next three months – so we’re confident that we’re going to have a very strong year.

Siobhan Lennon, Northern Ireland Sales Manager, Lighthouse

We’re a lifestyle brand based in Belfast that mainly specialises in outerwear - waterproof coats and jackets - and then we have leisurewear such as fleeces and half-zip sweatshirts, as well as T-shirts, that blend in with that. The Lighthouse brand has been established around 10 years, but the main company, Target Dry Ltd., has been going since the early 80s.

The offer is fit for coastal walks and everyday use and can be dressed up or down. We’re strong on coloured outerwear, with details such as stripes on the inside of hoods. A new style for SS26 is ‘Hallie’, a three-quarter length coat that is trench coat-inspired and features a detachable hood. Pink has so far been the strongest colour, followed by beige, navy and orange. It’s £40 wholesale to retail at £100, so its competitively priced for a waterproof and breathable garment.

We also have a heritage range which the company has been producing for a long time. It was part of the Target Dry range, but we’ve moved it into the Lighthouse collection. They are more traditional outback-style coats with storm flaps across the shoulders. We’re still selling that range for AW25 here too.

We’re very pleased with how the show has gone so far. We’ve seen retailers we expected to and we’ve had a few new accounts as well. We’ve always done Moda, and it’s always been a successful show for us, so we’ve stuck with it since it merged with Autumn Fair and now joined forces with Pure. I think this show has been slightly busier for us to be fair, maybe there is just more people coming to it. We did Pure before in London, but that wasn’t great for us. Birmingham is handy because we have customers who can fly directly in from Northern Ireland and come straight into the NEC.

Sarah Probert, Wholesale Manager, Bill Skinner

The Bill Skinner brand has been established for 12 years, but the company has been designing jewellery for 45 years. It’s a family run business, based down in Kent, and we specialise in enamel jewellery. It’s hand enamelled, gold-plated and made of brass.

Our bestselling piece is our ‘blackberry mouse’ brooch. It really sums up our brand as it has such attention to detail. The retail price is £70 (on a 2.5x mark-up). We also do really beautiful lockets. Again, the blackberry mouse locket, which was launched a couple of seasons ago, has become a bes-seller. We also have a locket that’s a bit like a fabergé-style egg. It opens up with a little robin inside and it’s very Christmassy. We have an entire Christmas range as well.

We’re selling in-season, though we do forward order too because we do a lot of bespoke work – especially in the museum and gallery sector. Today, we had buyers from the Ashmolean Museum come on to the stand. We work with them already, but from the show we’ve potentially picked up some more work with them.

We also work quite closely with a number of independents and that’s a growing part of our business. Over the last two days, we’ve had around 20 new leads from independent businesses that we are now looking to stock.

We’ve had our ‘Enchanted’ and ‘Bejewelled’ collections since the Bill Skinner business started 12 years ago. Enchanted features the hand enamelled animals, while Bejewelled is our higher end offer that has our bigger, statement pieces with hand-set stones. For instance, there’s a necklace with glass beads and our ‘vintage moth’, which has hand-set crystals. It’s a bit quirky and different. That retails at £128.

This is our first time back at the Autumn Fair show after a break of five years. What’s really brought us back is the launch of our new gifting range of pendants and earrings. It has a very commercial price point of £18-£30 retail. It has the same DNA as our other collections, but it’s that easy pick up-type jewellery. We saw a gap in the market for something like this, with the enamelling. We’re also offering the retail fixture that the product is presented on. We’re aiming this at the gifting market, as we’ve seen a real increase in people wanting that easy gifting product around the £30 price mark. It’s not so much of a considered purchase as our other collections are. It will be a volume business for us, and it’s been received really well by buyers, including new business here.

Lesley Rock, South West Sales, Nomads and Saige by Nomads

Nomads has been going for 35 years, it’s an ethical and sustainable fashion brand targeting 40-plus women, which is DTC online retail sales as well as business to business, while Saige by Nomads is an off-shoot introduced this year that is wholesale only. It’s also sustainable and ethical, but it’s a younger, more trend-led brand targeting women more in their 30s. This is only its second season. The collection is quite small and is sold in-season. The confetti print dress and blouse are proving good sellers for us, giving that boho look. Although the collection is small, it’s all interchangeable, including knitwear and vest tops. We’ve taken on in the region of 25 new accounts in the last month or so, which is encouraging.

So far, we’ve seen a lot of our customers that said they would be coming and there’s been some extras that we weren’t expecting, which is always good.

In fact, over all the show has been good as we’ve taken plenty of forward orders for Nomad’s SS26 collection, with a strong response to our neutrals and linens. The cotton drill wide leg trousers have been popular, and the two-piece linen sets too, which are mix and match. The chambray jacket and matching trousers have been other winners.

We’ve also done some in-season AW25 for Nomad. Generally, we have noticed that a lot of customers are beginning to buy in-season more than forward ordering. I think that, because of the current economic climate, people are more wary about placing big orders for six months in advance. Especially when they don’t know how the season they are in is going to pan out. A lot of customers I’ve been out on the road to see have said they are now preferring to buy in-season, so shop keepers are being more careful.