London Is Having A Moment With Fashion Startups

London has always been a fashion capital - but when it came to technology, the excitement used to be elsewhere. That's changing as a new generation of entrepreneurs bring fashion tech to the fore.

Take Edited. Located in Clerkenwell, they offer stores a suite of online monitoring and forecasting tools.

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Let's say you're wondering whether you should think pink, or think of something else.

Edited can show you how many pink items are for sale right now and whether that's trending up or down. It can show you which colours featured heavily in runway presentations. And it can tell you if those items are selling well and being restocked.

For a retailer, that type of information is invaluable. And it's just one example of how London's startup scene is bringing impressive tech savvy to the fashion world.

Or there's Farfetch. Farfetch is like the Amazon of high-end boutiques.

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Farfetch creates a unified online store for 300 independent boutiques around the world. For fashion connoisseurs, it's a godsend because many of these stores carry designers and items you won't find anywhere else.

And it's the kind of idea that makes sense in sprawling London, where it's easier to browse from your couch than braving the drizzle to go scouring from shop to shop.

London is also home to the original fashion startup, the big enchilada of flogging designer threads.

I'm talking about Net-a-Porter, founded in 2000 when the internet most often came with beeps and a dial tone.

Net-a-Porter merged with Yoox earlier this year, creating an online retail behemoth.

Why is London such a good place for fashion startups?

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Maybe it's because of Britain's long history of crazy, creative, brilliant, mad-off-their-rockers fashion mavens and designers. Isabella Blow. Alexander McQueen. Hussein Chalayan. Daphne Guinness. John Galliano. Anna Wintour. Vivienne Westwood.

Maybe it's because London is full of enterprising people from all over the world. When you put a lot of smart people in the same place you have more good ideas.

Maybe it's because men's fashion is taken seriously in the home of Savile Row.

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More customers= bigger market.

Or maybe it's because for the world's other startup capitals, fashion is a blindspot.

I see you, San Francisco.

Whatever the reason, it's a special time to be in London.

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Here's to all the people - techies, entrepreneurs, designers, writers, photographers - who are making the future happen.