Emilia Wickstead Fall 2026
For Autumn/Winter 2026, Emilia Wickstead looked back to the roaring 1920s and found a figure who resonated with her own precision of cut and emotional curiosity. The muse was Fano Messan, a French model and actress who once adopted a masculine persona in order to become an apprentice sculptor. Messan’s story of constraint, reinvention and artistic bravery informed a collection rooted in the tension between uniform and freedom. “She wasn’t allowed to be herself, and I wanted her to feel liberated,” Wickstead said, explaining how the search for identity translated into garments that balanced structure with sensual ease.
Wickstead’s tailoring was quietly powerful. There were elongated coats in menswear checks, rugged denim shirts and smock-like leather jackets that suggested a creative at work as much as a society woman at ease. The palette — rich blacks, moody greys and warm neutrals — reflected the discipline of the era’s atelier culture. Yet the collection also allowed space for drama. Sculptural gowns in silver lamé and shimmering lavender lace arrived later in the sequence, their polished surfaces sculpted in the way only Wickstead’s cutwork can achieve, bridging the architectural with the expressive.
What made this collection especially compelling was the way it articulated duality. Masculine references were precise without feeling rigid, and feminine details were assertive rather than ornamental. A black tuxedo shirt pulled over a full skirt or a sharply tailored leather suit beside a flowing dress illustrated how clothes can be both armour and invitation. Wickstead’s work this season was about more than homage to a historical figure. It was a meditation on identity itself, rendered through beautifully engineered tailoring that considered not just how a woman looks, but how she moves and feels within her cloth
