BLACKBURN-born designer Wayne Hemingway has launched a stinging attack on the fashion industry, accusing it of being too greedy.

In a new Channel Four documentary, he accused designers of being driven by envy and a desire for status.

Wayne, who founded the Red Or Dead chain, claims the public are being ripped off by fashion houses which sell clothes at mark-ups of up to 1,000 per cent.

He makes his comments in a new Channel Four documentary called Revolt in Fashion, due to be shown later this month.

In it, he singles out some of Britain's best-known fashion names, and says they are part of 'a fashion conspiracy."

He said: "Parts of the fashion industry stink. Designer fashion is the emperor's new clothes Spending £400 on a jacket that costs a fraction of that to make shows that you have got more money than sense and you just like funding big marketing campaigns and ostentatious flagship stores."

Wayne, educated in Blackburn and married to Padiham fashion designer Gerardine Astin, founded Red Or Dead at a Manchester market in 1982.

His pledge then was to sell fashionable clothes at an affordable price, an ethos which has remained with him ever since and helped make him a millionaire several times over.

He sold Red Or Dead in 1996 and then bought it back in 1998 when it had struggled to perform. He and Gerardine have since sold it on and created Hemingway Design, an architecture firm.

The firm has helped design some impressive new buildings in London, but like his desire to create clothes people wear, Wayne wanted to design houses which people would benefit from.

He got that chance when he teamed up with building firm Wimpey, and is helping design a 700-house estate on the outskirts of Gateshead.

Earlier this year, he urged the owners of Blackburn's Lord Square to preserve its 1960s architecture and restore it so it could become an example of the architecture from the decade.

Councillors and town centre owners Standard Life dismissed the idea.