RAINFOREST INSPIRATION
"By having a platform like Fashion Week, it's an opportunity to bring designers and the industry together and engage them in the conversation," Rush said, adding the BFC was promoting a Positive Fashion initiative.
"We're looking forward to five days of incredible creativity and we'll be showcasing fantastic businesses, that many of them are already working in terms of how they can address the climate change emergency and what they're doing to address positive change."
In a separate protest, nine members of the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) group poured buckets of black slime over themselves to highlight what they called "the hazardous waste associated with the leather industry".
London Fashion Week is the second leg of a month-long catwalk season that also includes New York, Milan and Paris.
The shows draw buyers, editors and bloggers, and in London for the first time, the public will also mingle by the catwalks.
London Fashion Week will hold six public shows where, for tickets priced at 135 pounds and 245 pounds, fashion fans can watch models strutting down the catwalk in outfits by Alexa Chung, Henry Holland and Self-Portrait.
Designer Mark Fast, known for his knitwear, held London's first show, presenting a colourful rainforest-inspired line.
Models wore vivid green and neon pink cropped tops with matching short skirts that also nodded to 1990s looks.
There were fringed dresses, mesh tops, denim outfits and snakeskin prints on jackets, shirts and footwear that included lace-up heels and knee-high boots.
Using a blue, green, orange, yellow and pink colour palette, Fast said he had looked to the rainforest flora and fauna.
"The destruction of the rainforest started to happen and I thought maybe this show should be a celebration of the beauty of the Amazon," Fast told Reuters backstage referring to the recent fires in the Amazon rainforest.
Asked about the Extinction Rebellion protest, Fast said: "We all have our own fights we have to express and we express it in different ways."
