Paolo Carzana Spring/Summer 2027

For Spring/Summer 2027, Paolo Carzana transformed a quiet London church into something between a Victorian ghost story and a living painting, with layers of fragile textiles, frayed edges and painstaking handcraft.

There was an eerie stillness to Paolo Carzana’s Spring/Summer 2027 presentation. St Cuthbert’s Church in Earls Court, with its Arts and Crafts interiors partially hidden behind long panels of canvas, provided a suitably atmospheric setting for a collection that seemed to emerge from the shadows. Models moved through the space like shrouded figures brought briefly to life, their clothes built from layers of delicate, distressed textiles that blurred the boundary between garment and sculpture.

Carzana has developed a language around fabric that is deliberately imperfect. For SS27, shredded knits, translucent woven textiles and fraying seams were layered and manipulated across the body, creating silhouettes that appeared to unravel as they moved. Openings revealed flashes of skin — a thigh, the curve of a hip — while wispy surfaces stretched and twisted around the figure. The effect was fragile but not necessarily delicate, with the clothes carrying a sense of age, decay and transformation. There was also something distinctly painterly about the collection, recalling the European tradition of elevating ordinary figures into subjects rather than leaving them as supporting characters.

The handwork was arguably the collection’s strongest statement. Every layer appeared to have been considered, distressed, woven or reconstructed to create texture, resulting in clothes that were particularly compelling as images. This is fashion designed to reward looking closely: the irregularity of the textiles and the way they sit against the body become the point. Yet that same commitment to craft raises a more difficult question about how Carzana’s vision translates beyond the runway and editorial image.

That tension is becoming increasingly relevant for designers working at the extreme end of artisanal fashion. Carzana’s SS27 collection offered plenty to admire in its construction and atmosphere, but its commercial proposition remained deliberately elusive. Perhaps that is part of the point. Rather than chasing obvious wardrobe staples, Carzana continues to explore what clothing can become when fabric, body and handcraft are allowed to lead the conversation — even if the answer is something closer to art than everyday dress.