London - If fashion is your thing, all roads lead to London.
For the second year running, it has beaten New York to the title of fashion capital of the world.
And the capital left Barcelona trailing in third, followed by Paris and Madrid.
Analysts say the Duchess of Cambridge’s impeccable style and the success of this summer’s Olympics were important factors in deciding the 21012 rankings.
The importance of British fashion was highlighted in the closing ceremony last month when supermodels including Kate Moss, Naomi Campbell and Lily Cole made an appearance in the musical extravaganza.
The results were compiled by the Global Language Monitor (GLM), which analysed the internet, blogs, the top 175,000 print and electronic global media and other sources to produce the list.
Paul Payack, president of GLM, said “Kate Middleton has proved to be incredibly impactful on the British fashion brand. The second thing is the Olympics being in the UK. For high fashion Paris is number one but it is not the media machine these other places are.
“Barcelona has made a really strong attempt to move forward and those efforts are paying off.”
The ease with which the Duchess of Cambridge mixes high street with high-end fashion has contributed millions of pounds to the British fashion industry, experts say.
Her influence on fashion first became clear in 2007 when a dress she wore for her 25th birthday – a £40 (about R500) Topshop tunic – sold out within 24 hours.
The £385 silk Issa Sapphire dress she wore when she and Prince William announced their engagement also sold out and spawned scores of copies at retailers, from Tesco to LK Bennett.
Shoppers were so keen to emulate her look that a fight broke out in a New York jewellery store between two women desperate to buy the last pair of the earrings the Duchess wore for her engagement photographs. - Daily Mail