Highlights from London Fashion Week SS25

Open­ing Image Jason Lloyd Evans

Words Leelou Reboh

As Lon­don Fash­ion Week’s 40th anniver­sary cel­e­bra­tions final­ly came to an end after a week of show­cas­ing the lat­est, vibrant Spring/Summer 2025 col­lec­tions of the city’s most beloved labels, OVERDUE looks back on six key moments that sparked greater con­ver­sa­tions with­in the fash­ion scene, and chal­lenged the tra­di­tion­al approach of a catwalk.

ERDEM challenged gender identity through queer literature

From the court­yard of the British Muse­um, Erdem Morali­oglu paid homage to the late Rad­clyffe Hall and her thought-pro­vok­ing nov­el ‘The Well of Lone­li­ness’. The book was banned short­ly after its release in 1928, as its themes and ques­tion­ing of gen­der and sex­u­al­i­ty were deemed inap­pro­pri­ate. Inspired by the char­ac­ter of Stephen Gor­don — a woman giv­en a man’s name because her par­ents were hop­ing for a son — Morali­oglu blurred the lines between menswear and wom­enswear, echo­ing with the pro­tag­o­nist’s quest for iden­ti­ty. In col­lab­o­ra­tion with Sav­ille Row tai­lors Edward Sex­ton, the design­er intro­duced an array of clas­sic, colour­ful, embell­ished suits to present along­side the label’s sig­na­ture dreamy, ultra-fem­i­nine gowns.

JW Anderson’s take on restriction

Jonathan Ander­son isn’t afraid to take on a chal­lenge, and he proved it with his SS25 col­lec­tion. Only work­ing with five dif­fer­ent mate­ri­als — silk satin, cash­mere, calf leather, sequins, and lace for orna­men­ta­tion — the cre­ative direc­tor demon­strat­ed that cre­ativ­i­ty will always tri­umph in restric­tion. SS25 was the sea­son of the mini dress for Ander­son. The design­er played around with the con­cept, call­ing for resource­ful­ness and inge­nu­ity in approach­ing ever­more so revis­it­ed designs. From over­pro­por­tion­ate knit­ted loops, and thick woven fab­ric pan­els, or pant­less mil­i­tary-style jack­ets, to sim­pler A‑line sil­hou­ettes, and the ever pop­u­lar bub­ble sil­hou­ette, there was a design fit to sat­is­fy any taste or desire. Clos­ing the show with a strik­ing state­ment print­ed onto a white silk satin dress — ‘In art, the only impor­tant dis­tinc­tion is the dis­tinc­tion between good art and bad.’ — Ander­son invit­ed his audi­ence to recon­sid­er their per­spec­tive of art, and to view his craft in a less com­pli­cat­ed, more authen­tic light.

HARRI can’t get enough of latex

Latex can be intim­i­dat­ing. It’s hard to slip on, at times uncom­fort­ably sticky, and quite frankly, it’s not always the most for­giv­ing of mate­ri­als. Yet, HARRI demon­strat­ed his abil­i­ty to tame this fick­le mate­r­i­al to make it his own. Draw­ing inspi­ra­tion from artist Wolfe Von Linkewicz’s craft, who works with both oil paint­ing and AI to bring his vision to life, HARRI inter­twined the crafts­man­ship required for the sharp pat­tern cut­ting dis­played through­out the col­lec­tion, with the inno­v­a­tive and exclu­sive use of latex. The design­er dis­played both prowess in his exag­ger­at­ed and unfore­see­able sil­hou­ettes, and in the pas­sion for his craft com­mu­ni­cat­ed through each gar­ment that had been entire­ly assem­bled by hand and con­struct­ed direct­ly onto the mod­el. Fur­ther estab­lish­ing his strong aes­thet­ic iden­ti­ty with­in the indus­try, HARRI trans­port­ed us to anoth­er dimen­sion, in which its oth­er­world­ly crea­tures seemed to be some of the tech­no­log­i­cal fan­tasies we gaze at from our screens every day.

Dreaming Eli SS25 was a love letter to monsters

Find­ing their path through the cloud-like drap­ing hang­ing from the ceil­ing, the mod­els at the Dream­ing Eli SS25 pre­sen­ta­tion looked like divine god­dess­es wan­der­ing around the Olym­pus. For her col­lec­tion, Elisa Trom­bat­ore found sym­pa­thy in the mys­ti­cal crea­ture of Scyl­la as depict­ed by Homer in the Odyssey. As West­ern soci­eties are torn between their lust and simul­ta­ne­ous irre­me­di­a­ble repul­sion for the fer­tile woman, Trom­bat­ore uses the crea­ture as a sym­bol to explore this rup­ture in the col­lec­tive psy­che. Offer­ing the mon­ster its human­i­ty back, the design­er embraced soft fab­rics and lace, paired with ele­ments of corsetry to con­trast with the flu­id­i­ty of the gauzes. Del­i­cate yet strik­ing, the Dream­ing Eli woman came out of SS25 a rein­vent­ed being: one of empa­thy, and one regain­ing pow­er over her own narrative.

Paolo Carzana on how to attract mosquitoes

In the inti­ma­cy of his back­yard, Pao­lo Carzana invit­ed a select few to reflect not only on his lat­est col­lec­tion, but also guid­ed them through the deep intro­spec­tion that would then fol­low. Nar­cis­sus and his myth­ic van­i­ty, the start­ing point of the col­lec­tion, aimed to fuel the greater con­ver­sa­tion of per­son­al respon­si­bil­i­ty as indi­vid­u­als exist­ing with­in a soci­ety. How can we, unlike Nar­cis­sus, walk away from our own reflec­tion and self-absorp­tion? Most impor­tant­ly, what can we learn from it to take onto greater pur­pose, and help oth­ers? Carzana tack­led this ques­tion in humil­i­ty and looked with­in him­self first to under­stand how to guide his audi­ence to the light. Blur­ring the lines of the fash­ion priv­i­lege, back­stage became front stage, and rows merged into one. The gar­ments were imbued in authen­tic­i­ty, and tri­umphed through their nat­ur­al shapes and organ­ic tex­tures. Return­ing to the roots of design, Pao­lo Carzana was a les­son in altru­ism, whether that be with oth­ers, or with our planet.

S.S. Daley’s long anticipated womenswear debut

Under the scru­ti­n­is­ing eye of none oth­er than Vogue tycoon Anna Win­tour,  S.S. Daley pre­sent­ed his first wom­enswear col­lec­tion, demon­strat­ing true prowess com­bin­ing his menswear crafts­man­ship to cre­ate sculpt­ed sil­hou­ette embell­ish­ing the female body. Akin British artist Gluck, Daley explored the tricks and intri­ca­cies of wom­enswear through the more mas­cu­line lens he was trained under. Con­trast­ing sharp edges with sup­ple lines, Stokey-Daley show­cased a desir­able col­lec­tion, hang­ing per­fect­ly in the bal­ance between pow­er suit­ing and refined dress­ing. A tad British with tweed, cor­duroy, and trench coats as the back­bone of the col­lec­tion, mod­els flaunt­ed con­fi­dent­ly, per­haps a bit man­nish­ly, down the run­way, lay­ered in sheer pleat­ed under­skirts under knit min­is, and bring­ing fun to tai­lor­ing again by sass­ing up col­lars with soft furs. One thing was made clear once the show was over: the S.S. Daley woman is unafraid of dress­ing up to her fan­tasies, and is unstop­pable in doing so.