The skies had been gray for the last 50 days, the rain had incessantly soaked the city and its inhabitants to the brink of exasperation, and the air still felt a bit too cold despite the promise of spring to be within our reach. Yet, once again, we all donned (or tried to) our best and marched down to crypts, churches, warehouses, basements covered in eggshells, hotels and all sorts of venues for London Fashion Week (LFW) AW26. In the hopes of being inspired and submerged into the sensorial experience that is fashion, witness the fleeting, hard to pin and extremely human cultural exercise and act of wonder of watching first hand beautifully constructed garments to clothe our bodies. And get lost in countless stories told, yes, through fabric but also by stage design, music, performance, makeup and hair. Orchestrated by designers and a plethora of creatives of various disciplines that come together to stage a fashion show or presentation, transcending the métier (profession) of fashion design into something beyond, perhaps a curatorial playground, perhaps art, perhaps yet another form of compelling storytelling that strikes a chord with our human sensibilities and necessity to ground our existence into the things we are capable of creating.

This particular season that feeling resonated with us more than ever, we finished this season of LFW thinking on how much more we felt that shows and presentations possessed this theatrical or expositional qualities as if, rather that just creating a runway display, designers staged full on stories, which is why this time around we are focusing as much on the “mise-en-scene” as we are on the actual collections presented. Dedicating as much attention to music, performance elements, stage and prop design as well as the environment and the emotions this evoked on us.

We will now present the mise-en-scéne of London Fashion Week AW26, and the tales told on the different shows and presentations we witnessed. 

An Ode to the Bar!

by

Sinead Gorey

photography by Lily Craigen

We descended into the crypt, but what was found there wasn’t a crypt but rather a Desperados filled pool parlour, a saloon vibe and the idea that as always with the South London-born designer, Sinead Gorey, “The party must never die.” The space was completed with pool tables, a bar and setting arrangements garnished with bottles of Desperados beer that suggested we were in for a fun time. 

Last season Sinead took the perediza team all on a weekend escapade to a muddy British festival, this time around she asked us out to join her at another British classic scenario: “The Pub.” Sinead Gorey is someone who fundamentally understands who she is, therefore she knows the woman she wants to dress as if she was designing for her inner circle of friends.

She knows that sometimes, even in the winter, a glitter mini dress must be worn to head out, paired with an enormous faux fur hat to keep warm. The models walked out decked in corsets, ribbed thighs in argyle, bouncy furry jackets and coats and a plethora of military inspired jackets and boleros done with flair and tailored to a feminine silhouette in different fabrics ranging from velvet to denim. The Gorey girl is an attitude, a rebellious streak that refuses to let the party die under any circumstances, even in the cold. Her design aesthetic is an understatement of urban culture and a well-rooted notion that fashion starts as a personal exercise of discovering who you are, a joy in getting dressed, and the embodiment of the “process of becoming” oneself, one that starts with inspiration and digesting visual culture and the world that surrounds us, but ultimately one that ends up being formed with the everyday clothes we possess on our wardrobes, her collections feel experimental, bold yet extremely accessible; they feel as if they were made for the girls who are always playing with the idea of personal style, a mix match of elements, patterns and materials, but always a statement on “fabulous.” Ultimately, Sinead Gorey encapsulates to perfection that young joyful feeling of being excited to go on a night out dressed to the nines, even if it's only to your local pool bar or pub.

Bright Glamor!

by

Poet-Lab

In an underground venue in Spitalfields, thin veils that casually moved and waved with the light air of the environment divided the room into little chambers and hidden corners. Bright lights and an electric musical score ushered the creations of designer Giuseppe Laciofano into the space, one-by-one took to the floor with grandeur and panache, reflecting the collections core idea, “the reclamation of femininity” not as imposed but as personal, empowering and self-constructed. Silk polka dots danced with leathers, shoulders were broadened, waistlines and necklines exposed with calculated and precise sensuality, black leather engaged in conversation with baby blue lace and transparency met opacity as a friend rather than its opposite.

Poet Lab acted as a mediator of odd conversations, inspired by the spirit of Diana Spencer, the collection was meant to reflect on the construction of the idea of femininity, its nuances and its societal constrictions and signifiers as an act of reclaimment rather than one of imposition, femininity as a way of being rather than an imposed performance of expectations. The collection stood as a proclamation and an invitation to construct femininity on one’s terms and conditions. The show included a diverse casting of models including drag persona Eliott with 2T’s, and Tayce who closed the show in a subversive re-imagining of Lady Diana’s wedding dress, in a true moment of dramatic glamour the bride walked all the way to the end of the aisle, only to reclaim herself and escape on the last minute, sending a clear message across the room, I exist on my own terms. 

The Tactile Concerto

by

The Ouze

The music sheets draped from the ceiling to the ground, the music hidden behind miles and miles of music notes and scrapped compositions filled the space as if entering a classical trance. The cellist performs for us the audience but also embodies the act of rehearsal, a process done alone, a process which awards mistakes and prompts repetition, starting again and again until we deem something finished or completed. “Repetition, Rehearsal and Mistake” is the thematic backbone for The Ouze’s newest collection, an analogy and a comparison between tactile craft and untactile art: music and jewellery. It’s a statement that is important perhaps now more than ever, “The process is the point.” In a world that has integrated and assimilated AI-generated everything, human process, human mistake and human intervention seems more relevant than ever. The collection highlights the imperfections, which are also part of the brand’s core ethos, the process and the discarded versions behind a finished polished product, making a strong point that, with creativity, the process from which great things come to be is as important as the finished product itself.

Taking from music an artform that incessantly perfects, nitpicks and trims discarded versions of a composition until its perfected or at least deemed finished, art and craft take time and something brilliant comes from countless hours of work, of mistakes and previous versions.

The Ouze newest collection highlights finished pieces alongside their raw materials, sketches, models and scrapped versions, presenting them on velvet trimmed instrument cases furthering the similarity between music and the accessories and emphasising the beauty of understanding how things come to be, how things get to harmonise in the end by understanding their unique journey and evolution. The collection features rings, bracelets, brooches, pins and a selection of lifestyle pieces including a tableware set. Finally the cellist, unveiled at the middle of the presentation space, embodies the finalised version of both the musical composition and the accessories, giving a live manifestation of how these two things finish their journey, music, made to be performed and listened to; the jewellery, made to be worn, touched and become part of who we are and the way we lead our lives. Both music and accessories are brought to life, truly fulfilling their destiny only when in direct interaction with the wearer or the performer, only fully complete when integrated with us humans, all of us in our own unique process of becoming, all of us in own individual journeys hoping that one day the composition of our lives will sound as beautifully as a cello in the dark.

The Devil’s in the Details

by

Denzil Patrick

The morning started slow as I approached the gallery space nestled within a hidden street at the intersection of Holborn and Bloomsbury. In the middle of the room half a dozen mannequins stood still, their glossy bodies dressed in Denzil Patrick's AW26 collection, at the back a piano along with its pianist, completing the atmosphere. 

Within the world of the “decorative arts,” fashion has always found itself at an interesting position, being far away from a stagnant piece of art or an immovable object, since its purpose is to be attached to the body at all times but only alive when worn, when in motion, when interacting with the world alongside its wearer, however, there is something extraordinary about being able to get up close to clothing when presented as an exhibition display. Moreover, a lot has been said about the importance and success of fashion as curatorial material. When presented in a room above a plinth, fashion becomes something else: an object of admiration, a canvas to be taken in slowly, allowing room to admire up close all the details, the patterns, the materiality and the artistic process behind garment construction. Paired with magnificent simplicity that allowed for the clothes to truly speak for themselves, that is my recollection of Denzil Patrick’s latest presentation; the collection spoke by itself, by act of admiration and by building an intimate connection with the pieces is easy to fall in love with them and in an act of fantasy it is easy to imagine oneself wearing the clothes.

photography by Francesco Zinno

Impeccably tailored, sleek and a curated attention to detail makes Dezin Patrick’s design a true hit for ready-to-wear menswear.

The latest collection featured pieces inspired by the grandfathers of Daniel Gayle, the designer behind the brand, as well as the core elements that conform the brand’s ethos, now in its fifth year of life. Featuring classic tailoring with a twist, suits in deep glossy reds, a burgundy suit finished with extravagant bling, a coat lined with black feathers and a plethora of details in a sartorial twist to complete knits, shots and shirts alike. The colour palette is clean and restrained mostly featuring reds, black, white, gray and touches of navy blue, allowing for the enhanced yet precise fit of the clothes to shine best. Denzil Patrick spins the tale of a timely gentleman anew, giving it a contemporary gaze that declares “London is mine.”   

The Worldbuilder Extraordinaire!

by

YAKU

The basement of the 180 studios had yet again been transported inside the world of designer Yaku Stapleton. To be in one of Yaku’s shows is to be transported completely into a realm of immersive storytelling, each year treating his collections as “chapters” from a story he crafts tangibly with his extraordinary approach to clothes and urban style, a story set inside a world he too has carefully crafted and built from zero, adding lore and nuance to it with each passing collection. The set, the scores composed by Jordan Fox and the brilliant cast of models and trained performers that enact and bring to life with precise movement each of Yaku’s new chapters. For AW26 and the designer’s 7th chapter he focused on the element of battle, inspired by film and video game battle sequences, we reconvene with the “Télavani” the fictional family that has embarked on the journey with Yaku from his first collection. Having explored themes of family, caretaking, and wondering, this time around the collection focused on the idea of battle and ambition, developing a narrative arc told in four acts “discipline”; embodying the act of building a routine, training and preparing yourself to face the world, “temptation”; speaking on the idea of maintaining focus and realising why you’re doing what you’re doing so that ambition moves you forward rather than deviate your path, "confrontation"; alluding to the moment of battle, the trials that we must face to get us towards where we want to be, and finally, “consequence”; culminating on the end of the journey and facing and dealing with the aftermath of our decisions, reminding us that the choices we make matter and the affect our path and, at times, even the path of those around us. For each of the acts, distinct styling and colour palettes made their way through the presentation space, showcasing Yaku's brilliant creations, his now traditional “torso” hoodies in electric blue, his denim and shorts dyed in tones of khaki and grey, cloaks mixed with sportswear,bulky sneakers, custom accessories and clothes pierced by arrows as in they just been in battle.

photography by Hannah Khatib @khatib.hannah

Yaku’s creations belong in a fantasy world but somehow, they also function in real life, making Stapleton’s design a real triumph and an accessible bridge between pure creative power and
marketable clothing for the everyday, his distinctive urban style car.

The collection features a collaboration with Nike, having participated in Nike’s “Re-Creation” programme for some time now, focusing on circular and sustainable design, AW26 marks a milestone as some of the hoodies, shorts and ensembles created will arrive in Nike stores late spring 2026. 

With each passing act the performance evolved, though contemporary dance and a perfectly choreographed performance the models embodies all the stages of combat, from training, to the battle to the aftermath adding yet another level of storytelling and emotion to the show, bringing the clothes to a full cycle of life beyond the runway. There is something truly magical about the way that Yaku approaches his craft and the palpable love for what he has created and the process of storytelling, infusing each collection with as much heart as technical mastery making him a true lore master, much to our own delight.

Grief in Three Acts

by

Rafael Azevedo

On a rainy evening in the City of London, I take my place on the wooden pews of St James Garlickhythe under its 40-foot ceiling carried by rows of Ionic columns, facing the east-end altar. There is something special about sitting inside a church. Centuries of whispered prayers and grief and vows absorbed into stone have turned these walls into a kind of emotional archive. And when you place a fashion show inside one, you are borrowing all of that accumulated reverence.

When the music begins — dark, minor-key, smoky — a girl in a black dress emerges; her movements are angular and unnatural, as if a clumsy, invisible puppeteer is pulling the strings, the kind of possessed choreography cinema has taught us to recognise. Then we see another girl in white, a corseted bridal dress with exposed boning and sheer side panels, a sculpted appliqué rising over the bust, tulle wrapped around her body like gauze, a soft train trailing behind. Her movements are elegant and stately, the complete opposite of the black-dressed figure's jittery, hijacked body.

This is how Rafael Azevedo pulls us into his new collection, O Que Fica? (What Remains?),  a reflection on what is left of you after love is lost. The two models are the two faces of the aftermath: the part of loss that still feels light, almost graceful, and the part that seizes the body when you're finally alone with yourself. As more models emerge, these ideas reveal themselves across the whole collection, always caught between exposing the body and concealing it: tulle and chiffon, crochet lace and corsetry, lace-up backs, crochet-cutout gowns, black lingerie details, lace-appliquéd trousers, and cropped ivory pieces.

But it's the dance that makes it visceral: halfway through the performance, all of the models begin moving in unison, as if seized by something otherworldly, a kind of collective fever. It reminded me of the final scene of the thriller Perfume: The Story of a Murderer — it possessed the same unsettling, ecstatic loss of control, when the crowd, intoxicated by a fragrance distilled from murdered girls, flips into a mass orgy.

Rafael Azevedo doesn't leave us in that madness. Once the models freeze at the altar, a ballet duet in black enters — Taesha and Wilferd, both of the Royal Ballet School — moving toward each other, then away again, as if caught inside a looped scene: approach, hold, recoil, repeat. It is the kind of dancing that leaves you weightless and a little heartbroken at the same time.

The whole show is a three-act performance — ambivalence, fever, melancholy — with the catwalk broken apart and woven between. The same three-act structure through which we have always received stories. Like a film director, Rafael Azevedo takes us by the hand and walks us through grief and fever and stillness until we understand the garments not with our eyes but with our nerves.

Gliding on Eggshells!

by

Pauline Dujancourt

You could hear the crack of the broken eggshells as the birds glided through them, gracefully and fearless of stumping on the shells, a symbol of birth but also of overcoming, growing and breaking free. The birds being all of the models wearing the intricate and sublime Pauline Dujancourt’s designs. Tulle, silk and chiffon defiantly woven, pleated and knitted to create extraordinary armour and a wearable poem and alpaca made to look like like tulle in an act of defiance, conforming against what women should be and how they have been conceived throughout history. Dunjancourt’s collection was inspired by witches and the historical becoming of these women, feared, mocked, ridiculed because of their knowledge and abilities within craft. Pauline re-frames this into her designs, echoing within each piece a testimony of the women in her team, their unique talents and expertise in helping shape and construct the garments presented. 

Pauline’s clothes always feel intentional, intellectual and poetic; there seems to be a unique sensibility and understanding of her fabrics and the techniques she and her team employ in manipulating them, achieving extraordinary silhouettes and construction by mixing knitting techniques with unconventional fabrics, elevating her craft into a different realm, sublimity ready to be worn, attention to detail made through tiny flowers hugging the body and a love of women transformed into dusty purples and blues, that can be used to face life and its everyday.

The score of the show, selected by Timothée Suillaud, reveled deliciously in its “French-ness,” also plating tribute to the designer background, setting the ultimate tone and atmosphere for the clothes to shine and permeate on the audience's minds.

Birds are also a recurring theme for Dujancourt, literally presenting the eggshell as the place from which birds are born from, but also as a metaphor for breaking free from the context and history of what womanhood is and should be, the models glided, because at her shows the models seem to do this rather than walk, through the eggshell pieces, cracking them further below their feet, with a daring pace that subverted the term “walking on eggshells” into an action of actively daring to walk (in Lili Curia footwear, by the way), stomp and crack whatever is holding us down, whatever minefield life puts under our feet, as if the designer encouraged all of us to dare and break free and like one of her birds, crack our shells and break free.

The Townhouse that
Housed Beauty!

by

Liberowe

Like a real life dollhouse, the door of the Bernheim Gallery in Mayfair opened before us, leading us through a staircase into a room filled with an array of black coats and skirt ensembles, on the wall a curatorial statement. This exhibition constitutes the latest proposal by the brand. Founded in 2021, Liberowe, rooted on the idea of letting clothes just be, presenting them before the viewer in a pure state of existence: no show, no models, just textile craft, details, fabrics and a pledge for admiration. There was a certain curatorial intelligence with the way the collection was executed, elevating their design ethos and the commitment to luxury fabrics into the world exhibition, longing for slow contemplation, close inspection, details and appreciation for the minutia of fashion.

Rooted in creative director and founder Talia Loubaton’s first memories of encountering fashion for the first time as a child, as well as her appreciation for Parisian style and Indian menswear, the collection feels tactile and sensible, the displays conveyed the full elegance of the clothes, the craftsmanship and perhaps most importantly, there was an element of desire, as if the clothes themselves were commanding you to desire them. 

Spaced across three floors of the Mayfair townhouse, the collection provided the full scope of what a dream wardrobe could look like, ranging from everyday pieces to more elevated evening wear and even a bridal section, the selection on display included imperial coats, Liberowe’s signature tweed jacket and peplum jackets in deep rich colours from black to burgundy red, skirt ensembles and evening dresses in glittering silver and gold. Bouclé, Velvet and tweed were explored in full, with every stitch highlighted in full display and under bright lighting.

The collection was created to give needlepoint and structure a new sense of appreciation, as if capturing perfectly the moment in which a garment is finished and its patient journey of waiting to be worn begins, only this time, for everyone to witness. 

Utilitarian Narratives!

by

Charlie Constantinou

Green, followed by purple, followed by red, followed by blue. The cluster of models wearing a singular colour, although each of them dawning their own design, put in the final pin at the finale of Charlie Constantinou’s show, making sense of the entire show’s narrative. This time around, Constantinou’s team put together a tale of uniforms, mass-standardisation, utilitarianism and the quest of the individual to adopt, assimilate and transform clothing made for function into pieces tailored to the wearer’s life, personality and unique walk of life.

Inspired by diverse interpretations of what uniforms are, the aesthetic and history of utilitarian wear through the 18th and 19th centuries, Charlie Constantinou re-frames and proposes a premise for the modern wearers, prompting us to think about clothes that are usually made to fulfil a specific purpose, achieve a function and also provide a unified sense of identity to the wearer. This collection’s hypothesis remarks a contradiction of uniforms, utilising techniques, appliques and different ways of constructing utilitarian wear to tailor modern garments and challenge conformity, slowly displacing it towards individuality. Constantinou’s colour palette started from muted greens, a traditional colour in military garments and other uniforms, and with each design the colours varied from red, purple and blue with each model, each garment and each colour moving further away from traditional utility and towards the play of creativity and individuality, all while maintaining classic uniform and functional garment construction and appearance.

The collection subverted authority and systems of rank, reclaiming and transforming them into pieces of modern mens and womenswear, the same array of unified clothes made for the individual, ready to adapt to one's unique path of life, completed with bespoke water bottle designs by Chilly’s.

Sustainability and circularity has also remained ingrained in the core ethos of Constantinou’s brand, building each garment and the bespoke Chilly’s water bottles with dead stock materials, dyeing and hand brushing them with their signature house techniques. The collection focuses on utilising organic dead stock materials like cottons, wools and raw silks, furthering its departure from uniforms, making each piece unique and emphasising even further the contradiction presented as the narrative of the collection, one of singular and individual uniforms. 

Velvet Curtains

by

Borealis by Blue Nude

A lush red velvet curtain trimmed the bar space at the Bethnal Green venue, glasses of rosé clanked while we waited to be seated. Once inside the auditorium in pitch black obscurity we witnessed Borealis, the newest creative collaboration from designer Blue Nude and its creative lead Katarina Protsack, in collaboration with graphic artist Coline L’Achiver, film director Raquel Couceiro, and music composer BirdWorld, in a film format the collection unfolded as a literal story on the silver screen. Much utilised as a medium to present fashion collections during the COVID-19 pandemic, there will always be something about cinema and film that is intrinsically related to fashion and the way we experience the idea of style and clothed bodies, perhaps because cinema is one of the most effective and powerful artforms for conveying stories to the fullest as it combines script, movement, sound, colour, composition, photography, set design and, of course, fashion. 

As with film, fashion benefits from all the creative possibilities of enhanced storytelling: artistic photography and cinematography, colour editing, special effects, precise coordinated scores to encompass the narrative presented, etc. This, combined with the ever intoxicating experience of watching a film on a big screen while seated in complete darkness with our senses hyper-focused on what's happening in front of us may be one of the most effective ways of presenting a fashion collection, one that tingles the senses at least. With Borealis, we experienced a journey realised through contemporary dance and performance, starting from darkness to enlightenment, expressed solely by the body, the sound and the clothes. Inspired by the landscapes of Svalbard and how light functions close to the North Pole, this marks the first unisex collection for the sustainable lead brand, exploring themes of self-acknowledgement, movement, position and posture, providing clothes with a bodily storyline, elongated movements, slow motion, contrasted silhouettes and exposed landscaped shape the story told in 3 parts: Moon (Solitude), Storm (Reality), and Sun (Resolution), exploring the self and our personal journeys of discovery. The evening concluded with a live performance, lounging at the bar, bodies moving to the rhythm, bodies disinhabited by the effects of the rosé, all behind red velvet curtains.  

An Important Feast!

by

Kazna Asker

As the day was coming to an end in terms of light and the sun set on this season of London Fashion Week, a glowing golden tree appeared. In the middle of the “BFC NewGen” fashion space, Kazna Asker, rather than unveil her new collection, in an act of love, culture and pride, Asker invited attendees, to break fast with her during the holy month of Ramadan by including an Iftar into her presentation, opening up her space for all to take part, observe, enjoy and commune all while witnessing her brilliant and culturally inspired AW26 collection.

Recognised for infusing sportswear with traditional clothing, Asker masterfully blends heritage with modernism, mixing sport fabrics with intricate brocades and lush patterned silks and cottons, her clothes are an ode to a cultural journey and the marriage between East and West, of two cultures and her personal journey of growth and mediating her heritage and her stance as a modern woman living in London. Her clothes reflect an understanding of the world through her eyes, her desires and deep appreciation for her story and of those in her community. A love letter if there ever was one and a pride that resonates loudly through her craft as a designer. The models were decked lavishly from head to toe in a dreamlike circle of culture, fashion and golden joy.

The evening was completed by poetry, music, and finally the moment in which models, the designer, and attendees alike all broke fast with delicious food, turning the presentation into a moment of significance, a feast for sharing beauty and pure community.    

 © perediza 2026