The twice-yearly event, which each season generates more than ￡100 million in global business and ￡50 million in advertising in the UK alone, is being squeezed in a three-pronged attack by the rival fashion centres of New York, Milan and Paris.

On Tuesday Hilary Riva, chief executive of LFW's organising body, the British Fashion Council, will host crisis talks in London with other his counterparts from the other big fashion capitals.

Among those attending are designer Diane Von Furstenberg, who is president of the CFDA (Council of Fashion Designers of America), her Italian counterpart, Cavaliere Mario Boselli, president of Milan's Camera Nazionale Della Moda, while M. Didier Grumbach, president of the Federation Francaise de la Couture et du Prêt-à-Porter, will be plugged in on a conference call from Paris.

This is crunch time for London fashion.

Ms Riva's mission is to persuade the American and European fashion tycoons to cut the cloth of their own events in order that London Fashion Week can maintain a six-day or, at the very least, a five-day event for the next autumn/winter designer 2009/2010 season which begins in February.

At the moment New York is determined to stage an eight-day season starting, inauspiciously perhaps, on Friday February 13 and running until Friday, February 20th.

Milan, meanwhile, plans to start its own eight-day fashion binge on Wednesday, February 25.

This leaves London Fashion Week squeezed into a scant four days - hardly a week.

In a worst case scenario, this could even mean a mere three days for UK and American press and buyers who might need to use Saturday, February 21 to return from New York.

Ms Riva's plan is to forestall the Americans and the Italians by persuading them to make their last and first fashion week days, respectively, limited to 'domestic designers' – ie, labels with no international pulling power - thereby nullifying their appeal to the UK and foreign press and buying contingents.

However, she conceded that both America and Italy were fiercely partisan, guided by vast commercial, marketing and sponsorship considerations and were unlikely to budge.

The situation is not improved by Paris, which intends to begin on the Thursday, March 5th, immediately after the end of Milan, ,ending a relationship in which both Euro fashion centres were previously happy to overlap by one day - a solution which favoured London Fashion Week.

On Tuesday Ms Riva is hoping for the best, but is fearing the worst.

"Our problem is we do not have the commercial clout," she said.

"Will four days kill us? No, I doubt it. It's not what we would want.

"But if this is what we end up with then we just have to make the best of it and deliver an action-packed and exciting four day schedule."

Inevitably, this will mean some designers being left off the London schedule.

The problem, then, for Ms Riva and the British Fashion Council will be whether to choose, long-established, money-making brands, such as Paul Costelloe - who opened LFW on Sunday morning and whose business generates pounds sterling 12 million a year.

Or will they chose young, fashion-savvy talents, beloved by the glossies, such as the French-born, 29-year-old Charles Anastase, resident in London for three years, whose fey and whimsical interpretation of Degas ballerinas and Victorian lasses led astray was the highlight of Sunday's schedule.

London Fashion Week's undoubted USP is the fact it is renowned as Planet Fashion's launching pad for the designers of tomorrow.

John Galliano, Alexander McQueen, Hussein Chalayan, Matthew Williamson and Luella Bartley, among others, have all built global success from the LFW platform.

In addition, European and American designers' studios are packed with the high-quality students from our fashion colleges, up to 1,000 of whom show at Graduate Fashion Week in June.

Many projects, such as Topshop's New Generation – worth millions to LFW in terms of sponsorship – and the On/Off scheme, continue to provide the ensuing LFW catwalk boost to young talents, who could not make their debuts otherwise.

But they do crowd the schedule – this season standing at 52 designers on the official schedule and as many as 40 at 'off-piste' locations.

There is no way, short of a 24-hour catwalk schedule, that all could be accommodated within four days.

One solution could be, as Ms Riva suggested, a "multi-tiered schedule with shows running simultaneously".

Alternatively, young designers could be persuaded to show in group events and the more pedestrian brands persuaded into simple presentations which could run three or four times a day.

Whatever the outcome, next season's London Fashion Week, will call for compromise and team effort – qualities the fashion jungle is not exactly renowned for.

On Monday however, rivalries will be forgotten when both Diane Von Furstenberg and Mario Boselli join Hilary Riva, as well as the chairman of the British Fashion Council, Harold Tillman, and a select group of designers, press and buyers at a Number Ten Downing Street LFW reception.

Whether the entente cordiale will exist after the crisis meeting is less certain.