“I was trying to strike a balance between Jane Eyre’s iron-willed restraint and Catherine Earnshaw’s untamed, wind-swept ferocity—to find a woman who exists somewhere between these two emotional extremes.” That was Ian Griffiths’s pre-show thesis for a Max Mara collection that sought to bottle the stormy, windswept romance of the Brontëan heroines—high drama, but make it wearable.
What trick will Francesco Risso pull from his magician’s sleeve this time? That’s the anticipation a Marni show generates—every season, an unpredictable sleight of hand, a door swung open to a world that didn’t exist five minutes ago. Risso is one of those increasingly rare creatures in fashion: a true visionary, someone who doesn’t just make clothes but conjures entire universes, where quirk and craft meet in poetic, almost mystical collisions. His work is ineffable and deeply felt, lyrical yet potent—an antidote to an industry currently flailing somewhere between panic and paralysis, either chasing every trend at once or no direction at all.
No grand unveiling. No messiah in monogrammed loafers descending from the heavens to rescue Gucci from its latest existential wobble. Just another show, another placeholder, another polite nod to the fact that yes, fashion marches on, even when it’s leaderless. It’s been exactly a decade since Alessandro Michele was plucked from relative obscurity, tasked with salvaging a collection in five days flat, and in the process, rewrote the house’s entire trajectory. Sabato De Sarno? He barely had time to unpack before being unceremoniously escorted out. And for a fleeting moment, the industry held its breath—would we see another eleventh-hour savior? A seismic shift? A moment?
Yes, the show started 45 minutes late—but honestly, what’s a few extra minutes when you’re marking a full century? And sure, more than one model got lost on a runway designed to mimic the Fendi atelier’s 1960s and 70s salon space (a labyrinth of history, nostalgia, and probably a few bad decisions). But then again, aren’t the best parties always the hardest to leave?
Weeks before the show, Diesel shipped off six miles of pristine white fabric—blank canvases sent hurtling into the hands of art students and street crews across China, South Africa, the US, the UK, Europe, and beyond. When the fabric finally returned, it was obliterated in layers of graffiti, scrawled-over by more than 7,000 people.
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.
A perfect phrase slipped out of Steven Stokey-Daley’s mouth mid-preview, the kind of line that makes you stop, blink, and then immediately write it down: “It’s un-messed-about wardrobe bangers! That’s what I want to do, really.”
Roksanda Ilincic doesn’t just make clothes—she builds them. Big, sculptural, sometimes unwieldy things that feel like they belong in a gallery just as much as they do on a body. Think swooping drapes, ballooning proportions, sharp angles where you least expect them, and an absolutely wild approach to texture. She’s been at this for a while now, and every season, she adds another layer to the architectural playground that is her work.
A grand Georgian façade, faux railings, Richard Quinn engraved above the door like it’s always been there. A fantasy in bricks and mortar. This winter’s set wasn’t just escapism—it was a scene. “It’s after midnight, the end of a private black-tie party,” Quinn explained, setting the tone like a director calling action. “Maybe it’s a pre-wedding dinner, maybe it’s the day after—and the guests are leaving. It’s snowing. The moon is up.”
The worlds female designers build around themselves—these intricate, insular universes of memory, craft, and self-mythology—only seem to grow more expansive, more nuanced. Pauline Dujancourt spins hers from knitwear, a delicate lattice of pre-Raphaelite romanticism and obsessive handwork: fragile mohair webs, chiffon ribbons trailing like ivy, stitches so fine they barely exist. After years of quiet presentations, refining her whisper-soft sensibilities into something tangible, this was her first time on a London runway.
