Ditching the minimalist dark urge that dominated fashion week, Chopova Lowena’s Spring/Summer 2026 collection was a riotous fight back, a feral hymn to colour, chaos, and adolescent rebellion.
Emma Chopova and Laura Lowena-Irons transformed a West London community hall into a rallying ground for misfits, a mash-up of sports hall, locker room, folklore ritual and teenage bedroom floor. Here, adolescence was not something to be tamed but exalted. Red plastic school chairs beside battered office chairs, pouffes, plastic mushrooms, an oversized shell, mascots loomed like half-deflated totems, while television screens flickered footage like it was a live sports broadcast of game day. The soundtrack was a sonic assault, a deliberate wall of sound combining Balkan brass, jungle breaks, cheer chants and the bark of angry NFL coaches, leaving the floor and the audience vibrating with its intensity. It was, in the designers’ own words, an attempt to “fully overwhelm the senses”, not just a runway but an immersive fever dream of youth culture.
Models stormed the runway in the brand’s signature kilts, heavy belts clanking, their silhouettes layered in tinsel, ribbons, and clashing prints. Pink-and-black stripes smashed into zebra print, checks, bedazzled stars, tartan swirled with cheetah spots, lace peeked from under padded sportswear. Peter Pan collars and schoolgirl ribbons softened the clanking armour of belts, studs and studded boots. Silver banged against gold, animal prints against pastels, a riot of mismatched patterns and textures that felt euphoric rather than chaotic, each look landing like a triumphant chord in a noise symphony. It was more-is more taken to its logical extreme: a collision of Japanese kawaii and Edwardian-Scottish romanticism, as though Celtic folklore raided a Harajuku closet.
The standouts were plentiful. One early look paired a lace-up football bra with padded track pants, the grommets criss-crossing across bare skin and over mesh, turning sportswear into a kind of armour. Another saw a varsity sweater in sherbet pastels layered over a zip-off skirt offering a theatrical reveal that echoed the collection’s themes of adolescent transformation. Chainmail appeared across several looks, glittering against brocade skirts and panniered hips, adding a sense of weight and ritual, part folk costume, part Marie Antoinette going into battle. There was a look that paired an oversized pom-pom jacket with tiny briefs and a belt loaded with hardware, like a mascot that had joined a biker gang. Accessories were characters in their own right: 3D-printed cleat boots clomped through the hall, lace up boots entwined with gems, jewels and lucky charm, leather harnesses cradled water bottles like ceremonial objects, and bags were transformed into fetish-like gear strapped to thighs or swinging like trophies.
Despite the overload, the collection was not purely chaos, it was tightly constructed, considered, and intentional. Every look played with tension: sports gear was decorated with lace and appliqué, folk traditions were spliced with technical fabric, and what might have been a symbol of conformity (the uniform) was reimagined as a tool for radical self-expression.
The hair by Kiyoko Odo, beauty by Lauren Reynolds and nails by Ella Vivi, echoed this narrative without overpowering it. Hair was often raw, with braids, ribbons and loose tendrils that looked as though they had been done in a bathroom mirror minutes before the rally. Hair pieces featured chunky metallic bedazzled clips, brooches and pearls — like a teenager had raided both her mother’s jewellery, charity shops and her own proud collection, wearing them all at once to show her friends. Makeup shimmered with metallic flashes, catching light in step with the glint of chainmail and hardware, a kind of ceremonial face paint for battle: intimate, homemade, but elevated.
Chopova has spoken about wanting to confront the dual feelings of love and loathing toward the cheerleader archetype. These are not cheerleaders who exist to perform for the crowd; these are leaders of their own ragtag teams, feral commanders of a maximalist pep squad. There is catharsis here, an invitation to the audience to join in rewriting their own teenage mythology, to claim power where there was once shame.
In the context of a fashion season that has been heavy with minimalism and sombre palettes, Chopova Lowena’s riot of colour and sound felt like a necessary rupture. It reminded us that fashion can still be unruly, sensory, maximalist. There were moments where the collection tipped towards excess, threatening to bury silhouettes under sheer decoration, but this too felt like part of the point: there is power in being too much, in not being polite, in demanding to be seen. Cheerlore was a pep rally not just for the brand but for a cultural moment, a manifesto for girls who were told to tone it down, for the ones who never sat still in assembly, for the ones under the bleachers with chipped nail polish and glitter glue. It was a show that argued that chaos is not a threat but an aesthetic, that identity can be stitched from fragments. Chopova Lowena held space for the chaos girl, for the folkloric athlete. In a season where restraint has been the mood, this was a maximalist roar.
