STYLE guru Wayne Hemingway has pledged to double the number of visitors to this year's Merchant City Festival.

The British designer and retail expert is confident he can attract 190,000 style fans to his two-day vintage festival.

He believes Vintage Glasgow will be a major draw at this year's summer festival, where it will make its Scottish debut.

The event, which is being run by Wayne and his wife, Gerardine, will celebrate seven decades of music, fashion, film, art, dance, food and design, from the 1920s to the 1980s, with a strong emphasis on homegrown talent.

The Morecambe-born designer said Merchant City has grown into a "world-class" centre of creativity since he launched his Red or Dead store in the city in the 1990s.

Last year's festival attracted around 95,000 visitors.

A previous vintage festival held in London's South Bank attracted 95,000 visitors every day and Wayne, 51, is confident he can match that number.

He said: "It's really ambitious but that's what we are going for.

"Glasgow is a great city, Merchant City is a great part of it, and we can't wait to get started.

"We loved visiting Glasgow when we had our Red or Dead shop on Buchanan Street.

"We saw the Merchant City Festival starting to evolve into something we could recognise as creative people and we've seen it gradually develop into a world-class place.

"You walk around and see the buildings and your jaw hits the floor. I hope we can persuade a lot of people to come up here.

"This is much more than an entertainment event. It's about economic regeneration, about protecting the creative industries, about mentoring. This is a celebration of the best of British, but it's going to be all about Glasgow. People should get their tickets early, as these events are going to sell out."

Vintage Glasgow will take over Candleriggs, the Old Fruitmarket and City Halls on July 27 and 28.

Highlights will include a vintage marketplace with dance displays, sewing and knitting workshops and kids' comic superheroes.

Music will range from rockabilly to swing to disco, and there will be fashion shows and films, including a documentary about the Empire Exhibition that took place in Bellahouston Park in 1938.

There will be a makeover salon where people can choose a decade of style into which they can be transformed, with a vintage photobooth to capture the results.

Now in its 12th year, the Merchant City Festival will incorporate more than 300 events and performances across 11 arts strands from July 24-28.

Other highlights will include a one-year-to-go celebration for the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games.

There will be a Games- inspired interactive installation, The South Brunswick Street Rope Factory, produced by Icecream Architecture, an intricate web of coloured ropes representing the 54 sovereign states of the Commonwealth that will come together as one large map through which participants can walk .

There will also be street performers, a family zone, a dance stage in Merchant Square, continental markets and music stages in Brunswick and Blackfriars streets.

Councillor Gordon Matheson, chairman of the Merchant City Festival and Glasgow City Marketing Bureau, said: "Every year the Merchant City Festival has developed and changed and the reason is that this area continues to regenerate and re-invent itself.

"We now have the challenge of topping last year's record-breaking festival and, looking at the highlights that have been unveiled, I'm confident that we can succeed.

"The wealth of music, culture and artistic vision that will be on show across the five days is a reflection of the fantastic arts organisations and venues our city has to offer.

"Attracting events of the calibre of Vintage Glasgow reinforces our claim to be Scotland's cultural powerhouse.

"These highlights also demonstrate our ability to deliver a world-class cultural programme in 2014."

n For updates on events and performances as they are added to the programme follow @MerchCityFest on Twitter or visit www.merchantcityfestival.com