Our favourite collections from London Fashion Week SS26

This London Fashion Week embraced both introspective and overt femininity, with designers mining personal mythologies and collective rituals for inspiration. Marie Lueder’s Convivium transformed 180 Strand into a Medieval feast, while Sinead Gorey’s evolved hedonism played out on moss-covered terrain with mud-splashed luxury pieces. Lucila Safdie offered one of the season’s most poetic moments with her tristesse impériale, where three models drifted through a single white room in babydoll dresses, meditating on girlhood’s contradictions. Overall, the season found poignancy in the quiet moments of the feminine ritual and power in the unapologetically daring ones.

LUEDER

Marie Lueder’s SS26 show, Convivium (the Latin word for ‘feast’), sat somewhere between ritual and carnival. 180 Strand was transformed into a banquet hall — models charged down an oversized table to a background of Manuka Honey’s foreboding mixes, half-finished red wine glasses strewn about like the aftermath of an ancient Bacchant festival. But there was also a contemporary dystopian tone to the show — one that gave an ironic edge to its exuberance, and communicated designer Marie Lueder’s sentiments of “Eat the rich!” The same temporal juxtaposition could be seen in the collection itself, inspired by Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet, which blends the Shakespearean origins of the story with a modern retelling. As such, the collection gave medieval-inflected sportswear a sophisticated but edgy treatment, spanning hooded dresses reminiscent of a twenty-first-century Vestal Virgin or Pre-Raphaelite muse, through to hoodies decorated with capelets. Meanwhile, Lueder describes the colour palette as a “muted doomsday Venice Beach” — sunburnt asphalt, wine-stain red and dusky neutrals. The show left guests with a simmering sentiment of the macabre, offset by an immense feeling of vitality created by this feast for the senses. 

Sinead Gorey

Sinead Gorey’s SS26 presentation embodied evolved hedonism, centred around the sophisticated, bratty party girl. Set in the luxury ME Hotel, the models danced on a moat of moss soaked in pink light, giving the appearance of raver girls in the Glastonbury VIP section, finely dressed in outfits bought on daddy’s credit card. The collection felt both precious and discardable, at least for the wealthy it-girl: pristine windbreakers and bikinis were deliberately soiled with mud-splashed prints, while fine silk scarves and Mongolian fur gilets were coquettishly twirled and shaken. The designer’s collaboration with Converse pushed this tension further, giving the classic Chuck Taylor a dirt-caked treatment. Military regalia appeared alongside chainmail corsetry, as if the Gorey woman was purposely overdressing for whatever field or warehouse she found herself in. Slogan tees bearing “Hardcore Happiness”, “No Knickers” and simply “SEX” punctuated the collection with a distinctly British feel, making the collection feel like a third coming of the Summer of Love, combined with Kate Moss’s Glastonbury heyday and an unmistakably 2026-coded female confidence. 

Lucila Safdie

The phrase tristesse impériale formed the cornerstone of Lucila Safdie’s SS26 presentation. Set within the haunting stillness of a single, inescapable room, babydoll dresses, satin headbands and oversized pearls converged in a delicate reimagining of the Romanov sisters — equal parts innocence and impending melancholy. Amid bubblegum whispers and coarsely brushed hair, a stark white bedroom was streaked with bold pink and black stripes motifs — a nod to girlhood and all its imagined contradictions. It was a portrait of dress-up: pointelle cardigans, cotton jersey bodysuits and chiffon skirts strewn across a splintered bedroom floor, traded between sisters in a quiet ritual of inheritance, of what is passed down and what is left behind. In this collection, jersey mini-shorts met silk demi-couture dresses, while butter-yellow garments clashed unapologetically with neon pink ensembles. Known for dressing Addison Rae and Rachel Sennott, the Argentinian label marked a clear evolution in its London Fashion Week debut, moving beyond the glittering Lurex mini-shorts into something more introspective. Here, hyper-femininity took center stage, brought to life through the choreography of movement director Daria Blum, as three girls drifted through a single room in a sustained meditation on nostalgia, performance and the cyclical nature of obsession.

Dreaming Eli

“This one is about love,” read the collection notes handed out at Dreaming Eli’s runway show on Saturday. Not just any love, but the kind that demands vulnerability, the courage to confront deep wounds and the radical act of embracing one’s body and soul — self-love. As the silhouettes made their way down the runway, they invited each guest to reflect on their own interpretation of ‘amore’. Softness permeated the collection through a delicate palette of creams, pinks and browns, with ribbon bows and pearls gently adorning hemlines in a way that felt both harmonious and deeply feminine. Tweed made a striking entrance, reimagined through sculptural corsets, ultra-mini skirts and even fused with vinyl to create lace-up trousers. Staged within a gothic church in central London, the show unfolded to the ethereal sounds of a live harp, as models walked in chunky, ballerina-style platform shoes. Yet the designer Elisa Trombatore did not shy away from drama. She explored the darker edges of femininity with daring cut-outs, sheer nude mesh, lace trims and suspenders draped from asymmetrically ruched skirts. In this collection, femininity was met with fearlessness in a quietly defiant expression of power. As Trombatore put it, “It’s the power of a woman. Her name is Amore.”

Denzil Patrick

For Denzil Patrick’s SS26 collection, husbands and founders Daniel Gayle and James Bosley drew inspiration from trips to the seaside and their families — in particular, the women within them. If they had to sum up the collection in one word, it would be “Londonism”. Friends and family modelled the collection’s lookbook, which paid tribute to the capital’s traditionally male cultural archetypes, such as the ‘teddy boy’, ‘boxer’, ‘ska kid’ and ‘pearly king’. The season marked the debut of womenswear for the brand, inspired by the women closest to them. Highlights included sheer polos, denim in new finishes, tailored boxing shorts and dinner suits designed for daytime wear. Details like Etsy-sourced buttons grounded the collection in a mix of heritage and modernity in a way that defines Denzil Patrick, adding a shot of femininity into the characteristically male brand.

Mark Fast

For Spring, Mark Fast drew inspiration from the ritual of seaside walks and the forgotten trinkets left behind by the tide. “You find glass that was once sharp and broken, but after being tumbled by the waves, it transforms into something soft, glowing, and entirely new,” Fast says. It resonates with a wider message of transforming resilience into radiance — this season, the Mark Fast woman is a siren, wearing her strength as allure and her vulnerability as elegance. This combined sense of nostalgia and female transformation came to life in rope-like knits, reminiscent of sun-bleached, weathered ropes washed ashore, shaped into dresses, bralettes, and mini skirts that clung to the body like modern-day armour. Elsewhere, silhouettes softened and flowed. Sheer black chiffon blouses floated over wide-leg trousers and asymmetric camisoles trailed elegantly down the back. Salt-bleached denim appeared in cropped jackets and matching skirts, delicately edged with lace in a quiet tribute to textiles shaped by time and softened by the sea. “When someone wears these pieces, I want them to feel as though they’ve stepped into their own strength,” says Fast. “It’s like being wrapped in something powerful, but never heavy. It’s about confidence, resilience and a kind of effortless seduction; you feel untouchable, but also completely free.”