LFW Dispatch: AW26 takeaways
On Regency swagger, CSM’s breakout graduates and some thoughts on playfulness in London menswear.
Maybe it’s the contemporary period drama overload, but London menswear has developed a definite Regency swagger this season. There’s a loosened attitude to dressing up in the air, and it’s showing up everywhere, from the dandyish mannequins marking five years of Denzil Patrick to the energy coming out of the CSM MA show, which, whisper it, felt more alive than much of the main LFW schedule.
The CSM graduates seemed less interested in minimalism than in presence. Finnerty McKay’s tailoring, already widely talked about, balanced a deep affection for wool with seriously artful cutting, while pushing material experimentation into unexpected territory, recycled condoms past their sell-by date included. Around him, designers like Tito Crichton-Stuart, Pranjali Menaria and Clay Hattam all suggested a broader mood: historical dress details reworked not as costume, but as attitude.
What’s striking is how contemporary it all feels. Pinched waists, ruffles, slashes, flashes of silk stocking, gestures that could easily slip into theatre, instead read as confident and oddly practical in the hands of this generation. It’s less nostalgia than remix, borrowing from the past to make the present feel less flat.
It’s hard not to think back to earlier moments when London fashion embraced dressing up as a form of resistance. The Warren Street squatters raiding local costumiers like Charles H. Fox. Westwood and Christopher Nemeth mining historical references to lift everyday clothes out of the mundane. That same impulse, to borrow from history in order to feel more alive now, seems to be surfacing again.
And honestly, it’s fun. Which is something London fashion occasionally forgets. Amid the commercial pressures and brand-building, this wave of emerging talent feels willing to play, to swagger a little, and that might be the most refreshing thing on the LFW calendar so far.