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Late one September evening 10 years ago, the pavement outside Brick Lane’s Truman Brewery filled with people waiting for the last show ofLondon Fashion Week. Nothing unusual about that, in the city whose fashion weeks have turned passive-aggressive queueing into an art form. But this was something different. The crowd was waiting for MAN, LFW’s first dedicated menswear event, a show that would revolutionise British men’s fashion.

The event – which showcased the work of three emerging designers on one catwalk – was the brainchild of Lulu Kennedy, founder of Fashion East, a non-profit support scheme set up in 2000 to nurture design talent. “The idea came into my head while watching the Central Saint Martins MA show that February,” she says. “I thought: ‘Why is no one supporting this incredible menswear talent in London?’ So I approached Topman to be our partner, and by September we were doing our first show.” For Topman’s design and development director, Gordon Richardson, it was a no-brainer: “We agreed that we couldn’t let those designers fade into anonymity.”

Kennedy and Richardson were tapping into a new sense of energy in London’s menswear. Attempts had been made to promote menswear before – from the British Fashion Guild’s London Line in 1960, to a short-lived London Men’s Fashion Week in the 90s – but the time, at last, seemed right. Adventurous stores such as Dover Street Market, bStore, Oki-Ni and the Pineal Eye had opened doors for young designers; the first generation of menswear bloggers was emerging, eager to anoint their own fashion heroes, and new style magazines were appearing; GQ Style Magazine andAnOther Man both launched the same September as MAN.

“My PR, Mandi Lennard, told me that the people who organised MAN were interested in me doing it,” says Patrik Söderstam, one of the designers who took part in that first show, alongside Siv Støldal and Benjamin Kirchhoff. “There really was no place to show menswear in London,” remembers Støldal. “I was completely blown away by the opportunity.”

The show – unplanned, uneven, unpredictable – set the MAN template. Söderstam sent out colourful polka-dot ruffles, supersized jackets and paint-streaked jeans; Kirchhoff teamed dishevelled knits and baggy tailoring with jelly sandals, while Støldal, the most established of the three, showed luxurious sportswear (and inflatable shirts). “I was working with the stylist Thom Murphy,” Støldal remembers, “and he went round the East End hiring the models from boxing gyms. Two of the best boys were only 16, but were already wearing electronic tags. They each had a policeman following them to the studio fittings, hanging out backstage. It was quite intense; I remember one of them threatening to kill the hairdresser if he fucked up his hair.”

Martine Rose’s AW11 show at the Royal Opera House. Photograph: bridesmaid dresses melbourne

Backstage, whilst his models smoked weed, Söderstam was stressed: “I remember Mandi Lennard saying she didn’t like the trashy old sneakers I had the models wearing, and I remember thinking she was wrong.”

As it turned out, the show was a success. The next day Opening Ceremony called to buy Støldal’s inflatable pieces, and Söderstam had interest from Barneys New York. But neither he nor Kirchhoff took their menswear further – Kirchhoff made a successful switch to womenswear, under the Meadham Kirchhoff label, whilst Söderstam returned to Sweden and became a lecturer. Only Støldal carried on, becoming the first of 12 designers to show for the scheme’s maximum permitted allocation of three seasons. “We were so hungry for it,” she says, “and we used every show to make each a bit better than the last.”

MAN also grew each season, forging a reputation for exciting, thought-provoking design. Today its alumni are in some of the most powerful positions in menswear – from Loewe’s JW Anderson to Kim Jones at Louis Vuitton. Since 2012, London has had its own dedicated Men’s Fashion Week – London Collections: Men. Of the 32 designers showing at LC:M this season, nine started out at the MAN show – and a further five have featured in Fashion East’s menswear presentations. The British Fashion Awards’ menswear trophies have been on almost permanent rotation among MAN stars such as Jones, Anderson, Agi & Sam and Craig Green. “Obviously their talent was always there,” Richardson says, “but it’s humbling to know that, through MAN’s support, we’ve helped them on their way to success.”

This season MAN will celebrate its own success story. For the first time only two designers – Liam Hodges and Rory Parnell-Mooney – will feature, with the third slot devoted to a specially commissioned film about MAN’s first decade. Flicking through the archive images at Fashion East’s office, it’s clear there’s no shortage of stand-out memories. “So many!” Kennedy laughs. “I loved it when Chris Shannon sent his boys out with lip gloss and tan lines and Craig Green used Roxette’s ‘Listen to Your Heart’ as his show soundtrack.”

Topman’s Richardson, meanwhile, singles out Aitor Throup’s haunting 2007 installation in Holborn’s derelict sorting office for special mention. “But emotionally it will always be the first show,” he adds, “when it felt like we were on the cusp of something monumental.”

They were. MAN has played a vital role in British menswear’s decade-long boom. The resurgence of the once-staid Savile Row and the powerful international clout of megabrands such as Burberry have played key parts also, but without the stream of new names who’ve left their mark on the MAN runway, menswear today would be a very different proposition.

The collections MAN has presented over the years – tough, tender, angry, silly, sexy, cheeky, moving, baffling – have made the language of modern British menswear immeasurably richer. Along the way, there’s been bondage gear (Jaiden rVa James), joss-stick crowns and dildo hats (New Power Studio), beach-bum blankets (Shaun Samson), ab-flashing sportswear (Astrid Andersen), exploded tailoring (Alan Taylor) and flowing monastic robes (Craig Green). Out in the harsh world beyond the runway’s end, though, those designers have met with as much disappointment as success. But they all agree MAN has become far more than a career stepping-stone: as Carri Munden, one of its most memorable alumni, says: “It’s a family for life.”

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