London Fashion Week unfolded as a study in continuity, cultural exchange and creative confidence.
This season, the city’s designers leaned into storytelling, heritage and lived experience, using the runway not simply as spectacle, but as a site of meaning.
Across storied institutions and unexpected spaces, collections were anchored in identity, memory and craft, with London’s distinctive plurality on full display.
From Erdem Moralioğlu marking two decades of practice with a reflective anniversary show at Tate Britain, to Simone Rocha’s ongoing dialogue with Celtic symbolism, the week traced fashion’s ability to hold multiple histories at once. Coquette codes, bonnets and fur trim recurred across the week, while dark romanticism and layered dressing set the season’s emotional tone.
Here, we round up the defining talking points and most resonant moments so far, from surprise royal cameos and emerging street style cues to the collections and pieces editors are already mentally bookmarking.
Burberry
In his fourth year at Burberry, a tenure often seen as the sweet spot for sharpening a house vision, Daniel Lee delivered a confident Winter 2026 collection that closed London Fashion Week on a high.
Staged at Old Billingsgate, the set nodded to the city after dark, with scaffolding wrapped in Burberry check, resin puddles mimicking wet pavements and deep blue lighting setting the mood.
Across 56 looks, Lee captured the pulse of going out in London, doubling down on house codes while refining them for now. Ruffled trench collars, raw edged shearling and liquid silks met jewel toned eveningwear, rendering heritage freshly alive.
Simone Rocha
Days before her AW26 show, Simone Rocha described her collections as acts of storytelling, shaped by emotion, memory and longing. That instinct unfurled at Alexandra Palace, where the designer transformed London Fashion Week into a passageway to Tír na nÓg, the mythical otherworld of Irish folklore, suspended somewhere between dream and devotion.
Drawing on Celtic symbolism, Perry Ogden’s Pony Kids photography and the poetic legacy of Elizabeth and Lily Yeats, Rocha stitched fantasy to reality with a light, reverent hand, allowing the collection to drift between the imagined and the lived in.
Deconstructed tulle dresses, rosettes and ribbon embroidery brushed up against tweed tailoring, Adidas track jackets and shearling, collapsing romance and utility into the same breath. Earth toned palettes, punctured by flashes of blood red, anchored the collection to the body, underscoring Rocha’s rare gift for making myth feel not just wearable, but lived in.
Tolu Coker
King Charles III opened his London Fashion Week schedule with a front row seat at Tolu Coker’s AW26 show, lending the room a sense of ceremony before the spectacle unfolded. Once the lights lifted, attention shifted to a set that softened the brutalist language of inner city London, the runway framed by a mural drawn from family photographs in Coker’s late father’s archive.
Titled Survivor’s Remorse, the show began with a live performance by Little Simz, before giving way to corseted tailoring and tartans set against Yoruba colour language in tomato reds, lime yellows and graphic checks, each look finished with Manolo Blahniks.
Sustainability functioned as structure rather than slogan, with British wool, upcycled leather and reclaimed satin grounding the collection’s emotional charge.
Erdem
Erdem Moralioğlu marked two decades at London Fashion Week with an anniversary show at Tate Britain, a setting that underscored his rare longevity as an independent luxury designer. With two London stores and a profitable business, Erdem remains one of the city’s most quietly resilient success stories.
The collection unfolded as a conversation with the women who have shaped his work, a dialogue he described as “an imaginary conversation” between memory and imagination. Fringed tinsel gowns, floral brocades, sheer lace and feathered skirts reworked familiar signatures with new restraint.
Less an exercise in nostalgia than a meditation on continuity, the show felt like a greatest hits refracted through the present moment.
Richard Quinn
Richard Quinn delivered a show true to his reputation at London Fashion Week, spectacular, assertive and unapologetically glamorous. Presented at Sinfonia Smith Square, his AW26 collection centred on sculpted hourglass silhouettes, with corseted lace bodices spilling into dramatic taffeta skirts, diamanté medallions and embroidered bustiers atop satin columns.
Crystallised lace morphed into fantasy gowns, while carnation florals felt newly restrained. A finale of red, imperial purple and turquoise cut through the monochrome palette. Polished and precise, the collection reaffirmed Quinn’s mastery of high drama eveningwear.
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