Geordie Campbell Spring/Summer 2027

For his London Fashion Week debut, Geordie Campbell stayed close to home. Presented at The Truman Brewery in Shoreditch, 15 Steps explored the history of queer identity, cruising culture and self-expression through a 24-look collection steeped in coded references. The title traces back to Mansfield, Ohio, where two police officers descended 15 steps into public toilets in the 1970s, installing a hidden camera behind a two-way mirror and arresting 79 men over three weeks for so-called “indecent acts”. Campbell takes this history of surveillance and secrecy and transforms it into something deliberately visible, using multihued trims, exposed linings, sailor trousers, extravagant feathers and suggestive prints to create a vocabulary of queer signifiers.

George Michael provides another thread running through the collection, with Campbell looking to the musician’s 1980s wardrobe and his relationship with masculinity, sexuality and freedom. Low boat-neck T-shirts, oversized military-inspired coats with exaggerated shoulders and micro athletic shorts push those references into distinctly Campbell territory. Elsewhere, rolled-back sleeves reveal contrasting linings, while feathers and unexpected flashes of skin bring a sense of theatricality to the tailoring. The visual language also draws from queer image-making, including the dreamlike sensuality of James Bidgood’s Pink Narcissus, Derek Jarman’s Sebastiane and the unmistakable illustrations of Tom of Finland.

Behind the playfulness is Campbell’s commitment to British manufacturing and local craft. Describing himself as a “British Boy”, the designer worked with organic cottons, wool woven with silk and 100% cashmere knitwear, with more than 92% of the collection manufactured in the UK. Small-scale collaborations included brooches created by a Glasgow School of Art graduate, prints produced by a London studio and locally made leather bags. Campbell also worked with Cruising Archaeology, whose research into former cruising locations inspired a found object recovered from one such site and transformed into a brooch in multiple colourways. Jewellery from THOMAS SABO Rebel at Heart completed the styling, while L’Oréal Professionnel supported the runway hair.

The strength of 15 Steps lies in its ability to take a history shaped by secrecy and surveillance and turn it into something proudly visible. Campbell does not treat queer history as a distant reference point; he folds it into the construction, styling and very objects of the collection. The result is playful and provocative, but also deeply considered - a debut that uses fashion not simply to revisit the past, but to reclaim the codes through which queer identity has been communicated, protected and celebrated.