The spring/summer time 2026 version of London Fashion Week is in full swing, with standout collections already unveiled by Paul Costelloe, Bora Aksu, and Sprayground. Their early showcases have set the tone for a season bursting with daring statements and contemporary views.
This season additionally marks a major milestone for British trend, as Laura Weir makes her debut as CEO of the British Fashion Council. Officially opening LFW this morning, Weir declared the start of a brand new period – one outlined by accessibility, cultural relevance, and world impression.
Determined to interrupt down limitations and re-energise the occasion, Weir is already implementing change: enjoyable entry necessities, waiving participation charges, and increasing the highlight past the capital to have fun the complete spectrum of British trend expertise throughout the nation.
TheTrade.trend has been on the bottom, capturing the thrill, the traits, and the should-see moments from the opening days of London Fashion Week SS26.
VIN + OMI on their ‘world-first’ textile innovation and placing sustainable showcase
Eco-designers VIN + OMI made a placing return to London Fashion Week with DYSPHORIANA, debuting a “world-first” collaboration with King Charles III. Unveiled final evening, the present delivered a robust and inventive reflection of in the present day’s world temper – exploring the widespread chaos and anarchy, and their social and environmental impacts.
As a part of their ongoing collaboration with the King, the designers unveiled a sustainable textile innovation – crafted from plant waste sourced at Sandringham. The creation is a light-weight, advantageous textile made out of pink-barked dogwood, a woody shrub native to Siberia and China.
The wider assortment featured an array of different revolutionary supplies reworked into textiles, resembling nettle and wooden clippings. Further pushing the boundaries of sustainable trend, used milk cartons from Sandringham had been recycled into a skinny, paper-like textile. The Norfolk-based designers additionally partnered with RAF Brize Norton, artwork provide big Daler-Rowney, the British Heart Foundation, and artwork’otel Hoxton.
Amid nice anticipation, Dame Prue Leith additionally returned to the Vin + Omi catwalk for the fourth time, as soon as once more joined by Loose Women common and journalist Jane Moore, in addition to eco advocate Jo Wood.
Sprayground makes its London debut with daring LFW showcase
Cult American journey baggage model Sprayground made its debut look at London Fashion Week. The runway present befell within the iconic Freemasons’ Hall in London, the place the brand new season’s assortment gave the impression to be accessorised with boldly silhouetted outfits of their very own.
The austere Art Deco ambiance sharply juxtaposed the model’s ‘streetwear attitude’, as seen by the brand new assortment and its matching outfits. The 47 appears to be like had been revolutionary and effectively-crafted, representing the work of a number of totally different designers, every providing their very own tackle the model’s more and more worldwide presence. Among these in attendance on the present had been Jack Whitehall and his fiancée, who joined musician Tom King and Lady Victoria.
Sprayground’s iconography was synthesized into wearable clothes as fashions paraded down the catwalk to heavy techno music. ‘Shark Mouth’ art work turned an revolutionary jacket, whereas houndstooth leather-based fashioned a mermaid-skirted robe.
Sprayground has been a part of the British Fashion Council’s City-Wide Celebration marketing campaign and has now launched in Harrods, Harvey Nichols, Fenwick, and Childsplay.
Paul Costelloe brings the Sixties Beverly Hills Barbie to the runway
Irish designer Paul Costelloe transported spectators throughout the Atlantic for his spring/summer time 2026 London Fashion Week present. It was the epitome of his work over the previous 4 many years: An ode to the previous heritage, daring and vibrant streets of Rodeo Drive in Sixties Beverly Hills, with the gathering fittingly titled ‘Boulevard of Dreams’.
Usually drawing on a subdued palette of pastels or earth tones, this assortment was a welcomed distinction to his earlier ones, with tangerine and turquoise being focal colors of the gathering.
Against a backdrop painted with sweet-colored palm timber, boulevards and convertibles, fashions walked in sky-blue trapeze minis, butter-yellow twinsets and sherbet-orange minimize-out robes perched on towering pastel platforms.
Even the hair, piled into excessive bouffants, nodded to an idealised California of the Sixties moderately than Carnaby Street – crafted by TONI&GUY Global Creative Director, Cos Sakkas.
Oxfam and Vinted current a celebration of second-hand trend
Pre-loved clothes took high billing at London Fashion Week this yr, as Oxfam collaborated with Vinted for the second yr to showcase the very best of what second-hand trend has to supply in a present entitled “Style for Change”.
Alongside a bunch of fashionable celebrities, the subterranean catwalk befell on the opening evening of Fashion Week on the Ambika P3 gallery in Marylebone. The present shone a highlight on sustainable fashion with the facility to vary the world. Indeed, each single garment on the runway was second-hand, pulled and styled by thrifting pioneer, Bay Garnett.
What proceeded was iconic representations of trend by the many years and fashion heroes – from Nineteen Fifties swing to a Nineteen Nineties grunge look. Evidently from Garnett’s endeavor, these garments had been greater than a ‘pile of stuff’ however the work of numerous weeks of thought and effort. Fortunately for us, nonetheless, the complete catwalk is offered for buy on Oxfam’s account on the Vinted web site.
Bora Aksu embraces ‘fragile fashion’ with damaged doll-impressed assortment
The setting of Bora Aksu’s SS26 present – a pathway framed by rose bushes moderately than a LED-lit catwalk – was the primary indication that this might be removed from a typical runway presentation. What adopted was a procession of cracked-doll-like fashions in bonnets, harlequin tights and lace caps, pulling collectively each nursery innocence and grownup melancholy.
Aksu’s place to begin was his personal archive of damaged porcelain dolls. “Broken dolls remind me that beauty does not lie in perfection but in the traces of love, time, and survival,” he stated earlier than the present. “Through this collection, I wanted to create a world where flaws and cracks are celebrated not as weakness, but as strength and beauty.”
That concept turned the thread for this assortment, which reworked fragility into energy. Some appears to be like – like a monochrome checked gown layered over black lace tights and harlequin diamonds – evoked Aksu’s signature Victoriana affect. Others had been virtually regal: a marigold-yellow robe with balloon sleeves and cascading ruffles glowed within the daylight; a pink scalloped gown shimmered with tiny reflective discs on the hem; a blood-pink gown trailed with free threads and appliquéd hearts.
The palette of the gathering was fittingly fragile as effectively. Colours unfolded like pale keepsakes: powder pinks, comfortable corals, peaches and powder blues anchored by ghostly whites, shadowy blacks and touches of midnight navy. Meanwhile, the cracked edges and uncooked seams recalled Aksu’s theme of damaged porcelain, but additionally mirrored the present cultural way of thinking: audiences are prepared to maneuver past polished, Instagram-perfect trend into one thing extra emotional, even a bit uncanny.