To Defy Reality, London Fashion Week Escaped It
London Fashion Week has had it rough. Blame Brexit, blame economic difficulties, blame Paris and Milan's expansive gravitational force – the UK's domestic designers have long faced tough odds, but are eager as ever to defy or at least escape them.
Akin to the Fall/Winter 2025 men's shows in France and Italy earlier this year, escapism and the channeling of otherworldly, fantastical beings was a guiding principle for London Fashion Week designers, too. Some collections took more obviously political routes to deliver this messaging than others but a good lot of them rejected staid norms by affecting flamboyance, channeling divine myths, and delivering fetish-y attacks on our corporate overlords.
So, don't be fooled. London Fashion Week's cast of young and old boundary-pushers is not backing down. If anything, they’re firing back up that same fabulous freakiness that's defined the event’s past four decades.
Ashish
As per usual, Ashish's pieces were an unruly explosion of sequins. The difference is that the clothes weren't merely bold or bright but full-on loud-mouthed. The brand’s messaging was made clear by models with lipstick-stained thighs clad in bedazzled slogan tees and phallic pouches, waving "End Is Near" signs overhead as they treaded the post-party catwalk.
Burberry
Easily the most senior participant of London Fashion Week, Burberry's one of the city’s fashion heavyweights. Ever since Daniel Lee, the man who singularly reshaped Bottega Veneta, took over the nearly two-century-old British label, the expectation was that Burberry would reach new levels of stylishness. But it took until Lee’s third anniversary for the designer to truly crack the code. For Fall/Winter 2025, he updated Burberry's DNA here lavish, ethereal boho touches, made physical by excellent outerwear like velvet blazers and fur-trimmed biker jackets. Even Anna Wintour apparently thought so!.
S.S. Daley
For his Fall/Winter 2025 collection, Steven Stokey-Daley upended British convention. With neon twinsets, disproportioned duffle jackets, and lots of leg, S.S. Daley cheekily juxtaposed high-low culture like a tabloid, recreating Scottish painter Francis Cadell's Iona oil paintings on trench coats, and referencing the English's love of gawking on snarky screen-print shirts. The standout was Daley’s signature (and fun!) knitwear, this time depicting anthropomorphic sugar cubes and an homage to recently deceased British Invasion singer Marianne Faithfull.
Dilara Findikoglu
Dilara Findikoglu is always one of the best parts of London Fashion Week. Findikoglu’s sensuous designs perpetually test the boundaries between clothing and art, except that they’re also wildly fun. Indebted to occult garb, Vivienne Westwood’s punk rags, and artisanal crafts of her native Turkey, Findikoglu also took aim at Victorian corsetry and Italian Renaissance paintings.
Chet Lo
A New Yorker by birth, Chet Lo came to London to study at the great art school, Central Saint Martins. He's remained loyal to the English metropolis ever since and, for Fall/Winter 2025, presented an assortment of surreal spiky sweaters and psychedelic patterned sets of matching tops and bottoms.
Sinéad O'Dwyer
Irish designer Sinéad O'Dwyer and her garments, inspired by shibari, the Japanese art of intricate rope bondage, have made quite a splash since debuting in 2018. A champion of diverse casting, O'Dwyer regularly proves that there's not a single size or shape that can’t fit her body-sculpting attire. Her Fall/Winter 2025 collection emphasized signature cut-out techniques and boned denim onesies, ideal outfits for office sirens gone rogue.
Di Petsa
As if descending from the heavens or ascending from underwater, Di Petsa's moist-looking and wind-swept ruching remains a radical reimagining of texture as we know it. Relying on the rich fictional history of Athens, where founder Dimitra Petsa was born, Di Petsa Fall/Winter 2025 meshed mythology with erotica.
Simone Rocha
Simone Rocha fans will never be short of femme-goth ruffles; of pearls, pinks, and ribbons. But, there was something distinctly darker afoot in Rocha’s Fall/Winter 2025 collection, with its padlocked harnesses, fur bralettes, and eery stuffed animal accessories. Call her girly one more time, I dare you.
