RED or Dead fashion label founder Wayne Hemmingway headed up a Daily Echo-backed event encouraging business leaders to consider whether Southampton should create a major new festival.

The maverick designer of everything from sheds to housing estates is now setting up the massive new Vintage at Goodwood festival in East Sussex, which is due to run this August.

Together with Sian Thomas, the boss of Winchester’s internationally- renowned street art festival the Hat Fair, he made a powerful argument for the benefits a major event could bring for the city.

Organised by The Coast radio station, Business Southampton and the Daily Echo, the Working Lunch series at Kuti’s Royal Thai Pier is dedicated to examining ideas suggested by the business community to fire the city to live up to its potential.

Wayne said creating a major event needed passion, clear thinking and commitment.

“There’s no point just thinking everybody else is putting on a festival on and that’s what we should do,” he said.

“There has to be a reason for it and it has to be done with passion, otherwise it’s more likely you will end up with a failure because there are 350 other summer festivals already.

“I’ve been working since January an average of 19 to 20-hour days, seven days a week. No one on my team is having one day off from April to the day of the event. That’s not because I’ve told them they can’t, it’s because they want to do it and they feel passionate a b o u t i t . ”

A fusion of music, fashion, art, film and design, Vintage is dedicated to all things “cool” and sees a line-up including a reunion of super-group The Faces and Lily Allen launching her new clothing range.

Sian said Southampton could benefit from an event like the 36- year running Hat Fair, which sees as many as 45 free shows staged across the city centre during one weekend at the start of July.

Sian said: “The Hat Fair costs the best part of £300,000 to put on.

“There was an economic impact survey done in 2008 and over the four days just over £1m was bought in, in terms of retail, bed nights, catering and parking.”