It's less than a month before London Collections: Men kicks off in June, but it's time for you to pencil another date into your diaries. The British Fashion Council has announced yet another presentation period on the Fashion Week calendar: London Pre-Collections, which will take place right after LC:M wraps up on the fifteenth. 

The two-day event is not quite a full week, but it will incorporate a showroom called the Hoxton Collective, featuring designers like Marques’Almeida, Huishan Zhang, Phoebe English and Zoë Jordan. Burberry, Peter Pilotto, Roksanda and Roland Mouret will also host their own presentations and showrooms around London. 

BFC chief executive Caroline Rush said: “The designer fashion sector has responded to the demand for collections that fall outside the traditional spring/summer and autumn/winter period with collections that in some cases now account for up to 70 per cent of sales for some fashion brands. It’s important that we celebrate the designers that are selling pre collections in London and make it a date in the diary for press and buyers from all over the world.”

The pre-collection period – i.e. the months between the end of spring/summer and the beginning of autumn/winter – are getting busier by the season. Chanel kicked proceedings off with its cruise show in Seoul, South Korea while Louis Vuitton debuted its Palm Springs cruise collection in Los Angeles yesterday.

There's an obvious commercial thinking underpinning for London Pre-Collections – as Rush points out, pre collections (whether you call them cruise, resort, whatever) actually tend to sell better for some designers than their main line. Strong sales could mean a crucial boost in business, especially for an emerging London designer.

Now-established names like JW Anderson actually caught on to the importance of pre collections early and view it as integral to their brand. In an interview with Dazed, he mused: "There’s recently been this debate about pre-collections, many collections, and when I first thought about it, I thought why? Why is there such an anti-feeling? For me, a collection is a collection whether it is a look book or a show."

London Pre-Collections will run from 15 to 17 June.