So. Bora Aksu. Ghosts. Obviously. Not long ago, he was wandering the halls of the George & Dragon—this old 18th-century coaching inn in Buckinghamshire—and honestly, I can picture it so clearly it kind of rattles me. Dim corridors. Creaky floors. That feeling where the air feels… watched. He was looking for his next muse and—oh boy—he found her. A barmaid named Sukie. Two hundred years ago. Beautiful. Desired. And doomed (because of course).
This season, Roksanda Ilincic decided not to have a show, “but it comes with exciting news,” she said, “and that is that I’m opening a popup in Sloane Street. Next to Chanel and Pucci. It’s amazing. And the space is huge.” I went to see her in a light-filled penthouse showroom next to the storied Museum of the Home, (set in a series of restored 18th century almshouses) on the Kingsland Road in the East End of London.
For fall 2026, Alice Temperley went straight to Hollywood—old Hollywood. The glossy, smoke-filled, impossibly elegant kind. Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Greta Garbo. Marlene Dietrich. The icons. “I’m embracing my all-time icons,” she said at a preview, and you could feel that pull toward fantasy, toward drama, toward dressing like life might suddenly turn cinematic.
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.
London feels quiet this season—like the city took a deep breath and held it. And maybe that’s why Mark Fast is feeling nostalgic. He’s been here forever (or at least, since graduating from Central Saint Martins almost two decades ago), but this season? Something feels different. “I don’t know why,” he admitted during a preview. “Something is in the air.” Which, obviously, sent me spiraling into the archives—because if a designer is having a feeling, you check if the clothes are, too. And, sure enough, Fall 2009 was staring back at me.
