One of the worst side-effects of the emergence of the green-screen social media critic was the death of the catwalk gimmick. Yes, it could be conceptually thin, often too obvious in its intentions to merit introspection, but it was also a lot of fun – and gave rise to the original conceit of this article, whose headline featured the word “viral” for several post-pandemic seasons. That was excised around the time designers were shamed out of airbrushing dresses onto supermodels in real time, unleashing robot dogs and sending Kardashians through Disneyland – and that was just Coperni – and returned to sending models up and down in a line. That isn’t to say the stunts have disappeared entirely – Prada cast just 15 models last season, each wearing four layered looks, for a total of 60 exits – but we are, broadly speaking, in a gag recession. Is that such a bad thing? I suppose it forces us to look more closely at the clothes, searching out the surprise rather than having it thrust in our faces – and if that is what you’re after, well, there are always the celebrity arrivals.

Scroll down for all the viral moments you missed from the spring/summer 2027 shows.

All The Stars On The Front Row At London Fashion Week

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The spring/summer 2027 season drew to a close at sunset in the courtyard of the Louvre, as Zendaya, Lisa, Emma Stone, Sophie Turner, Chloë Sevigny and Wunmi Mosaku proved that while Nicolas Ghesquière’s Louis Vuitton womenswear isn’t always the most commercial, it packs a punch when his inner circle collectively flex their star power. Then, as the flying car set revved into gear, Ghesquière seemingly hit the brakes on his most directional style inclinations, and sent out a collection geared more towards LVMH’s bottom line. The artistic director had, in fact, been thinking about “the ergonomic”; clothes geared for action! Realised in feather-light fabrications, the reengineered louche tailoring and triple composite chiffon slips were in keeping with a general lightening up across the board (chunky crystal headpieces aside), while the notes regarding “forward motion” will keep the rumour mill regarding the next round of designer musical chairs in overdrive. Ghesquière, for what it’s worth, didn’t look back once during his victory lap around the Louvre.

Fashion’s fascination with the art world shows little sign of waning. For Kiko Kostadinov’s spring/summer 2027 womenswear collection, sisters Deanna and Laura Fanning turned to Nanda Vigo, whose series had caught their attention at a 2022 retrospective in Bordeaux. Their focus was the late artist’s use of light, considered, in the words of the show notes, “not simply as illumination, but as a material in itself”. On the catwalk, that translated to slip dresses of featherweight organza, moiré tunics formed through darts alone, translucent striped knitwear and free-flowing headpieces made from metallic gauze.

As we recently learned while spending time with her in Los Angeles and London, Nadège Vanhée is a deep, philosophical thinker. The measure of her skill as a designer, however, is that her cerebral contemplations never weigh down the clothes. Such was proven in her spring/summer 2027 womenswear collection for Hermès, a material extemporisation on the quality of airiness: gossamer-woven slip dresses, chamois suede car coats ventilated with delicate micro cut-outs, and harness-detail calfskin dresses with carwash hems. Printed carré bandeaus brought a sun-dappled optimism, as did a sunset palette that ran from rubber-glove yellow to ardent Hermès orange. A collection pinned to the top of our moodboards for next summer.

Hermès spring/summer 2027.

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This season, designers have set about funking up the familiar tropes of prep-school dress. It was there in Gucci’s upturned-collar rugby shirts and kilts, and in Celine’s tartan shirts and popped-tongue trainers. But where better to find it than at the source of so much collegiate style: Polo Ralph Lauren? The brand presented its spring/summer 2027 collection in a rustic, stable-like space in Paris’s 7th arrondissement, where models posed amid lush blooms on an elevated runway, wearing familiar Polo signatures with a twist. A white piqué polo shirt had been elongated into a column dress that skimmed the tops of canary-yellow smoking slipper-loafers; an electric-blue cable-knit sweater gave way to a shin-length skirt of crochet fins; and cotton windbreakers featured collars hand-embellished with found trinkets. “I really wanted to go back to a bit more of an American summer,” said Karen Brown Brody – who works under Ralph Lauren’s direction as senior brand creative director for women’s Polo and RLX – of these eclectic takes on the brand’s most time-honed pieces. “She travels, right? So she’s getting jewellery from places. She’s getting a straw bag from somewhere.” That souvenir-hunting spirit extended to a collaboration with jewellery artist Piki Wadsworth, whose shells and stones, cut, drilled and polished by hand, had the appeal of market-stall discoveries, as did braided belts in Indian madras and plaid, raffia totes and a new clutch version of the Blaze bag.

Polo Ralph Lauren spring/summer 2027.

Courtesy of Polo Ralph Lauren

Where Michel Gaubert had previously soundtracked Chanel shows with millennial bangers such as Paula Cole’s 1997 “I Don’t Want to Wait” and The Corrs’s 1995 “Runaway”, spring/summer 2027 saw him splice Britney’s 2007 hit “Gimme More” into a mix that began with a reading from Virginia Woolf’s . Such is the irreverence that Matthieu Blazy has brought to Chanel’s own storied text since taking over the Maison in 2025. Here, in the Grand Palais, Dua Lipa, Nicole Kidman, Paloma Elsesser, John Malkovich and Ayo Edebiri snarled along to “It’s Britney, bitch” as models including Nigerian Stylist Rachel Ojuromi and former British cover star Bhavitha Mandava walked beneath a low-slung flock of illuminated birds, across a mottled resin floor that resembled the Earth seen from space. Some carried their tweed suit jackets and Double Flaps together in one hand. There were mannish tailcoats worn over half-buttoned dress shirts – something for Pedro and Jacob, perhaps – and low-slung checked skirts with contrasting lime silk linings and ultra-wide croc-effect belts. Tweed cardigan jackets and matching knee-length skirts were interrupted by large, sheer rectangular panels framed with ragged yarn fringing; shin-skimming coats came densely covered in deep-red sequins, with Dorothy pumps to match. You’ll need to wait for the detail shots to emerge on Runway to take it all in, but until then: gimme more.

It’s highly unlikely Roman house Valentino imposed a mobile phone ban inside its library-themed spring/summer 2027 show, considering the reading desk-lined front row at the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève included a bow and leopard print-bedecked Naomi Watts, Colman Domingo, Cynthia Erivo, Off Campus’s Mika Abdalla and Alexander Skarsgård. A moment of quiet please for the prismatic prep-coded silhouettes in shimmering and textured fabrications synonymous with Alessandro Michele, sure to fly off more than book shelves; the jewel-toned corsetry paired with ostrich feather-trimmed pencil skirts; foulard silk pj bottoms teamed with hoiked-hemline double-breasted jackets; and gowns with frilled fishtail hems in retina-searing fuchsia. In a city where déshabillé takes on the undone woman have dominated, Michele’s maximalist wardrobe was polished, paillette-twinkling and put together. Considering Skarsgård is embarking on the promotional trail for , we expect to see him taking out a long loan on one of the catwalk’s tongue-in-cheek “Villain Teen” caps. –

Whereas with fashion shows, you generally walk into the show space with a general sense of the aesthetic or vibe that lies in store, that’s never quite the case with Junya Watanabe. That’s hardly to the brand’s detriment, though. It is, in fact, this radical eclecticism that stokes such feverish anticipation for its shows – whatever it is that Watanabe has up his sleeve will be worth the early start. Such was proven on the first show of ‘Japan Day’ – the Saturday of Paris Fashion Week, when the brands beneath the Comme des Garçons umbrella have historically shown – a buoyant, high-octane parade of graphic lycra bodysuits worn with spiky breastplates, deconstructed leather bikers and gabardine trench capes that brought beaming smiles to the typical stony faces on the frow. None, however, matched Ciara’s, with the R&B icon (and renowned Junya stan) one-two-stepping down the runway – proudly flaunting her baby bump – not once, not twice, but times, lighting up the room with each turn. Junya really does bring the goodies every time! 

Junya Watanabe SS27.

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As we recently learned while spending time with her in Los Angeles and London, Nadège Vanhée is a deep, philosophical thinker. The measure of her skill as a designer, however, is that her cerebral contemplations never weigh down the clothes. Such was proven in her spring/summer 2027 womenswear collection for Hermès, a material extemporisation on the quality of airiness: gossamer-woven slip dresses, chamois suede car coats ventilated with delicate micro cut-outs, and wide harness-fronted calfskin dresses with carwash hems. Printed carré bandeaus brought a sun-dappled optimism, as did a sunset palette that ran from rubber-glove yellow to flame red (as worn by the artistic director of womenswear herself for her closing bow), through ardent Hermès orange. A collection pinned to the top of our moodboards for next summer.

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This season, designers have set about funking up the familiar tropes of prep-school dress. It was there in Gucci’s upturned-collar rugby shirts and kilts, and in Celine’s tartan shirts and popped-tongue trainers. But where better to find it than at the source of so much collegiate style: Polo Ralph Lauren? The brand presented its spring/summer 2027 collection in a rustic, stable-like space in Paris’s 7th arrondissement, where models posed amid lush blooms on an elevated runway, wearing familiar Polo signatures with a twist. A white piqué polo shirt had been elongated into a column dress that skimmed the tops of canary-yellow smoking slipper-loafers; an electric-blue cable-knit sweater gave way to a shin-length skirt of crochet fins; and cotton windbreakers featured collars hand-embellished with found trinkets. “I really wanted to go back to a bit more of an American summer,” said Karen Brown Brody – who works under Ralph Lauren’s direction as senior brand creative director for women’s Polo and RLX – of these eclectic takes on the brand’s most time-honed pieces. “She travels, right? So she’s getting jewellery from places. She’s getting a straw bag from somewhere.” That souvenir-hunting spirit extended to a collaboration with jewellery artist Piki Wadsworth, whose shells and stones, cut, drilled and polished by hand, had the appeal of market-stall discoveries, as did braided belts in Indian madras and plaid, raffia totes and a new clutch version of the Blaze bag.

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“I’ll be seeking a comfy place to sit at the after-party,” says Dita Von Teese, having spent almost an hour strapped into a size zero corset, flying on wires and rotating on a giant upturned stiletto at Christian Louboutin’s cabaret at Théâtre du Châtelet. “With my heels UP.” All the better to show off those illustrious red soles, which have been a fixture of the burlesque star’s wardrobe since she first spotted a pair in Neiman Marcus in the 1990s, and later began performing in bespoke creations ranging from extravagant, crystalline fetish heels to crotch-high patent-leather boots with crystal buttons and enormous, sparkling star spurs à la John Willie. Such are the perks of being a close co-conspirator of Louboutin himself, who even took to the stage for the closing number of the Bruno de Lavenère-directed spectacle, while Cynthia Erivo, Elizabeth Debicki and Milly Alcock watched on in slack-jawed astonishment. “He’s got a fantastic sense of humor, he’s generous and kind, and there’s always a sense of joy around him.”

At 9.30pm, an audience hungry for priceless jewels flocked to a runway show, where for once, the clothes came second. Parisian jeweller Messika used the glamazon-heaving catwalk to debut its latest haute joaillerie collection – Terres de Contrasts – which takes its cues from the landscapes of Botswana (where its precious stones are sourced), and brings together the lush aquas of the Okavango Delta, the burning ochres of the Kalahari Desert and the mineral whites of the Makgadikgadi Pans. These all came together in intricately hewn jewels that became their own source of light beneath the domed ceilings of the Grand Palais, and which in true Messika style, were worn in surprising places on the body, as belts, belly chains and arm bands. While the front row was twinkly enough – Nicola and Brooklyn Peltz Beckham, Julianne Moore and Carla Bruni – the pièce de résistance was Irina Shayk, prowling along the black lacquered catwalk before them with the Okavango Blue against her chest, the largest blue diamond ever sourced in Botswana, and the eighth largest in the world.

Messika Haute Joaillerie.

Stephane Cardinale - Corbis/Getty Images

Who among us hasn’t come away from a gossip-filled dinner with friends inspired and satiated? For spring/summer 2027, though, Loewe creative directors Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez looked beyond the meal itself and took their inspiration from, well, the tablecloth. The American duo, who succeeded Jonathan Anderson, have already made their mark with a knack for colour, texture and the cleverly uncanny. Presented within a minimalist, all-white, two-tiered circular amphitheatre, the set provided the perfect palette cleanser for Loewe’s colour wheel of Yves Klein blue and rubber-duck yellow. The show opened with the gathered pleats of a pristine silver-service tablecloth before moving into a procession of minty toothpaste turquoise and tangerine, with metallic collars appearing alongside drooping bows, flopping down the runway over exposed toes. Sheer picnic blankets doubled as midi skirts, hastily rolled up at the waist, before painted stripes brought us back to reality, calling to mind the mishmash of tableware found in any old-school Italian restaurant worth its salt.

The rise of Benjamin Barron and Bror August Vestbø stars has been quite unlike any other, with the duo’s trajectory to the forefront of a new Paris establishment unfolding as if it were a movie. It felt fitting, then, that their latest show – one of the week’s hottest tickets – was a contemplation of “the pursuit and preservation of stardom,” the show notes read, particularly through the prism of Hollywood and its culture-shaping lore. Taking films that have studied – and immortalised – intrinsic fame-hungriness as a jumping off point – among them – the collection offered deliciously twisted and tweaked riffs on Tinseltown archetypes, with plucky young starlets, past their prime divas and pornstars galore all commanding the catwalk with the deluded confidence of Holmby Hills-dwelling megalomaniac. August Barron, you will always be famous!

Was it a swansong collection from Chemena Kamali, the German designer who transformed Chloé’s fate in three short years? Judging by the finale song, “Für Mich Soll’s Rote Rosen Regnen” – a song of hope and longing often played at weddings, anniversaries and funerals, and which Angela Merkel chose for her official farewell ceremony – and the standing ovation from VIPs including Tish Weinstock and Alexa Chung, it was tempting to read it as an . And what a collection to end on, if so: runway newcomer Apple Martin wearing a broderie anglaise dress with scalloped collars, a ruffled neckline and billowing sleeves; Jacqui Hooper wearing a sailor cap and an ivory cape trench with a high, buckled collar, layered over a blush skirt with an undulating hem; Mariacarla Boscono wearing a sheer, empire-waisted floral nightie; and Mona Tougaard wearing a flutter-sleeved lace top anchored to a buttercream skirt boasting cascading folds. As the final line of the show notes read: “Chloé, forever”.

A “surprise” show at the height of Paris Fashion Week would typically be met with a huff and an eyeroll, though that’s not quite the case when the invitation comes from A$AP Rocky. On Wednesday night, industry folks and fans convened at the Accor Arena for a show staged by the original fashion killa, presented under the banner of his creative studio Anti War Global Economics (AWGE), ahead of a planned concert at the Parisian concert hall. Before an audience that included Pharrell Williams and, of course, Rihanna, Rocky presented a collection designed to channel and protect against “recurring and interrelated forces impacting the world”, resulting in a parade of looks that dovetailed streetwear silhouettes, military patterns and details, all executed to an exacting degree of luxury – something the former American cover star sure knows a thing or two about!

If you weren’t in a hot sweat before the Tom Ford show at the Place Vendôme, you will be now! In true Haider Ackermann style, the creative director delivered the sexiest co-ed show of the season, staged inside a hide-and-seek hall of mirrors, complete with glittering scarf-detail bodysuits, draped blood red gowns, razor sharp leather and tattered denim. And it was all modelled by a hot-to-trot model line up that included Alex Consani, Kristen McMenamy, Anok Yai and Malgosia Bela. Unfortunately Harry Styles wasn’t spotted on the frow amid Shakira, Kate Moss, Cara Delevingne, Sam Claflin and Cynthia Erivo, but should his stylist Harry Lambert have been glued to the live stream, we’re sure he’ll have bookmarked the moustached model sporting a tuxedo jacket worn with tiny denim hot pants — not to mention the camel knit, worn with nothing but a pair of hot pink budgy smugglers.

We salute the coterie of A-listers who schlep from each fashion city to sit front row at a dizzying number of shows each season. But a moment for the fresh meat on the block, which for spring/summer 2027, has included a welcome Brit pack of female comedians – Julia Davis at Courrèges and ’s Diane Morgan at Stella McCartney – who we hope have been cracking one liners as the show lights come up. “To see and mix with a whole different industry, I was kind of like, ‘What’s that going to be like?’” confessed and star Davis before her turn at the Courrèges show, where she was invited to attend by newbie creative director Drew Henry. The frow is often full of tittering, “You can’t sit with us” cliques. Now at least, everyone is in on the joke.

This year marks 10 years of Anthony Vaccarello’s tenure at the top of Saint Laurent, and – while there may currently be murmurs circulating around quite how much longer he’ll continue to hold it – the collection he presented tonight – basked in the aureate glow of the Eiffel Tower (the site of some of his greatest triumphs) beneath a series of improbably suspended gilt chandeliers – was a testament to what a golden reign it’s been. Literally. Rather than reinvent the wheel season after season, the Belgian-born designer’s formula for success has been the simplest you could think of – consistency, repetition. A knack he paid tribute to by presenting a collection dripping in gold. Laminated leathers, rich brocades, scintillating bouclés – no fabric, surface or treatment was spared the designer’s Midas touch – save for the gemstone-tone chiffon scarves that trailed behind looks, or the odd bejewelled turban Loulou de la Falaise. As for silhouettes, this was also a collection that demonstrated quite how varied Vaccarello’s Saint Laurent has been, revisiting the key shapes that he’s made the keystones of his stylistic vernacular – broad-set, razor-sharp tailoring; ’80s power shoulders tapering into cinched waists; halter-neck slips of dresses; spectral froths of tulle; and sensible skirts made skimpy with slashed hems. Of course, looking at the monotone procession – watched by the likes of Zoë Kravitz, Rosalía and Donatella Versace – you couldn’t help but be reminded of the age-old fashion swansong tradition of presenting a funereal, all-black collection (a nod to which came with the show’s closing suite of looks – sculptural organza gowns and a decadent yet austere midnight-black velvet coat dress among them). While the entire industry will now be waiting on tenterhooks for a newsflash announcement, whether it comes or not, one thing was made very clear: Anthony Vaccarello really has had a 24-karat run at Saint Laurent.

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Maison Margiela has always been a house that has revelled in cerebrally-charged contrasts;  head-spinning juxtapositions that prompt reflections on fundamental questions around what fashion is or can be. Now fully dedicated to his position at the helm of the brand – having presented a hot-and-heavy final collection for Diesel just last week in Milan – Glenn Martens seems to be leaning into that heritage, albeit with a lesser degree of abstraction than has been seen from the house (and from his own work) in the past. The collection he presented was essentially a contemplation of “hard” and “soft” as springboard concepts for approaches to garment making, resulting in sculptural leather tailoring with ovoid draped fronts, structural floral jacquard wrap skirts, and swooning gowns with transfer prints of eagles taking flight, some styled with breastplates comprised of crushed metal crockery. If a little literal at times, it was at least a collection filled with things that made you think – which, at the end of the day, Margiela has always been all about.

Maison Margiela SS27.

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Forget The Row’s figs, walnuts became Instagram’s most reposted morsel in the run-up to the Dior show, as Jonathan Anderson invited guests to muse on the ancient Chinese tradition of shaping walnuts in the palm of the hand via his spring/summer 2027 invitation. Those knobbly nuts were far from fashion week fodder; rather, the very kernel of his third mainline womenswear collection, which was inspired by the asymmetry of nature (identical are extremely rare). Staged at Le Bassin Octogonal in the Jardin des Tuileries, where a cluster of newly planted camphor trees were enveloped by mist, the fresh edit was the breeziest we’ve seen so far from the creative director – which chimes with a general lightening up across the board (cc: Burberry and Bottega.) Bold-faced names, from Jennifer Lawrence to Jisoo, Rihanna to Rosalía, all flew in to see the looks – many of which were fashioned from circle-cut chiffon and could fit into a shoebox – up close. The vibe was as buoyant as the collection.

Fans holding their breath for were offered a crumb of hope just last month, when A$AP Rocky confirmed that Riri was actively spending time recording in the studio. It appears, though, that she’s now taking a bit of a break at Paris Fashion Week, where she made her first show appearance of the week at Matières Fécales, sporting a whittle-waisted, distressed gold tinsel bouclé skirt suit and curved talon pumps by the label, with an elegantly tousled up-do. While Rihanna showing up for the buzzy rising brand – fronted by Canadian design duo Steven Raj Bhaskaran and Hannah Rose Dalton – wasn’t necessarily unexpected (the singer is a deep-cut, IYKYK fashion stan, and a longstanding supporter of emerging talent), it nonetheless marked a major co-sign for the designers. They’ve been running their collaborative practice since the mid-2010s, but it’s only been a year since they presented their first show in Paris. Since then, they’ve racked up a string of high-profile endorsements. Rick Owens and his wife Michèle Lamy are old friends, Sarah Paulson wore a custom look to this year’s Met Gala, and just months ago, Gabbriette became the very first Matières Fécales bride. Could an album cover be next? 

Jacob Elordi has always been a Bottega boy (he was being papped with his Cassette bag years before Erling Haaland’s Birkin collection crossed our desk), but attending the spring/summer 2027 show in Milan on Saturday night must have felt extra special. Why? Because his girlfriend walked the runway. Kendall Jenner, herself a friend of the house, closed the show in a draped black dress, drop earrings and flats, while her beau – dressed in a leather jacket and toting a red clutch – watched from the front row. It begs the question: which of their wardrobes contains more intrecciato weave? A joint campaign feels inevitable.

What was so great about Demna’s debut Gucci catwalk earlier this year was the way in which he celebrated the brand’s real-life customers, from phone-snatchers wearing monogrammed bum bags to yacht-party girls in diamanté minidresses and the of Milan in pleated floral-print gowns and top-handle bags. The designer took that notion one step further with his spring/summer 2027 presentation, staged inside a simulacrum of a Gucci store, apparently modelled on prototypes for its new boutiques. Models emerged from a street projected onto a screen and snarled their way between cabinets and shelves, pausing to remove their sunglasses and admire their reflections in mirrors, as Anok Yai did in an outrageous fuzzy jacket and sparkling minidress. There was also Elsa Hosk in a broad-shouldered bomber layered over a striped knit and a popped collar shirt with tracksuit bottoms rolled shinwards; Rosie Huntington-Whiteley in an enormous faux-fur coat over a black lace bodysuit and satin pencil skirt; Candice Swanepoel in a twinkling high-necked minidress with an asymmetric waist cut-out and a trailing sash; and Alex Consani, who smacked gum – a much better way of conveying attitude than carrying a prop cigarette, of which there were far too many in London – in a long-sleeved black cut-out gown held together at the side with a crystal G clasp. These were not the smiling, coquettishly waving Victoria’s Secret Angels, but evil fashion bitches. “Would happily allow these women to murder me,” as fashion features and jewellery editor Laura Hawkins put it. Show of the season? At least so far.

Gucci spring/summer 2027.

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British ’s September cover star Nicole Kidman confessed that when she hits the club in Ibiza at 1am, she does so wearing glasses and “a little dark wig”. One can only hope that somewhere on the back row of Meryll Rogge’s sophomore show for Marni, Kidman had donned a black bob to watch her daughter Sunday Rose Kidman Urban take to the spring/summer 2027 runway in a lilac shearling coat, buckled boots and a check mini (an-everything-but-the-kitchen-sink combo synonymous with the Belgian designer’s style). This wasn’t Sunday Rose’s first turn on the catwalk. Back in October 2024, Mrs Prada chose her to open Miu Miu’s spring/summer 2025 show, and she walked again for the brand the following season. You’ll have to wait until 4 October to see if Kidman dons a disguise to watch her daughter in Paris too.

Hey fashion week insiders. Guess who had something of a reunion on the Max Mara front row? Leighton Meester and Kelly Rutherford, aka Gossip Girl’s Blair Waldorf and bulk Birkin owner Lily van der Woodsen. As you can reliably expect from the Italian house, which Ian Griffiths has presided over since 1987, its spring/summer 2027 collection had everything required for an elite Upper East Side wardrobe: lightweight trench coats, optic white tailoring and elegant one-shoulder dresses, topped off with multi-pocketed utilitarian details. As for what Meester and Rutherford were discussing on the frow, seated next to Kate Mara? That’s one secret we'll never tell.

Editors might have been slightly bamboozled by the eyesight-blocking mirrored box set, which reflected their own Bar Basso spritz-afflicted sleepy selves back to them, but one thing was clear. Bras (flimsy and padding free) are getting a real boost on the Milan runways, as evidenced by the 33 iterations at Prada, the 26 lace and silk-lined takes at Fendi, and the plethora of bras peeking out from deconstructed shirting at MM6. Chiuri was inspired by the stage costumes of the singer and TV personality, Raffaella Carrà, using her bedroom dressing-inspired garments as vessels of irony, from saccharine slip dresses to glittering blouses, leopard-print tailoring to déshabillé denim. – 

It’s been a pretty good couple of weeks for Simone Bellotti and his team over at Jil Sander. It was just a fortnight ago that the brand released its cinematic campaign starring Edie Campbell to industry-wide acclaim; and today, the creative director presented his third collection for the house, a body of work that pushed Bellotti’s tweaked vision of Jil Sander’s native minimalism to its most compelling form yet. Rigid sartorial templates were simultaneously upheld and dismantled – as its procession unfolded, cleanly contoured tailoring in wool and leather started to subtly crumple and twist, with pleats and folds that gave the impression of a garment picked up and pulled on from the bedroom floor. Colour combinations were “wrong” – sheened black satin and matte lilac, copper and duck-egg blue – yet all the more right for it. It was a collection that both presented and quietly challenged the monastic parameters of “good taste” that Jil Sander’s brand of minimalism has long been associated with, and was truly delicious for it. –

Jil Sander spring/summer 2027.

Filippo Fior / Gorunway.com

There are certain codes we can expect from a collection with Miuccia Prada at the helm: sensible skirts, ladylike pumps and a certain disregard for a hairbrush. This season, the Prada woman took things one step further, forgetting her shirt entirely and stomping out the door in a satin bra and sparkly pumps, sunglasses askew. A masterclass in morning-after dressing, the spring/summer 2027 collection saw coats slung open over printed scarves doubling as tiny tops, lumpy knitwear left untucked, unfastened jackets hastily stuffed into waistbands and chaotic brushstrokes splashed across pencil skirts. Taking their seats on the front row were Prada’s usual army of It-girls, including Alexa Chung, Hunter Schafer and mother-daughter duo Uma Thurman and Maya Hawke, in bedazzled socks and knitwear seemingly plucked from the wardrobe of a debutante on a self-destructive path.

The big bang that closes out every London Fashion Week, Burberry’s Monday night show is invariably the starriest on the schedule. That’s true of the FROW, with this season drawing the likes of Fiona Shaw, Jorja Smith, Gabbriette and Paapa Essiedu to the Chelsea College of Arts for Daniel Lee’s latest offering for the house. A face conspicuous by its absence, however, was Central Cee’s – though it all made sense when the London rapper turned up midway through the show, not making a mad dash for his seat, but on the catwalk itself. Dressed in a hooded rain jacket and mega-low baggy jeans with a shoelace in place of a belt, this marked his very first appearance on the runway not just for Burberry, but ever. It’s a fact we could hardly believe ourselves, but the moment was well worth the wait. – 

At this point in the week, anyone who’s been doing the show circuit will have become familiar with St Clement – the uber-luxe yet ultra-discreet hotel that just opened at 180 The Thames. The property has become a talking point among the city’s style set – not least Tolu Coker, who feels right at home in its Alex Eagle-designed suites. Or that was the impression, at least, gleaned from the presentation she staged across a series of rooms – one set up with moodboards and annotated sketches; another featuring models lounging about while a chamber orchestra played on the balcony, leafing through photobooks and sniffing flowers as if they’d been happened upon on a lazy Sunday afternoon. Rather than a paean to indulgence, the collection was a reflection on social mobility, following on from last season’s show that transported us to the West London council estate that she grew up on. Here, Coker contemplated what it means and looks like to inhabit spaces further up the social ladder than perhaps initially outlined. Even if she is moving on up, the Tolu Coker woman still knows where she came from. –

It’s somewhat astonishing that the fashion institution’s relationship to a country as vast – in size, population and cultural output – as India has for so long been conditioned by such flat stereotypes. It’s a topic that Osman Ahmed recently explored for us in British ’s July 2026 issue, drawing attention to the breadth, diversity and difference that characterises the fashion currently coming out of the country.

Lovebirds was one of the pioneering brands she highlighted. On the closing day of London Fashion Week, audiences were able to get a first-hand glance at what makes the brand so special. Staged in a glass-canopied hall in Westminster, the Delhi-based brand staged its first show outside of Asia to a rapt audience. The MO of their collection was to both present and explore the notion of “India: IYKYK” – an India entirely distinct from the postcard version “that shows marigolds and spices and elephants”, the show notes read. The result was a collection that took motifs that Gursi Singh and Amrita Khanna assure me that anyone who grew up in India will recognise – handpainted Bollywood posters; giant tooth signs for dentists; the texture of photo studios – and threaded them through exquisitely wrought silhouettes, rich, shimmering embroideries and cleanly distorted graphics. – 

When asked what he would rescue first from the McQueen archive, Seán McGirr didn’t hesitate. “I constantly ask them to wheel out the impala-horn jacket Debra Shaw wore in autumn/winter 1997’s It’s a Jungle Out There,” he said in British Vogue’s October issue, “and then stare at it”. It was a hint of what the creative director would show at the house’s much anticipated London Fashion Week homecoming, where models emerged through plumes of smoke at the 17th-century Undercroft of Lincoln’s Inn Chapel, their hair teased into twin horns. McGirr described the look as an homage to the Prodigy’s Keith Flint, while precisely fitted tailoring developed with Huntsman found its muse in Savile Row radical Tommy Nutter.

Here was London as the Dublin-born designer found it: a place where the beauty of Piero della Francesca’s The Baptism of Christ – which he returned to obsessively at the National Gallery as a student – could coexist with the abandon of rave culture. On the runway, those two poles were represented in classic red-carpet gowns, spiked with harnesses by original McQueen collaborator Shaun Leane, fitted with open-backed corsets that soared above the shoulder line, or hand-embroidered with metal skulls. By the time Emma Corrin, Lila Moss, Florence Welch, Alexa Chung, Lily McMenamy and Emilia Clarke rushed backstage to congratulate him, McGirr had made a persuasive case for bringing McQueen home for good. – 

Architect-trained Roksanda Ilinčić understands the nuances of the London skyline better than most, and after showing against the stark backdrop of the Barbican for spring/summer 2024, she looked to another Brutalist masterpiece, the National Theatre, for the new season. Architecture aside, the Serbian designer’s collections serve as micro art history lessons, referencing Lee Krasner, Phyllida Barlow and Niki de Saint Phalle. On her moodboard for spring/summer 2027? Octogenarian Swiss textile artist Françoise Grossen, whose large- scale sculptures incorporate braided, knotted and coiled rope. The DNA of Grossen’s burnished and tactile work was not just incorporated into Roksanda’s exuberantly-hued eveningwear – from harp-like threads festooning a panniered dress to chunky plaits tracing the back of a bias-cut silk gown – but more relaxed daywear too. What to wear to your next exhibition visit? Gabardine jackets with sculptural sleeves and relaxed cotton poplin shirting. “We’re covering the needs of women from the start of each morning, not just the afternoon or weekend,” Ilinčić says. “Shapes, sculpture and drama are counterbalanced against the realities of existence.” –

It’s a busy few months for the team over at Labrum. Off the back of winning the BFC/GQ Fashion Fund, not only has the brand staged a fully fledged runway show, but also a pop-up in Soho featuring panel talks and a specifically-produced capsule collection celebrating Britain’s status as a crucible of West African synthesis. And that’s not to mention the sculpture that creative director Foday Dumbuya has been working on, soon to be unveiled at the UN headquarters in New York. Back on the runway, this season staged in a grand Edwardian hall in Westminster, the brand presented the final part in a trilogy of collections exploring osmosis as a metaphor for sustained cultural exchange. Drawing on the palette of painter Jacob Lawrence – burgundies, taupes, mossy greens – the brand extended its exploration of how rigid (typically British) archetypes are transformed (and arguably enriched) when reappraised in the hands of migrant communities; how prim tailoring takes on new texture when cut from custom-developed, richly textured cloth, for example, or airy linen shirting finished with embroideries inspired by the real story of Dumbuya’s grandmother, a produce seller in Sierra Leone. As ever, this was a powerful story of the yield (and crucial importance) of intercultural dialogue, rendered in beautifully crafted cloth. – 

Labrum spring/summer 2027.

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Emilia Wickstead’s fashion universe is a cinematic one, too. In previous seasons, the royal family-beloved designer’s collections have nodded to Hitchcockian heroines and French New Wave, Hepburn classics and Antonioni’s oeuvre. So it’s perfectly fitting that for SS27, Wickstead decided to swerve the IRL fashion show format for a film debuted in her Sloane Street boutique, dedicated to the work of abstract expressionist artist Lee Krasner, and featuring a cameo by beloved London restaurateur Jeremy King (fashion week wouldn’t be fashion week without a sugar-fuelled pitstop at The Delaunay, now would it!). The accompanying collection nodded not just to Krasner’s vivid and experimental universe — A-line dresses in which “the artist’s colours come alive through tweed”, bias-cut gowns embellished with hand-placed feathered daisies (Krasner was a huge nature fan), but to her everyday working wardrobe, too: artist’s cloaks, striped shirting and ribbed knits. “I’m always trying to reinvent while reusing the silhouettes that define us,” Wickstead explained in a collection preview. “Things feel a little bit unravelled rather than perfectly put together.” – 

Emilia Wickstead spring/summer 2027.

“Believe it or not, his name was Vander Clyde ,” says Erdem of the eccentric who captured his heart this season. If you’re not familiar with the name, it’s because the Texan-born trapeze artist, who was a muse to Jean Cocteau and Man Ray long before Erdem came across him in the London Library, went by Barbette. “He began performing in Texas with two sisters, but then one had a terrible accident, so he had to replace her and dress as a female,” recalls Erdem, who is at his best when in historian mode. “He became this true androgynous kind of creature, almost like a third sex.” Shown at The Roundhouse on models with windswept hair, “as if they are soaring through the air”, with excerpts of Cocteau’s musings on Barbette blasting over the actual airwaves, the collection was less aerial-chic and more showgirl-cool. “It’s about the push and pull between masculine and feminine; the idea of illusion, and coming from somewhere, but actually discovering your truest self somewhere else.” Tailoring was a particular source of excitement for the designer, who is known for his devastatingly good dresses, which, this season, come fluttering with feathers. “What would Barbette look like today?” asked Erdem. There was plenty for him to love flying through London on Super Sunday. – 

Erdem spring/summer 2027.

To the Old Bailey! Simone Rocha has shown at the criminal court twice before (spring/summer 2023 and spring/summer 2025 for Rocha heads), but this time round felt different. “Following on from my menswear debut in Pitti, this is the first solely womenswear show in a long time – I wanted to bring an energy to that,” says the Irish designer, who began analysing her own pretty-tough aesthetic for a “less obvious” route. A Caravaggio masterpiece, The Betrayal of Christ – which was lost for 200 years, found in the dining room of a priest in 1990, and now sits pride of place in the National Gallery of Ireland – became a central source of inspiration for looking at things “a little bit out of context”. At Rocha’s hand, the Old Masters aesthetic filtered down into sumptuous blue velvet roses, enrobing hoods and frothy lace, while her signature underwear as outerwear looked more ornate than ever. “I know the term ‘character’ is kind of overused, but there’s a lot of different views on the female perspective within [the collection]; how you want to dress and how clothes can make you feel,” she explains. “That’s been really important.” – 

Nostalgia ran high at Chopova Lowena’s spring/summer 2027 collection at Bloomsbury Lanes, as guests, including The Femcels, John Glacier and Amy Taylor, reminisced about student days sinking pints at the bowling institution. Designers Emma Chopova and Laura Lowena-Irons took us further back than Noughties freshers’ nights to the cultish days of pre-Christian Pagan horror figures in Slavic cultures. Six characters – from Baba Yaga, the forest witch, to Rusalka, a dangerous water spirit, and Kikimora, a house elf – inspired a rambunctious edit full of frills and trims fit for a woodland nymph, but with all the bite of, say, a vampire. Still with us? Amongst all the bloomers, big hoods and bold embroidery were ’50s housewife tropes paying homage to Marion Ladewig, an all-American ten-pin bowling whizz, whose lace-up shoes formed the basis of the brand’s signature belted carabiner skirts. Oh and there were two dogs on the runway. And a Dr Martens collab. And the models wept gel tears. “It’s not tame, but there’s a fine line in terms of what feels believable,” say the proud shopkeepers, who cut the ribbon on the first Chopova Lowena store – sorry, clubhouse! – in August. “It’s a nice balance of what’s real and then storytelling – it doesn’t feel like a costume.” – 

Chopova Lowena spring/summer 2027.

Spring/summer 2027’s London Fashion Week has proven itself to be one in which the historic gap between the high end and the high street has narrowed to its greatest extent yet. While they didn’t stage a show, ASOS also had a marked presence in town, namely at the very first staging of a London iteration of Lyas’ La Watchparty. Staged in a vast town hall in King’s Cross, more than a thousand fashion fans convened en masse for a seat on the ubiquitous French fashion commentator’s virtual front row. Sponsored by the online retailer, the crowd tuned to a livestream of Chopova Lowena’s pagan frolic, hosted in a bowling alley just around the corner – though not before the unveiling of ASOS’s latest fashion coup: Law Roach’s appointment as its stylist-in-residence, with the renowned image architect set to reshape the platform’s fashion point of view in his immaculate vision. – 

Courtesy of Asos.

It wouldn’t be a Richard Quinn show without glitz, glamour and a cameo or two. On a drizzly London afternoon, Quinn brought the opulence back to London Fashion Week, staging his spring/summer 2027 show inside a mirrored Lindley Hall and exploring “distortion, perspective and the heightened drama of getting dressed”. , the show notes read, is “a study in glamour, reflection and the ritual of dressing”, moving “from the intimacy of the dressing room to the drama of the ballroom”. Leaning into the excess of ’80s glamour, with nipped waists and full skirts embellished within an inch of their lives, there was nothing laid-back or understated about the designer’s eveningwear. Overdressing, after all, is a redundant concept in Quinn’s world. Closing the show to a soundtrack of the Pet Shop Boys, legendary supermodel Helena Christensen glided down the mirrored runway beneath clusters of chandeliers while WAG of the moment Tolami Benson watched on from the front row. – 

The KNWLS heroine has long been associated with particular tensions and contrasts – a delicate yet hard-edged femininity; a simultaneous softness and severity. This season, however, saw all of that come undone before our very eyes, the typically rigorous, armour-like compositions of the looks seemingly falling apart on the runway. This seeming dishevelment was, however, a canny construction knack, with the tanktops floating below dress hemlines and skirts dangerously teetering on the hip held together by invisible underpinnings. In one particularly nailbiting look, a necklace strung with 27.33 carats of CrissCut diamonds appeared frozen at the moment of snapping and free-falling from the wearer’s neck. It was a clever material foil for the ethos at the brand’s heart: even if she may seem to be falling apart at the seams, it’s entirely on her own terms – and even if it’s invisible to the naked eye, the force keeping her together is far stronger than you could fathom. – 

Knwls spring/summer 2027.

Pauline Dujancourt has an elderly Turkish lady on YouTube to thank for the knitted flowers that form the foundation of her spring/summer 2027 collection – all 5,000 of them. The Parisian designer, who cut her teeth at Simone Rocha and Rejina Pyo, speaks not a jot of Turkish, but was bewitched by the technique and started spinning her own floral webs to crawl up her gossamer-light garments. The next feat of textile genius was born out weeping – not at the 700 blooms required for the finale dress alone – but Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s play, The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, which Dujancourt, who has synesthesia, has been captivated by for over a decade. She began to dream, through various bunches of textiles, what tears could look like. “I wanted to make emotional garments,” she says of her precious tangles of scalloped fabrics that fall down her looks, indeed, like tears. Another type of crochet daisy has a collective of craftswomen in Lima to thank for helping scale it up for hungry stockists, like Net-a-Porter. “I’m actually really enjoying it,” adds Dujancourt of watching the seeds of a successful business grow. – 

Pauline Dujancourt spring/summer 2027.

Priya Ahluwalia’s collection may have been born from a swell of negativity (fashion week can often feel like a disconcerting bubble, when outside it appears as if the world is caving in!), but as it progressed “the mood has shifted somewhat”. As well as designs referencing active forms of resistance – think: sharp Black Panther-inspired tailoring, newly-introduced black leathers – it’s a collection that revels in lightness too. “I was thinking about small acts of joy, balancing negativity with positivity,” Ahluwalia explains of the smile-inducing puffball skirts, organzas and fringed flourishes that floated down the catwalk at the Rosewood Hotel. The brand’s geometric set featured panels of hand-painted wallpaper resembling vast swathes of water, an 18-month endeavour and the fruits of a collaboration with Calico Wallpaper. “The only thing that separates humans is bodies of water,” reflects Ahluwalia, a poignant remark, considering that far right thugs have descended on Dover and Portsmouth in anti-immigration demonstrations in recent weeks. “I like celebrating migration; if my dad hadn’t moved from Nigeria and my grandparents hadn’t moved from India, I wouldn’t exist. There’s a time and a place for fighting and a time and a place for something optimistic and beautiful.” – 

For their debut LFW presentation last season, Freddy Coomes and Matt Empringham presented conceptual works made predominantly from rolls of crepe paper on mannequins. But for their first physical show inside Rose Easton gallery, Coomes explains, “We were more interested in how things resonate physically than visually.” Specific clothing archetypes, sourced from Angels Costumes in Hendon, formed the starting point – from a donkey jacket to a Ben Sherman gingham shirt, St Michael’s underwear to a ’50s day dress – for pieces that the design duo associate with British suburbia and domesticity. Dedicated to rooting out what clothes really mean – symbolically, materially, conceptually – Coomes emphasises the collection is not a “love letter” to these pieces, but rather an exploration of how they can be elevated, using velvet flocking and pressed silks, and with the addition of contemporary Venetian masks. “We were thinking about how we make these clothes feel modern, rather than nostalgic”. – 

A Letter spring/summer 2027.

Much has evolved for Aaron Esh over the past year. He’s added a new job title – chief creative officer of AllSaints, no less – to his CV, while maintaining his position at the helm of his namesake label. “My life changed so much,” he shared in a preview. “The personal, professional… When I think of who I was a year ago, I was a completely different person.” This shift could be felt in the collection he presented at Camden’s Electric Ballroom, marking Aaron Esh’s return to the runway after last season’s lookbook. The telling factor? The loud and proud use of colour – immaculately crafted suede jackets in hot pink and electric-blue shirting; double-layered silk chiffon dresses in fuchsia. Rather than a direct transcription of his personal emotional landscape, this brighter palette – replete with unexpected, almost jarring tonal clashes that were all the more alluring for it – signalled an impressive broadening of the designer’s remit beyond the now rather ubiquitous “East London night owl” figure he’s long been associated with – a fact also signposted by the debut of a collaboration with On in the form of sporty yet subdued Cloud trainer. – 

Filling a South London skate park with editors on the first full day of fashion week is no mean feat, but it’s one Fashion East has managed for a second season running. The Victorian bathhouse-turned-Supreme hangout was packed with the highest quota of small dogs and razor-sharp bobs you’ll find anywhere on the LFW schedule – proof of just how hotly anticipated this slot has become. Newcomer Mé Mé kicked off the three acts, finding “glamour and absurdity in the everyday” and urging us to “dare, grab and take”. The Cantonese designer was inspired by the “casual glamour of busy women on the streets of ’80s Hong Kong”, paying homage to the overworked girl crying in the cubicle, all smudged eyeliner and raw hems, with a cigarette welded to gloves coming undone at the seams. Next up was a languid, summery jaunt courtesy of Jacek Gleba’s , which took its cues from Denton Welch’s In Youth in Pleasure: think pool boys, denim left to dry and fabric wrapped around wet bodies. Closing out the show was insider favourite Traiceline Pratt with Goyagoma, who brought us back down to earth with oversized rugby shirts, beaded belts and leather separates. – 

Ian Wright and Joan Collins on the front row! Erin O’Connor, Karen Elson, Jodie Kidd and Lara Stone bringing supermodel clout to the runway! Clothes for under £50! Picky bits for afters! Despite there not being a Percy Pig or a pair of 50 deniers in sight, it could only have been the M&S show. Celebrating 100 years of fashion at the great British high-street favourite, the Design Museum takeover – soundtracked by Bronski Beat, as well as the whoops of friends of the brand, like David Gandy – the show had serious birthday energy. Marks & Sparks could have rolled out Colin the Caterpillar, but, instead, marketing director Sharry Cramond got on the podium and asked everyone to guess how much her buttery leather jacket was. The answer? Head over to the website to find out. A brilliant interlude in London Fashion Week’s usual programming. – 

How would H&M live up to the hype of previous seasons? By giving Nick Knight – the experimental British photographer known for his pioneering use of technology, who recently announced he was building his own AI model – a 40-metre-long catwalk at Kensington Olympia to play with. Casting Alex Consani, Paloma Elsesser and Lila Moss – plus two mother-daughter duos, Kristen and Lily McMenamy, and Karen Elson and Scarlett White – to walk it also helped. The show unfolded in three chapters, encompassing H&M’s premium Studio and men’s Atelier lines alongside its mainline collections, against an evolving backdrop of light, movement and sound. Longtime collaborator Labrinth took charge of the latter. It was an explosive end to Thursday, with thousands watching the livestream around the world. “We love London!” said Ann-Sofie Johansson, head of design, womenswear, at the Swedish retailer. – 

H&M autumn/winter 2026.

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Legacy Models, Labrinth, And A Beckham On The Front Row: How H&M Kickstarted LFW

A sense of grounding seems to be something that many of us are after at the moment, not least Harris Reed. For his latest collection, the designer – who’s earned something of a reputation as one of the city’s great showmen – decided to “really look at past silhouettes, and bring them down to this earth,” he shared. A shift in focus from fantasy spinning to the real-world wants of his growing customer base, this season saw the designer veer away from polychrome prints and jewel tones for pieces in “fifty shades of white”; with a sensible Manolo Blahnik collaboration in place of the usual towering platforms. Of course, Harris Reed would not be Harris Reed without a bit of razzmatazz. Corsets and structured tailoring with ballooning puff shoulders were realised in opulent, custom-developed ivory jacquards; zebra stripes came in understated silk dévoré and shimmering beading – all of which will be available to his select clientele in a variety of hues. “There will still be these levels of theatricality,” says Reed. Pared back as they may be by comparison, these aren’t quite clothes you’d wear for the milk run. – 

“Wake the town, welcome to church,” read the programme accompanying Francesca Lake’s spring/summer 2027 presentation. Whereas her previous collections took us to the schoolroom, pairing perspex pleasers with exaggerated tartan, for her London Fashion Week debut, the mood took a sombre turn. Against a backdrop of concrete and crucifixes, the Jamaican-born designer paired larger-than-life bustle skirts, broderie handkerchiefs and deconstructed military jackets with ladylike pumps and slashed leather overflowing with tulle. The palette was black, white and sun-bleached orange, with flashes of neon fringe peeking out beneath signature sculptural church hats. The order of service itself doubled up as a reading list. Junior Byles’s reggae classic “Fade Away” was printed alongside a passage from Virginia Woolf’s : a timely meditation on the pitfalls of vanity and hollow wealth (both apt and essential reading for any fashion week attendee). The show itself drew on a three-year body of work developed during Lake’s postgraduate studies at Central Saint Martins. A designer, but also a writer, sculptor and videographer, Lake has a habit of pulling her various disciplines under one roof, and “Wake the town" was no exception. – 

When the Homme Plissé Issey Miyake team decamped from Tokyo to London for a research trip to view Henri Matisse’s – the artwork hung in Tate Modern that has inspired their sophomore Open Studio collaboration – they were surprised by its large scale. For their show inside the museum’s vast, subterranean Tanks, the team were influenced by the gouache-on-paper, cut-out collage artwork’s “spectrum of colour”, transforming each piece of collaged paper into a single garment, worn by the Dresden Frankfurt Dance Company in an interactive performance. “We wanted to faithfully represent the richness of each cut-out piece,” they explain. The team also paid attention to Matisse’s use of visible brushstrokes, using the garment pleating technology synonymous with the 2013-launched Homme Plissé line to mimic their tactile direction. The joy in the design process came from the “foundation of respect for the artwork,” which transformed when its collaged cut-outs were transposed onto the body. The Tate Modern partnership has also culminated in a capsule collection, featuring printed dresses, tote bags and block-colour tops that will be available to buy in its Terrace Shop and online store. – 

Homme Plissé Issey Miyake Open Studio.

R&M Leathers hotly-anticipated debut fashion show wasn’t one for the pious. Staged in a listed chapel in East London, the cult leather brand – with fans including Charli XCX, Lily Allen, Dua Lipa and Addison Rae – transformed the space into a curtain-draped peep show, an homage to “the vanishing vernacular of pre-sanitised urban vice,” the show notes read. Expectations of raciness were more than met by the parade of body-flaunting calfskin corsets, studded micro shorts and body harnesses accessorised with swinging cat-o’-nine-tails, and a look that nodded to Nan Goldin’s seminal 1978 self-portrait as a dominatrix. It was the pieces with unexpected – dainty, even – craft details, like hand-cut broderie anglaise-style trims that convincingly challenged assumptions that full leathers automatically mean sleaze. “It’s nice for us to play with what people perhaps think of as fetish clothing and soften it a little,” said Ruby Mariani, the brand’s founder, in a preview. “People can sometimes get a bit afraid of ‘kink’, but we’re trying to show another side to leather than that.” –

Thom Browne channelled A Bug’s Life for spring, sending an army of caterpillars down the runway, before they danced around a giant chrysalis and became butterflies, bees, dragonflies and beetles in the aptly titled show venue, The Shed. The insects appeared everywhere, from bumblebees embroidered onto tailored jackets and dragonflies woven into checked coats, to black-and-red ladybird spots and beetle wings on sculptural skirts and corsets. The final look saw the caterpillar reach its final form, which is probably the opposite of how all those harried editors and PR girls are feeling on the last day of New York Fashion Week, but a reminder that inspiration is everywhere. The next time you see a wayward beetle, think of Thom Browne, instead of recoiling in horror. – 

Thom Browne spring/summer 2027.

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Ulla Johnson’s choice to stage her show in the sapling-and-grasses-dappled Gotham Park, as the monumental Brooklyn Bridge swelled in the skyline above, echoed a collection that mediated between the tailored and romantic, or what Johnson defined as the “urban pastoral.” In her tale of two cities, her women wear fringed floral dresses, and pasted hued tailoring, gossamer slip dresses and trenchcoats: pieces that would be equally at home on a Grecian isle or in The Hamptons. A longtime sustainability advocate, Johnson is committed to the ground her models walked on. Once a hangout for skaters, Gotham Park is in the midst of a large-scale regeneration, overseen by architects Field Operations, and Johnson plans to dedicate 750 native plants and 12 trees to its permanent landscaping. – 

Ulla Johnson spring/summer 2027.

“The thought of doing a show in New York has always been there, and people would kind of make fun of me because I saw New York as my Paris,” Conner Ives told ahead of his Stateside debut. If the decampment seems sudden, fresh off his BFC/Vogue Fashion Fund win, it’s not quite. The idea to guest star in NYC began to take shape at the end of 2025, when Westchester County-born Ives returned home for a prolonged trip during his British visa renewal process, and he was reinfected with the American itch. When he began development for February’s show in London, he brought his USA idea to BFC CEO Laura Weir and eventually the CFDA, who both helped to make it happen. He titled the collection “Across the Pond”, with plenty of New York references to match, like The Grill, a power-lunch restaurant, the 60th anniversary of Truman Capote’s Black and White Ball, and Jonathan Glazer’s starring Nicole Kidman. While Lila Moss and Iris Law ensured that the Brit contingent was represented on the runway, the designer’s parents and his high-school art teacher, plus a handful of current students, were in attendance. “I feel like I am now embarking on a point in my career where I’m present in both spaces, which I think for the longest time, I almost maybe thought wasn’t possible,” said Ives. – 

Veronica Leoni’s choice of a vast, sparse red-brick warehouse on Manhattan’s post-industrial West Side as the show venue for her latest Calvin Klein Collection offering was telling. Hers, after all, is an aesthetic defined by function and restraint; by “taking away everything that does not carry the work, until only what is necessary remains,” the show notes read. An extension of her ongoing exploration of American minimalism, Leoni’s latest collection was certainly pared back, though an urgent sensuality made itself felt in the movement of sheened silks against the body; an optimism in the flashes of marigold and cyan that lifted the predominantly monochrome palette. Minimal, perhaps, but hardly skimped on. – 

Calvin Klein spring/summer 2027.

Photo: Filippo Fior / Gorunway.com

Fashion and art’s commingling has been a hot topic of late on account of the current exhibition at The Costume Institute at The Met, but the perfect place to behold the overlap of the two creative spheres remains a vernissage, according to Michael Kors. “I love the idea of the mix of people that you see at a museum. Sometimes, it can be as interesting as the art,” the designer remarked in a preview. It was in the MoMA garden, no less, that Kors presented his treatise on contemporary gallerina style, a city-minded wardrobe that counterposed classic, all-black tailored separates with coats with painterly embroidery, dresses with flickering scrims of primary colour and op-art stripes. With Frieze week on the horizon, it’s all the inspiration you could wish for. – 

Michael Kors spring/summer 2027.

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There was an almost ominous air around yesterday’s Tory Burch show. On arrival, guests descended beneath Wall Street’s glass-and-steel towers into Noguchi’s Sunken Garden to the booming bass of ’s opening theme. This hard edge percolated into a good number of the clothes themselves: ultra-constructed tailoring, subtly contoured coats in the driest of matte wools and sober tweed two-pieces, as worn by Alexa Chung. This was not, however, a collection entirely preoccupied with severity. “Opulent femininity meets American pragmatism,” read the show notes, with richly embellished jewel-toned suits, Fortuny-pleated silk gowns and chunky, gleaming belts checking the former box. Ultimately, it was a collection that offered a template for feminine dress that felt both aspirational and realistic, as rooted in the need for armour as in the yearning for escapism and, moreover, fun. – 

New York’s cultural tapestry brims with world-class landmarks, but when it comes to its hotels, few carry quite the same clout as The Plaza. It was here, in the Central Park-facing grande dame’s marble-colonnaded, frond-filled Palm Court, that Tommy Hilfiger staged his latest show. It’s a spot of particular significance to Hilfiger – he and his family, in fact, lived here for a number of years, during which time he observed the mêlée of uptown ladies who lunch, joined at the weekends by their downtown-dwelling It-kids. The collection he presented skewed towards the latter, rejuvenating the prep that Tommy has been purveying for more than four decades. Boxy gabardine coats and rugby shirts in block primary tones, along with jaunty riffs on classic poplin shirting, came in hand-me-down proportions, styled with silk foulard bags and knitted ties. They were sported by today’s It-kids, too, with Gigi Hadid opening the show and Romeo Beckham closing things out as Slayyter belted out her hit of the summer, “Dance”. – 

Tommy Hilfiger spring/summer 2027.

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Party hats, presents, and confetti canons, it had to be Coach’s 85th birthday! Stuart Vevers’s downtown party saw Elle Fanning and Troye Sivan discuss the trends they hope will no longer be around in 85 years (queuing for frozen yoghurt?), while a Bronx youth orchestra and voguing dancers were tasked with evoking the celebratory air of Studio 54 (no pressure). The looks were inspired by Meg Ryan in underrated Noughties hit and the suit Vevers wore on his own wedding day, but the key takeaway came from the sound system, not the runway, via MFSB’s “Love Is the Message”. – 

The chicest thing is to show off-schedule and, on 9 September, Ralph Lauren did just that, but with a presentation designed to “upend traditional notions of chic”. Indulging his inner romantic, the 86-year-old all-American designer, who rocks a varsity jacket like no other, said he wanted to create “a new elegance” via ways of dressing that “celebrate ingenuity, originality and character”. In practice, this meant tailoring and gowns, given a distinctly fanciful feel with ruffles, feathers and tassels that bounced down the runway, like models had a spring in their step. The start of the season is always a giddy affair and this intimate Tribeca show, with Viola Davis, Helena Christensen, Iman and Katie Holmes all in attendance, set the tone for the month to come. –