HAPPY RETURNS: The British Fashion Council on Thursday unveiled the provisional schedule for the London Fashion Week fall 2026 edition, slated from Feb. 19 to 23.
Joining the usual anchor brands Burberry, Erdem, and Simone Rocha next spring will be many familiar faces that have stopped showing in recent seasons, mostly due to financial pressures from the COVID-19 era.
Temperley London will return for the first time since September 2019 for the brand’s 25th anniversary celebration.
The runway moment will come after designer Alice Temperley embarked on a new chapter for her namesake label after selling a majority stake in Temperley London to Times Square Group LLC in 2023. Last year the brand opened a flagship at 134 Sloane Street in the former Façonnable space.
Also returning is the seasoned designer Julien Macdonald, whose business went into liquidation in the summer of 2023. He hosted a large-scale fashion show earlier that year with a front row brimming with wealthy clients and reality TV stars.
The brand’s insolvency practitioners FTS Recovery at the time said Macdonald’s label had lost “a significant proportion of revenue” following the collapse of Debenhams at the end of 2020, and that no employees or existing contracts could be saved.
With opportunities like Designers at Debenhams making a comeback with Ashish Gupta this year, it’s possible Macdonald has managed to secure a deal of a similar nature to continue the brand’s operation.
Designers at Debenhams was a trailblazing initiative from the early 1990s that saw talents such as Macdonald, Matthew Williamson, John Rocha, and Jasper Conran create dedicated and affordable collections for the store, which is now an online-only retailer after it was acquired out of administration by Boohoo Group, now called Debenhams Group, in 2021.
John Richmond, Joseph, Masha Popova, Phoebe English, and Chet Lo, who hosted a dinner last September during London Fashion Week for his Converse collaboration, will also return to the official calendar.
Newcomers next February will include women’s fashion brands Agro Studio and Liberowe, accessories designer Clara Chu, design label Ewenki, men’s brand Gravalot, craft-led Indian brand Raw Mango, and Selasi, a fashion label founded by photographer-turned-designer Ronan McKenzie in 2020.
Designers under the BFC support programs, including Conner Ives, Chopova Lowena, Aaron Esh, Oscar Oyang, Tolu Coker, and Yaku, will showcase their work via various formats, both physically and digitally.
Those continuing to show during London Fashion Week, as usual, will include Ashish, Denzilpatrick, Di Petsa, Edeline Lee, Labrum London, Harris Reed, Mithridate, Yuhan Wang, Patrick McDowell, Jawara Alleyne, and Paolo Carzana.
