I think Prada is at its most interesting when it refuses to give you the answer straight away. You see something. You think you understand it. Then you look again and — oh. No. There’s something else happening underneath. And that feeling runs through this collection almost obsessively.
I think I finally understand what Daniel Lee is doing at Burberry. And honestly, it took me a minute. Because Burberry has always been very good at being Burberry. The trench. The check. The Britishness. The rain. The countryside. The whole beautifully organised fantasy of looking effortlessly put together while secretly carrying seventeen things in your bag and probably being late for something. But this season felt different. A little messier. A little stranger. A little more alive. And OH MY GOD, the colour.
I have a problem with Alexander McQueen. I keep looking at the pictures. Not in the normal scroll, like, save, move on way. I mean properly looking. Going back. Zooming in. Staring at that horn. Looking at the satin. Looking at the ridiculous volume of that skirt and thinking, okay, but why does this actually make sense?
I have a confession: for the first few looks, I thought Roksanda was trying to behave. And I mean that affectionately. There was something almost suspiciously controlled about it. Black tailoring. Soft ivory. Muted beige. Clean trousers. Sharp shoulders. A little scarf here, a glove there. Everything beautifully contained, beautifully disciplined. The sort of clothes that make you stand up slightly straighter without quite knowing why. And then suddenly — colour. Then fringe. Then those enormous sculptural hips. And I thought: OH. There you are.
I knew Simone Rocha was going to give us romance. Lace, flowers, bows, something slightly haunted, something slightly beautiful. That part was never really in doubt. But then the first looks came out and I found myself thinking: Oh. We’re going somewhere else. Because this collection feels less like “pretty” and more like what happens when prettiness starts to unravel. And honestly? I love that.
I have a weakness for clothes that take themselves very seriously. Give me a gigantic skirt, a corset, enough crystals to require its own insurance policy and a woman walking towards me looking as though she has just been informed that the entire room belongs to her — and, honestly, I’m interested. So Richard Quinn had me pretty much immediately. At first, though, I thought something strange had happened. Where was the riot?
At what point does getting dressed stop being getting dressed and become a full-blown personality disorder? Because watching Chopova Lowena, I kept thinking about the moment you were a child and decided that today you were going to be a bride, a ballerina, a witch, a princess, a mourner, a rock star and possibly someone's slightly unhinged aunt — all before lunch.
I wasn't expecting KNWLS to make me think about romance. Honestly. KNWLS, in my head, has always lived somewhere between a corset, a motorbike and the slightly dangerous feeling that something might come apart at any second. Skin. Straps. Hardware. Leather. The body held together and pulled apart at the same time. And then this collection walks out in powder blue.
Bora Aksu staged Spring 2027 like a garden party with something unsettled beneath the petals. The set’s climbing greenery and small white flowers made an easy frame for the collection’s ivory, powder pink, lilac and blue, but the clothes kept interrupting any idea of uncomplicated sweetness. There were brides, perhaps; there were girls in bonnets; there was one figure in a black lace dress that felt as if she had wandered in from a different ending.
There are runway shows you watch and then there are runway shows where you find yourself zooming into the pictures afterwards thinking, wait, how the hell did they make that? Mark Fast did that to me. Because at first glance, this looks like a very simple proposition: knitwear, skin, colour, legs, repeat. But then you actually look. And look again. And suddenly the whole thing starts to unravel — literally.
