Who knew the industry would turn to men’s fashion in the face of financial catastrophe?

The past few months have seen shifts toward menswear from everyone from Christophe Decarnin at Balmain to Alexander Wang to Gareth Pugh, all of whom should be very refreshing after this season’s rather dull showing.

But thanks to London Fashion Week, we won’t have to wait quite as long. The British Fashion Council’s added thirteen new menswear designers to their Fall 09 schedule next month. The week - or in this shortened case, five days - usually ends with the TopMan show on the last morning and any other menswear can be found in the exhibition tent or tossed on the runway within a women’s show, but this time around they’ll be singled out and hopefully, paid attention to.

Names haven’t been released yet, but we promise to cover them with as much dedication, if not enthusiasm, as we do Luella.