Notting Hill Carnival is London’s loudest love letter to Caribbean culture, and if you’re a creative, it’s the one weekend you should really be paying attention to. Yes, it’s vibes, yes, it’s feathers, sequins and soca flooding the streets, but it’s also a whole ecosystem that fuels the city’s economy, sustains local businesses, and has the potential to show us what sustainable fashion could really look like when community and creativity are the drivers.
Carnival started as resistance, not a tourist attraction. After the 1958 Notting Hill race riots, Claudia Jones organised a Caribbean carnival indoors in 1959 as a way of healing and reclaiming joy. Fast forward to 1966 and the streets came alive with steel pan bands, eventually expanding into the masquerade, sound systems and parades we know today. This year, around 2 million people are expected to flood West London. That’s not just a crowd, that’s an entire city within a city. And it’s not cheap to put on either. Carnival costs almost a million pounds to stage and only just avoided cancellation this year after last-minute funding was secured. Why does it feel like Carnival is seemingly always narrowly missing cancellation? With only the negativity of the event being covered by media, there’s pressure on, not only the individuals organising it, but the participants to ensure its legacy lives on.
When you zoom into the detail, Carnival is a fashion show in disguise. We’re talking over 15,000 hand-made costumes built in mas camps over months, decorated with more than 30 million sequins and 15,000 feather. That’s hours and hours of labour, artistry and craft, often unpaid or undervalued, stitched into something that only exists for one weekend before it’s stored away, sold off or dismantled. And here’s what the media WONT tell you: Carnival contributes almost £400 million to the UK economy. Food, accommodation, transport, security, sound hire, fabrics, rum, it’s one of London’s biggest financial engines. To put it in perspective, vendors sell five tons of chicken, 30,000 corn cobs, 70,000 litres of carrot juice and five million drinks in just two days. That kind of demand shows you how embedded Carnival is in the economy of the city, even if the communities who built it still face barriers and underfunding.
So where does sustainability fit into this? Honestly, Carnival is already a masterclass in reuse and resourcefulness. A lot of mas camps work with recycled or repurposed materials because budgets are tight, and creativity thrives under limits. But as sustainability becomes a louder conversation in fashion, Carnival has an opportunity to show us how culture and climate responsibility can align.
For young designers and creatives, Carnival is basically a free runway. It’s a chance to test design ideas in the wild, where the audience is millions deep and the Instagram exposure is unmatched. If you’re already experimenting with upcycling or fashion design and art direction in general, Carnival is where your work can live and breathe beyond the studio. In a walking, talking and dancing campaign. And the community element matters too. Working with Caribbean heritage artists, mas camps and craftspeople roots your work in the culture that birthed Carnival instead of just extracting aesthetics for clout.
The reality is, Carnival is at risk. Rising chicken prices, NI contribution hikes, increased policing costs, all of it squeezes out the small vendors and makers who keep the event alive. If sustainable fashion can step in, even in small ways, it’s not just about saving the planet, it’s about sustaining the communities who created the space for us to dance in the first place.
The lesson for anyone in the scene is simple. Carnival isn’t just something to attend, it’s something to learn from. It shows us how fashion, food, music and culture are already interconnected, how craft can power an economy, and how sustainability is stronger when it’s cultural, not corporate. If you’re a creative working in fashion, this is your call to get involved. Design costumes with waste in mind, tell the story of your process. Because Carnival is more than a party, it’s proof that when culture leads, economies follow. And if we can protect that, and evolve it sustainably, then everyone wins.