Glasgow to host Wayne Hemingway’s Vintage Festival

• The touring event was launched five years ago by designer Wayne Hemingway

• Expected highlights include a vintage marketplace, fashion shows and clubbing events

• The event will run on 27 and 28 July

Wayne Hemingway’s touring event – which he launched five years ago – will be the centrepiece of this summer’s Merchant City Festival, after being previously staged in locations south of the Border.

It is hoped the event, which will be staged over two days at the end of July, will be held for the next three years if it proves popular enough.

Hemingway said he was hopeful it could attract upwards of 100,000 people, more than the entire Merchant City Festival has ever previously drawn.

The 52-year-old – who is as well known for his housing developments and property ventures as his fashion designs – said he had set them up as an antidote to modern festivals, which were dominated by “rock bands and muddy fields”.

The Red or Dead founder is billing the two-day event, to be held in the City Halls and Old Fruitmarket, as a celebration of “all that has made Britain the world’s capital of cool.”

The bulk of events at “Vintage Glasgow,” as the event has been dubbed, will be free, although some will be ticketed and have already gone on sale.

Hemingway warned that every ticket for previous Vintage Festival events south of the Border had been snapped up well in advance.

Vintage Glasgow – which will be organised by Hemingway, his wife Geraldine and Glasgow design firm Dollshouse – will showcase music, film, fashion, art, dance, food and design from the 1920s to the 1980s.

Expected highlights will include a vintage marketplace, fashion shows, makeover salons, craft workshops, dance displays and two late-night live music and clubbing events.

Among the film screenings will be the chance to enjoy rarely seen archive footage of Glasgow, including from the famous Empire Exhibition at Bellahouston Park in 1938.

It is hoped the arrival of Hemingway’s event in Glasgow will vastly boost attendance numbers at the Merchant City Festival, which is being staged for the 12th time this year. Its £200,000 funding comes from the Glasgow City Marketing Bureau and Creative Scotland.

It was moved away from the September holiday weekend to the end of July several years ago and taken over by Glasgow Life, which runs a host of the city’s arts and culture venues, several years ago, and attracted 95,000 people last year.

Hemingway said: “We had a fantastic time in Glasgow when we had our Red or Dead shop on Buchanan Street and have always enjoyed visiting the Merchant City. What is very important for us with the event is that we don’t want to go around the country imposing another culture on a city.

“We want this to be about Glasgow and its culture and we want people to really get dressed up for it.

“I do think Glasgow’s culture is still pretty under-rated throughout the rest of Britain. It is such a vibrant European city and it really makes sense for us to do the event when the Merchant City Festival is on so we can take advantage of that.

“But we’re going to aim to try to get 100,000 to come to the event over the weekend. We might not get that, but that’s what we’re going to aim for.”

• The Merchant City Festival runs from 24-28 July.