09/21/2026
London Fashion Week RECAP
On Sunday evening, Alexander McQueen walked a London Fashion Week runway for the first time in a quarter-century. Creative director Seán McGirr staged the spring/summer 2027 collection in the vaulted undercroft of Lincoln’s Inn Chapel, a stone-and-gravestone space that felt closer to a crypt than a catwalk. Models wore hair gelled into devilish horns, ankle-strap heels that recalled electronic tags, steel harnesses, and a chain-mail dress of tiny silver skulls. The references ran from Piero della Francesca’s The Baptism of Christ at the National Gallery to East End rave culture and Savile Row, with Huntsman tailoring and jewelry by longtime house collaborator Shaun Leane. McGirr called it a celebration of London’s “uncompromising attitude and subversive spirit.” Front row included Emilia Clarke, Florence Welch, Emma Corrin, Alexa Chung, and Salma Hayek.
The homecoming was the week’s most anticipated ticket. McQueen had shown in Paris since 2001; bringing the house back to the city where Lee Alexander McQueen founded it was both a branding statement and a test of whether McGirr — now in his third year — could fuse archive darkness with a lighter, more ethereal register. Organza shoulders rose like angel wings. Critics described a collection that was “happy and dark” at once: sacred and subcultural, tailored and undone. 
Hours earlier, another British resurrection landed. Christopher Kane, whose own label shuttered in 2023, made his debut as creative director of Mulberry — the first Mulberry runway since 2017 and a relaunch of the brand’s ready-to-wear after years of focusing on bags. Held in the Brutalist Queen Elizabeth II Centre, the “Town, City, Country” collection turned the flap of the iconic Bayswater bag into a graphic motif: cut into leather minis, collars, hemlines, and sweaters. New bag shapes included the Axe and the Chop. Colors pulled from “bleak, post-industrial Scotland.” The room gave a standing ovation. CEO Andrea Baldo framed it as Mulberry evolving from a leather-goods house into a British lifestyle brand; first-quarter sales were already up 23 percent. 
Those two shows bookended a week that also saw Marks & Spencer stage its first-ever Fashion Week catwalk to mark 100 years of selling clothes — a consumer-facing move as London tries to stay relevant beyond the usual heritage names. Victoria Starmer even walked for Edeline Lee. Simone Rocha, Erdem, Roksanda, and Burberry (tonight) filled out a schedule that felt more British-first than it has in years. 
The industry arrived in London still talking about New York. NYFW wrapped last week with Coach’s 85th-birthday party on the runway, Carolina Herrera’s 45th-anniversary tulips, Diane von Furstenberg’s return under Henry Zankov, and Thom Browne closing the week in a grassy garden at The Shed. Designers leaned into “touch grass” aesthetics: moss, bare feet, earth tones, and a retreat from quiet luxury toward color, fringe, velvet duster coats, coin belts, and sweaters tied at the waist. Joyful dressing was the unofficial mood. 
The week’s darkest business story was not on a runway. Steven Kolb, longtime president and CEO of the Council of Fashion Designers of America, resigned after a viral video showed him physically restraining PETA activists who stormed the COS show over wool. He pinned at least one protester and covered her mouth. The clip ignited a debate about institutional power, protest, and who gets to police fashion week. Opinion pieces this morning are still unpacking what the confrontation says about the CFDA itself. 
Elsewhere in the news cycle: Converse’s CEO pledged an internal review after an ad was accused of evoking K*K imagery; Donatella Versace is preparing a new fashion-and-beauty line with Revolve; former Versace designer Dario Vitale landed at Emporio Armani; and model Presley Ge**er, Cindy Crawford’s son, died at 27 after speaking publicly about depression and addiction. Milan Fashion Week begins tomorrow, with Demna’s third Gucci collection already under the microscope. 
What it adds up to: Fashion month is mid-stride, but London just reminded the calendar that homecoming still works as strategy. McQueen and Mulberry both bet that British codes — chapel and club, bag flap and rave horn, Savile Row and high street — can be rewritten without being abandoned. Whether that energy survives the flight to Milan and Paris is the next week’s story. For one night in a 17th-century undercroft, the house that Lee built looked like it belonged exactly where it started.
