The standout shows of London Fashion Week S/S 2026

London Fashion Week (LFW) is in the midst of an upgrade: new British Fashion Council CEO, Laura Weir – the organizing body which hosts the event each season – has promised to reshape the country’s fashion landscape, with equality at the fore. Coming from a publishing background (she was editor of London-based ES magazine for some years), an opening manifesto presented at the Serpentine earlier this summer saw her call for waived fees for designers to show at LFW (‘fashion week is a valuable piece of national IP and our shop window for what creative Britain looks like’), increased scholarships and funds for young designer businesses, and doubling an international guest program to get more attendees to the event each season. ‘Fashion is not just about shows and clothes. Fashion gives us a preview of society’s next chapter. It’s time to write a new story together,‘ she concluded.

Weir will no doubt be front and centre of proceedings this week, presiding over a schedule which – as ever – captures London’s unique and energetic mix of established and emerging talent. In the former camp is Burberry, which will hold a blockbuster show on the closing Monday evening (22 September), while Simone Rocha, Erdem and Roksanda remain the city’s creative stalwarts as they enter their second decades in business (meanwhile Jonathan Anderson hosted a special dinner at The Ritz to celebrate the relaunch of his eponymous label on Friday). In the latter camp is a raft of on-the-rise talent, from fledgling names such as Oscar Ouyang to those gaining traction, like Talia Byre, Aaron Esh and Conner Ives, who will present their S/S 2026 collections across the week.

Here, reported from London, Wallpaper* fashion features editor Jack Moss and contributing fashion writer Orla Brennan pick LFW’s standout shows – as they happen.

Last night, in the upper drawing rooms of the ICA, Jawara Alleyne presented an S/S 2026 collection that channelled the feeling of a particular word – tabanca. Originating from a dialect in Trinidad and Tobago, it translates roughly to a romantic longing after loss, but these days in Caribbean culture it more accurately captures the crash after the highs of a party. Staggering into the room tired and wired, Alleyne’s models looked like they had had big nights, dressed in celebratory looks that offset a joyful carnival feeling with the subversively dishevelled, chopped-slashed-and safety-pinned style that has made Alleyne one of London’s favourite designers.

Mixing old and new, fabrics layered up jersey from Jawara’s archive with light chiffons, grunge-inflected denim and deadstock T-shirts that paid homage to Caribbean wildlife artist and conservationist Guy Harvey. Two collaborations also made their way into the collection – one with Converse, who Alleyne first worked with on a Notting Hill Carnival release, and a second with Japanese rock band Bo Ningen, using guitar strings to stitch circle shapes in band tees and broken cymbals and drumsticks for jewellery. A love of music and his community also extended to the soundtrack in the room, orchestrated by collaborators like Ib Kamara and his own brother Tafari Alleyne. ‘I’ve been thinking about the way you feel after a carnival or a good night out at the club,’ said the designer of the mood he wanted to capture. ‘You start out with your look intact, but by the end you’re completely dishevelled. You don’t care, though, because the elation of an unforgettable night is all that matters – and that’s the feeling I’m trying to capture.’ Orla Brennan

Justine Kurland’s seminal 2000s photo series, ‘Girl Pictures’, provided the inspiration for Simone Rocha’s S/S 2026 collection, shown in the grand Egyptian Room of Mansion House, the ceremonial residence of the Lord Mayor of London. Kurland’s images, taken across the United States, capture young women in places of wilderness, imagining that they have abandoned their homes and established their own communities. Her subjects are at once defiant and vulnerable, with a sense of danger just out of reach – for this reason, they have become emblematic of the experience of being a teenage girl. ‘I channelled the raw, angry energy of girl bands into my photographs of teenagers. All the power chords we would ever need lay within reach, latent, coiled in wait,’ she once wrote of the images.

Similar juxtapositions between sweetness and subversion have run through Rocha’s oeuvre, which continued for S/S 2026. Markers of femininity were twisted: crinoline skirts were skewiff and worn with sequinned bra tops, their straps falling off the shoulder, enormous satin flowers bloomed on waistlines, while disorientating panels of clear vinyl sat atop delicate silk gowns. Meanwhile accessories spanned glimmering sequinned gloves and ruffled-edge bags shaped like pillows – capturing a desire to dress up and stay home at once (lips, meanwhile, were written with ‘Sweet Dreams’). As ever, the applause was rousing as Rocha took her finale bow – over a decade into her eponymous label, her collections continue to thrill. Jack Moss

‘Elegant, efficient, with no time to waste’ is how Johanna Parv described her wardrobe this season, unveiled yesterday morning in the Newgen space below 180 The Strand. It’s a sentiment that could apply to any of her collections, which meticulously refine and tweak an unmistakable action-ready uniform rather than presenting a new fantasy each season. Yesterday, that obsessive approach imbued Parv’s wardrobe with a subtle magic, as her cult cycling-inflected shapes appeared in a litany of sensual, technically impressive new variations. Rendered in a natural palette punctuated with shocks of red, layers of body-clinging shorts and dresses came in featherlight yet durable blends of linen, cotton, and nylon, each engineered with problem-solving quirks – from hidden hoods to adjustable straps, subtle air vents and cleverly placed pockets. What felt new was a sense of summery looseness, seen in baggy nylon cargo shorts slung low on the hips and crisp white track sets paired with red neoprene sock shoes.

While other designers might do their research in libraries, Parv has always designed from the experience of the wearer, often personally test-running her pieces and adjusting them for weeks until satisfied. This season, a foldable bag was the result of this experimentation, made to sit snug against the body in multiple configurations or clip neatly onto a bike frame. While most of her work comes from a sensory place, Parv did however return to a book she read as a teenager while making the collection, ‘Streetwalking the Metropolis’, which details the tension between independence and danger women face in the city. Using it to think forensically about armouring her women for any eventuality, this season Parv’s clothes felt charged with a particular sense of purpose – sharp, chic, and completely her DNA. Orla Brennan

Talia Lipkin-Connor was thinking about the idea of ‘home’ this season, having read Deborah Levy’s ‘Real Estate’ at the start of the creative process. Part of the British author’s ‘living autobiography’ series, it is a meditation on female creativity and the meaning of home. ‘I began to wonder what myself and all unwritten and unseen women would possess in their property portfolios at the end of their lives,’ writes Levy in the 2022 book. ‘Literally, her physical property and possessions, and then everything else she valued, though it might not be valued by society. What might she claim, own, discard and bequeath? Or is she the real estate, owned by patriarchy?’

On a bright Sunday morning on the upper floor of Vauxhall’s Cabinet gallery, Lipkin-Connor’s intimate S/S 2026 continued this exploration. ‘It begins at home,’ she wrote in the accompanying collection notes, seeking to capture the moments of intimacy between a woman and the clothing she wears – clothes that are ‘not costumes but companions... the clothes I want to wear’. It made for an uplifting, appealing outing from the Warrington-born designer, who was marking her first runway show proper (previously she has shown in minuscule presentations at bookstores and galleries; this, though bigger in scale, still had only just over 40 guests, a suggestion of Lipkin-Connor’s desire for intimacy).

This season, she continued to be inspired by the women around her, having previously spoken about how her collections emerge from observing the daily clothing habits of those who work in the studio alongside her. Her signature stripes returned across flared-sleeved tops and voluminous rugby shirts, while apron-style gowns straddled utility and glamour. Flourishes of embellishment added new textural richness to her vision, like a V-neck sweater adorned with strings of beads, while millinery – something she has explored in recent seasons – came in baseball caps with elongated trains, or slouchy beanies tied with tassels. Terry-cloth fabrics suggested interiors, as did nods to William Morris prints.

Lipkin-Connor’s approach – satisfyingly off-kilter, but grounded in reality – has won her a small but devoted legion of followers, many of whom were in attendance today. If their response was anything to go by, they were more than satiated by the new season offering – several people said it was their highlight of the week so far, proof that amid the noise, such moments of quiet beauty can be equally arresting. ‘This season I wanted the woman to feel very elevated, grown up,’ she said. ‘Past the craziness of your twenties.’ Jack Moss

Queuing up for Aaron Esh’s S/S 2026 show last night felt more like stumbling into an underground party than attending a fashion week event – and not just because of the late hour or its setting in the former nightclub Oval Space in Hoxton. Alongside the usual circuit of editors, a sea of the designer’s friends and black-clad fashion kids packed the walls of the warehouse space to see Esh’s new collection – his first in a year after skipping last season.

What came was testament to the authentic vision the London-born designer has built since launching his brand in 2022 – and to taking time to do things properly. Styled by Katy England and set to a poundingly aggressive soundtrack that moved from scouse rapper EsDeeKid to bassvictim, a vampiric army of models – including Lux Gillespie and Kiki Willems – stormed through the room in clothes that merged the finery of 1930s couture with East End leather craft. Silhouettes were skinny, colours were dark, and the clothes were, above all, beautifully made. A nod to craft came in Harrington jackets constructed from lustrous satins and double-faced suits cut in Highbury by the same tailor who made Esh’s father’s wedding suit. For women, slinky A-line dresses and skirts were cut languidly on the bias in brown silk and soft jersey, worn over drain-pipe leather trousers. Offsetting artisanal glamour with the eclectic style of the Londoner on the move, looks were finished with black baseball caps and big leather boots ready to be wrecked on the city’s streets.

Now a few years into his brand, the precise attitude of display was evidence of a designer firmly in his stride. Last night it was clear that Esh, as Osman Ahmed observed in the show notes, is able to capture the mood of London like no one else at this present moment: ‘At the fitting I noticed something: the models looked like they owned the clothes, as if they’d walked in wearing them. That, I think, is a very London thing.’ Orla Brennan

Roksanda has been in business for two decades, a landmark the label celebrated on Saturday afternoon in the vast subterranean ballroom of Chancery Rosewood, a new London hotel opening in the former American Embassy on Grosvenor Square. A tangible nod to the past came in a trio of dresses from past collections, reissued and reimagined in new fabrics and colours – the Margot (S/S 2012), the Anya (S/S 2016), and the Cataline (A/W 2022) – but the S/S 2026 collection also felt a summation of the essence of Roksanda Ilinčić’s work over the last 20 years, which is rooted in a study of form and inspired by the work of (largely women) artists.

This season, it was British artist Barbara Hepworth, whose sculptural works inspired a series of graphic cut-outs (Ilinčić said she was drawn to her use of ‘negative space’), as well as the undulating forms of panniered dresses. Ilinčić also looked towards the landscapes surrounding the Hepworth Wakefield, the Yorkshire institution which houses a permanent collection of her work. A nearby river informed hazy prints on diaphanous silk, while fronds of colourful raffia were a nod to its wildflower gardens. The Serbia-born designer described Hepworth’s work as ‘contrasting strength with femininity and tension with grace’ – a summation which could equally apply to her own oeuvre, which has been embraced by the creative women of London and beyond (many of whom cheered on Ilinčić from the front row, including performance artist Marina Abramović). Jack Moss

The cheerleaders in American movies are usually the popular girls – emblems of clean, sunny energy and conformity that rule the school. But not on the campus of Chopova Lowena. In a church-turned-gym hall in west London, design duo Laura Lowena and Emma Chopova channeled the sugary energy of the sport into a wardrobe for the outcasts, presenting a collection that the pair said ‘brought us back to our roots of playfulness and experimentation’.

The duo have been designing as one for over ten years now, forming a symbiotic language that was felt in the show’s confidently bonkers vision. These are two designers who have, season after season, chosen to cast unconventional characters over typical runway models, armouring them in beautifully eccentric clothes that have deeply resonated with a devoted cult of followers. Set to a hyper-drive soundtrack that blended death metal, cheer chants, and heart-racing bass, this season the duo’s unmistakable wardrobe was told through a storyline that blended Bulgarian Karakachani costumes with high school sports gear. Layering up an overdose of trimmings and textures, silhouettes paired their signature carabiner skirts in gothic glittery shades with new sport jerseys and track pants, football lace-up bras, shoulder-pad panniers and pom-pom jackets.

A love letter to the ‘weird girls’ they have been doing it for since the start, the display marked a satisfying close to the first day of London Fashion Week – a city where outsiders have long found a home. ‘There is no“I” in team... but there is one in individuality,’ Chopova and Lowena said after the show. ‘In the collection, we celebrate that push pull of blending in and standing out.‘ Orla Brennan

It has been 25 years since Lulu Kennedy founded Fashion East, the Brick Lane-based talent incubator which has helped usher the careers of names like Kim Jones, Jonathan Anderson, Martine Rose, Craig Green and Grace Wales Bonner through its runway shows (traditionally, Kennedy chooses a trio of designers to show each season, spanning both mens and womenswear). The ICA provided the location for the celebrations: in one room, a decade-spanning exhibition of ephemera from Fashion East’s ‘rowdy and raw’ history (Craig Green’s wooden ‘broken-fence’ chestplates; a leopard-print birthday cake by Mowalola; a pair of elongated soft toys by Claire Barrow), in the other, a darkened runway ready for Fashion East’s future. It was there that Kennedy introduced two new additions to her roster – Mayhew, the eponymous label of London College of Fashion’s MA Womenswear graduate Louis Mayhew, and Jacek Gleba, a graduate of the Central Saint Martins MA – as well as the return of Cameron Williams’ Nuba after two seasons.

Mayhew titled his S/S 2026 collection ‘Hard Graft’, looking towards the act of ‘mudlarking’, a historic tradition which sees people combing the tidal shores of the River Thames to find trinkets and treasures. As such, garments were adorned with rocks, rusted keys and ceramics like charms, while sweatpants cinched with cable ties and paint-splattered sweaters nodded towards the designer’s background in labouring (he previously worked as a painter-decorator). In its undone eclecticism, it felt typically Fashion East – though despite the energetic start, the challenge for Mayhew will be to find a piece which sets him apart from the pack (playful ladylike handbags, draped with sheets of faux fur, demonstrated a knack for accessories he might explore further). Gleba’s aesthetic felt more defined: a series of body suits and sweat jackets informed by the ‘balletic body’ in intriguing colour combinations which called to mind the work of designers like Kiko Kostadinov. The designer said his work is inspired by his own background in dance, which informed the collection’s sinuous line. Next time, it would be good to see the pieces come alive in greater fields of motion.

Nuba, which came between the debuts, saw Williams continue a strong eye for drape and silhouette, capturing a twisted elegance in satin trousers constructed to appear like they had been pulled open at the front, cropped jackets which twisted sensually around the body and diaphanous, semi-sheer trousers which fluttered as the models walked. The deep-thinking designer said it was about ‘the silent pull of another life... in act of bravery that consists in remaining yourself within transition’. Indeed, Williams’ shape-shifting pieces seemed to transform on the body, culminating in a jacket which came alive in feather-like fronds of tulle.

As ever, the mood in the room was buoyant: as Fashion East marked its quarter century, it was a reminder of how much a part of London Fashion Week the incubator has become – and a testament to Kennedy’s own (seemingly endless) well of energy in hunting out the next generation of fashion talent. Over the weekend, celebrations will continue at the ICA with a packed programme of talks and film screenings. ‘We’ve had a lot of fun digging through the archive,’ says Kennedy. Jack Moss

Joining the ranks of the Newgen cohort this season, Oscar Ouyang presented his debut runway show yesterday morning in London. It’s an event he’s been dreaming of since he was 17, he told Wallpaper* in an interview earlier this week, ever since moving from Beijing to the UK to study knitwear at Central Saint Martins. Rewriting the traditions of the craft with experimental techniques and stories found in anime, medieval history and the wardrobes of his friendship circle, Ouyang’s personal approach to knitwear has already seen designs stocked in Dover Street Market.

Transforming the Newgen runway in the basement of 180 The Strand with a letter-strewn floor created by artist Gary Card, his runway debut looked to messenger birds such as owls, doves and eagles as a storyline. In practice, this saw classic materials like silk, linen Harris thread and Irish Donegal yarn taken to experimental new realms, spinning them into ultra-light jumpers and honeycomb weave short shorts that translated the grunge-coded Ouyang wardrobe for summer heat. Adding flourishes of glamour and fantasy through feathers salvaged from the meat industry, the resulting display made for an original debut from a designer set on proving knitwear to be as exciting a craft as any other design discipline.

‘The challenge this season is how to translate the Oscar wardrobe into the warmer months,‘ he told Wallpaper* in an exclusive collection preview. ‘This season, we're trying to play with the possibility of silk and linen blends and more traditional yarns that people would associate with a vintage kind of look, like Irish Donegal and Harris thread. We want to engage with that history, but with a little twist, adapting them to be more contemporary and hopefully more chic.’ Orla Brennan

 

Source: https://www.wallpaper.com/fashion-beauty/london-fashion-week-ss-26-highlights-standout-shows-lfw