London Fashion Week SS27: McQueen’s homecoming, Kane’s Mulberry debut and the new guard takes centre stage

The biggest names may have brought the crowds to London Fashion Week's spring/summer 2027 edition, which ended on Monday, but the season also belonged to the designers rewriting what British fashion can look like now.

As McQueen returned to London and Christopher Kane reset Mulberry’s ready-to-wear proposition, a new guard highlighted craft, technical experimentation and an undone kind of glamour, which has long been part of British fashion.

McQueen’s London homecoming

Seán McGirr, creative director of the house since 2023, brought Alexander McQueen back to the London Fashion Week official schedule for the first time since 2001. McQueen has presented frequently during Paris Fashion Week in recent decades and, although the brand has staged runway shows in its home city, they were off the official calendar.

McQueen’s SS27 show took place in the Undercroft of Lincoln's Inn Chapel, a rib-vaulted 17th-century space with the gravestones of lawyers and preachers underfoot. The 46-look collection covered womenswear, menswear and eveningwear, and took as its starting point Piero della Francesca's 15th-century The Baptism of Christ, which McGirr has said he studied obsessively at the National Gallery as a Central Saint Martins student, set against the memory of London nightlife.

"This collection is a celebration of London's ceaselessly stimulating and transcendent power," McGirr wrote in the show notes.

Tailoring carried the collection, with sleeves folded into sculptural wings and elongated suiting cut to narrow proportions, alongside smoked tulle, neon shades, tie-dye and gowns hung with silver leaves.

Shaun Leane, who first worked with Lee McQueen in 1995, made a harness in recycled silver for Karen Elson and reissued two headpieces from autumn 1998, while Savile Row tailor Huntsman produced three men's suits with exaggerated shoulders and high, narrow waists, reviving a partnership last seen in 2012.

McQueen's return to London, and a smaller Bond Street store to come, form part of a restructuring under CEO Gianfranco D'Attis, hired from Prada this summer as Kering repositions the brand under Luca de Meo.

Christopher Kane's Mulberry reset

Christopher Kane made his official debut as Mulberry's creative director of women's ready-to-wear on Sunday, the brand's first runway show in six years. It was also Mulberry’s first ready-to-wear collection since Johnny Coca's autumn/winter 2020 range, after the brand ended its clothing and footwear licence with Onward Luxury Group.

Titled Mulberry by Christopher Kane, the collection featured laser-cut leather and cutouts drawn directly from the hardware and flaps of the Bayswater and Piccadilly bags, in a palette of taupe, cream, caramel and chocolate. Minidresses with layers of leather flaps, boxy coats, oversized sweatshirts, a see-through plain raincoat and nylon jackets completed the collection.

Kane closed his own label in 2023 after 17 years and had been largely absent from fashion apart from a 2024 Self-Portrait collaboration; his return was treated by the British industry as symbolic of London's creative health. CEO Andrea Baldo, who arrived at Mulberry from Ganni in 2024, has framed the hire as part of evolving Mulberry from a leather goods brand into a British lifestyle brand.

Marks & Spencer

Marks & Spencer staged its first London Fashion Week show at the Design Museum, marking 100 years since the retailer began selling clothing in 1926. The 59-look collection drew on the M&S Archive, held at the University of Leeds, which contains more than 72,000 items documenting the company's place in British social history and which this year mounted a centenary exhibition, The Archive Edit: M&S Fashion since 1926, of 100 previously undisplayed pieces. The runway included modern tailoring, wide-leg denim, heritage outerwear and reworked knitwear, with a tan Borg jacket based on a vintage St Michael design, a black tuxedo and 1980s velvet tailoring among the standouts.

The new guard

The official SS27 programme ran to 47 catwalk shows, 23 presentations, 10 digital activations and 53 evening events, and a substantial share of it came through the British Fashion Council's talent pipelines.

Newgen, now backed by Pull&Bear, gave LFW debuts to Francesca Lake, Gui Rosa and Petra Fagerström, with Charlie Constantinou, E.W.USIE, Liza Keane, Octi, Oscar Ouyang, Pauline Dujancourt, The Ouze and Yaku returning. Fashion East came back to the official schedule with Goyagoma, Jacek Gleba and Mé Mé.

Petra Fagerström had the strongest debut of the week. The Swedish designer, an LVMH Prize finalist with only a handful of collections behind her, opened day two at the Newgen space at 180 Strand with a collection titled Swedish Summer, built around fracturing the imagery of the traditional wife.

Paolo Carzana staged his in St Cuthbert's Church after dark, models moving through the nave in organically dyed cotton, hemp and Ahimsa silk in creams, turmeric yellow and washed blue, with sculptural headpieces by Nasir Mazhar.

Tolu Coker, whose last show drew a surprise appearance by King Charles, closed out the final day alongside Di Petsa. KNWLS returned after a two-year absence that included a Milan debut.

Chopova Lowena, Aaron Esh, Ashley Williams and Ahluwalia all showed, several of them on the once-a-year schedule that independents increasingly adopt because the cost of two shows no longer makes sense.

Weir's BFC has waived London Fashion Week fees for designer members showing physically, increased scholarship funding and secured a three-year government commitment to Newgen through the Department for Culture, Media and Sport — measures introduced precisely because, as Weir has said publicly, London has been losing designers to Paris, Milan and Berlin for want of infrastructure to help them scale. Conner Ives moving to New York this year is the live example. The new guard showed well in September. Whether the city can keep them through their fifth or sixth collection is the question worth reporting in six months.