Bora Aksu’s East London studio is lined with cracked china dolls. Their faces are chipped, their bodies fractured—each one carrying a quiet kind of tragedy. “I collect them wherever I go,” he says, surveying the room like a curator of forgotten souls. “But only the broken ones. The ones that have been rejected. I save them, and I mend them.”

Which, honestly, tells you everything you need to know about his approach to design. Aksu is in the business of reclamation—resurrecting the misunderstood, the overlooked, the women history dismissed or dismantled. His past muses? Eva Hesse, the artist who turned trauma into sculpture. Sophie Germain, a self-taught mathematician who defied 18th-century misogyny. Mathilde Willink, the scandalous Dutch socialite who refused to be a footnote. His own late mother, Birsen, who rejected the stifling role of housewife and became a doctor in 1960s Turkey.

This season, though, it was all about Sissi.

Or rather, the idea of Sissi—the version of Empress Elisabeth of Austria that exists in sentimental films and souvenir shops. It started with one of Birsen’s favorite movies: Sissi (1955), starring Romy Schneider as the free-spirited young royal. But nostalgia is a trap, and history is rarely so romantic. The real Sissi? A teenage bride thrown into the machine of monarchy, trapped in its suffocating expectations, only to be assassinated in 1898—just as she was beginning to break free. “I didn’t realize how romanticized that film was until I visited her home in Vienna,” Aksu admits. “She was the Princess Diana of her time.” And so, the collection unraveled from there—an examination of a false fairytale, the illusion of a perfect life.

The dresses arrived like ghosts—billowing and beautiful, but unsettling. Aksu’s signature layers of tulle, georgette, and vintage lace felt heavy this time, like they were pressing inward. There were asymmetric bridal gowns edged in black pom-poms, love-heart appliqués stitched like fading promises. Crocheted epaulets, like armor. Lace-caped polka-dot dresses that blurred between romance and mourning. The distortion continued—variegated pinstripe skirt suits that felt slightly off, as if viewed through the feverish brushstrokes of an Egon Schiele painting.

But there were flashes of something else, too—flickers of the Sissi no one saw. A jacquard miniskirt set that wavered between prim and rebellious. A purple taffeta dress, its laser-cut flowers dancing like something out of a fever dream. A lace-trimmed magenta slip that hinted at a private kind of joy. “I needed to reveal Elisabeth’s inner self,” Aksu said. “The playful side that remained unseen. I want to give credit to the invisible strength inside these women.”

And isn’t that the real fairytale? Not the one where the princess finds her prince, but the one where she finds herself—however briefly, however imperfectly.