Celebrating its 40th anniversary, London Fashion Week began with a bang, officially introducing Harris Reed on the runway. Debuting his ‘Encore’ collection, this designer puts on a show for everyone with his fantastical designs.
Harris Reed's theatrical Summer/Spring 2025 collection is enveloped with hand-crafted Old World designs with a modern spin. After the grand event, Reed told Vogue and London Fashion Week reporters that his style is best described as ‘Romantism Gone Nonbinary’, drawing on personal identity and empowerment. Celebrating the ‘beauty of fluidity', this aesthetic focuses on breaking through the boundaries of societal gender expectations, and rejecting the heteronormative stereotypes enveloped in society.
Using vintage tablecloths, curtains, bedspreads and timeless Italian lace, acquired second-hand in car boot sales, eBay, Depop and textile shops, the designer displays the future of sustainable fashion through his maximal style. A key value of this designer’s brand is to upcycle materials as Reed advocates for a sustainable future. So, after spending over 6 months searching for reusable materials and planning these concepts, models walk out in 10 of his designs to open for London Fashion Week. This rising fashion designer expresses the significance of sustainability within a polluted, mainstream industry, by transforming 200-year-old heritage fabrics into modern masterpieces.
Models are wrapped in enchanting corsets and cinched skirts, with large, bewitching embellishments, emphasising Reed’s favour for a dramatic silhouette, which had previously been seen as he dressed Nicola Coughlan for the Bridgerton red carpet. Makeup artists working with Reed, experimented with a striking eye look, playing with both a monochrome palette and hues of blue and pink, exaggerating a porcelain, doll-like beauty alongside each hand-crafted design.
London Fashion Week 2024 undoubtedly shone a light on emerging phenomenons, like Harris, who begun his journey to redefine the sustainability of the fashion industry for the next generation of visionary creatives.
https://londonfashionweek.co.uk/designers/harris-reed
https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20211208-how-the-beauty-of-fluidity-went-mainstream-in-fashion
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