There are two kinds of designers in fashion: the ones who chase relevance, and the ones who let relevance chase them. Martine Rose is firmly in the latter category.
The British Fashion Council recently delivered the final blow to London Fashion Week June, a decision that might have surprised the few still paying attention but shocked no one watching the runway calendar hollow out year by year. London Collections: Men—once the stomping ground for emerging talent and late-night debauchery—has officially been folded into the Council’s Paris showroom program. And then, right on cue, came Martine Rose with something far juicier: her first London runway show in two years.
But, in typical Rose fashion, it wasn’t just a show. It was a scene.
Held in a disused job centre in Marylebone—the kind of brutalist relic that still clings to bureaucratic ghosts—the event sprawled across two floors. Downstairs: a weekend-long market featuring indie designers, zine publishers, record collectors, vintage sellers and the kinds of vendors who actually make London interesting. Upstairs: the catwalk, reimagined as a ’70s beauty salon, draped in satin and swagger. No velvet ropes, no security-coded iPads. Just a crowd that ranged from Condé Nast editors to curious locals, all sweltering together on the hottest day of the year.
That ethos came through in the casting (entirely street-cast), the music (a dizzying mix of DJ Choci Roc, Fela Kuti, and Roy Ayers), and the clothing—of course. The show opened with a model in a voluminous black wig and an all-black outfit so tightly cinched it looked like it might whisper if you leaned in close enough.
Sexy, yes—but not in the way Instagram wants it. Rose’s vision of sexiness veers toward the unglamorous and the lived-in. Undergarments became outerwear. Technical outerwear came spliced with slinky skirts. Football shirts were rebranded with the designer’s signature logos, while barbershop capes became actual garments. One model wore what looked like a café apron as if it were Margiela-era couture. The whole thing felt half-dystopia, half-off-license romance.
There were thigh-skimming shorts worn with tall socks, shrunken leather jackets that hugged like second skins, and tracksuits layered under baseball cap hoods. New iterations of Rose’s coveted Nike Shox MR4s were seen alongside kitten heels and mule-loafers—shoes that looked like they belonged to your older cousin who was always cooler than you.
And yet, for all the experimentation, there was a warmth to the collection. The kind of charm that comes when a designer stops performing for the fashion world and starts playing with it. The models flirted with the crowd. They posed. They smirked. “People are charming, aren’t they?” Rose asked backstage.
What made the whole affair so sticky—so undeniably London—was that it didn’t feel like a comeback. It felt like an inevitability. In a fashion capital that has long struggled with identity and infrastructure, Martine Rose managed to create a moment. A real one. Not for TikTok. Not for the calendar. But for the city.
And if this was, as Rose calls it, a homecoming, then it wasn’t just hers. It was a reminder of what London fashion can be when it doesn’t try to be Paris or Milan or New York. It can be messy. It can be hot and awkward and charming and overstuffed.
It can feel, somehow, like something you want to be part of again.
