Simone Rocha still remembers the moment—Miss Ruddock, the school principal, sitting her down and hitting her with the classic: the tortoise and the hare. “In life, you’re either one or the other,” she told her. Rocha, even then, knew exactly where she stood. “I remember coming out thinking, Mmm. I’m so ready to be a tortoise.” And honestly? She was right. Slow and steady gets you somewhere. Fifteen years later, she’s climbed—deliberately, persistently—to near-mythic status in London fashion. Even in an industry that now seems to measure success in influencer impressions (God help us), Rocha’s impact is undeniable.

This season, she let herself look back—just a little. She pulled from her own archive, piecing together characters from memory, nostalgia, and whatever version of the past lives rent-free in her head. Fiona Shaw, in a black duchesse-satin egg dress (a tortoise shell, if you squint), cinched at the shoulder and knee with bicycle-lock chains, was an echo of Miss Ruddock herself. The bike locks? Classic school symbolism—the sheds, the first cigarettes, the kind of romance that feels tragic at 14. But also, another one of Rocha’s ongoing experiments with restraint.

Elsewhere, Bel Powley and Alexa Chung showed up in looks that twisted the classic perfecto jacket—cool girls, maybe a little mean. Chung’s faux-fur Barbarella bra top was a direct pull from Rocha’s starting point: the hare. Some models literally carried (faux) hares at the hip, draped over their shoulders like decadent little trophies. Menswear leaned into romantic toughness—ruffled rugby shirts, bead-studded suiting, and a belted fishtail parka, accessorized with a resin tortoise clutch (subtle, if you compare it to the hares).

On the womenswear front, Rocha shredded her own work—literally. Faux-fur coats, slashed into ribbons from the hem up. Dresses and tops, reconstructed from strips of pink silk jacquard, laced back together with ribbon. One dress, just a curtain of cascading pink ribbon strips, worn over faux-fur bloomers. Even her bouclé tweed got the treatment, hacked apart and tinsel-strafed. Harnessing, lingerie, ruffles—always ruffles—layered into looks that felt somewhere between moody and innocent, emo and angelic. The kind of contrast that lets Rocha do what she does best: build a world where soft is strong, and beauty always has a bite.

The cast was more diverse than ever (long overdue, but still). And then, the crescendo: Shaw, striding through it all, looking like some celestial apparition in a Simone Rocha fever dream. Backstage, she summed it up: “The intensity of the beauty of it. You walk through these spaces with beautiful people wearing astonishing clothes. I feel like I’ve died and gone to heaven.”

Rocha’s tortoise? Still moving—steady, deliberate, and more beautiful than ever.