London Fashion Week may have been cancelled this season, but Martine Rose wasn’t about to let the city’s creative heartbeat go quiet. Off-schedule, off-script, and entirely on-point, she staged Spring/Summer 2026 in a job centre in Marylebone, turning the absence of official proceedings into a powerful statement about community, resilience, and London’s refusal to bow out. While others fled to Milan or Paris, Rose planted her flag at home, proving that London fashion doesn’t need a calendar — it needs character.
Her venue of choice spoke volumes: a bureaucratic relic transformed into a two-story tribute to the city’s lifeblood. Downstairs, twenty-two independent traders set up shop, queer publishers Smut Press and Parc London, vintage sellers, S&M t-shirt brands, wig makers, jewellers, and independent designers such as Rihanna-approved Jawara Alleyne, were all invited to share space, hustle their craft, and remind us what keeps the capital’s spirit intact: its collision of community and individualism.
Upstairs, beneath silky curtains resembling a couture salon and the glare of office strip lights, Rose unleashed her vision for SS26: tight, taut, and knowingly awkward. If Martine once made her name with oversized, baggy silhouettes, here she did the opposite: clothes were suctioned to the body, clinging like shapewear but with a wink of kink. As with all things Martine, there was something erotic in the tension: Puffa jackets, leather Harringtons, trench coats, and electrician’s trousers were rendered in stretch fabrics, hugging muscles and limbs with a kind of deliberate voyeurism. Some pieces played tricks on the eye: stretch materials printed to mimic woven textiles, creating a trompe-l’œil effect of traditional menswear warped into something unsettlingly body-conscious. The tension between covered and exposed, modest and brazen, ran through everything.
Part of what made the show so electric was the casting and styling. Rose’s street-cast models brought real London texture to the runway. Shaggy manes, granny curls, and head-banger hair courtesy of Gary Gill added layers of subcultural reference that felt authentically British. The styling struck chords of ‘60s, ‘70s, and ‘80s counterculture, echoing Rose’s memories of Kensington Market — that legendary hotspot of hippies, punks, goths, and ravers where London’s creative tribes once mingled. This collection, she said, was an homage to that spirit: a place to meet, to buy, to become. And judging by the cheers and whistles of the crowd as the models stomped by with their lady-like bags draped in Martine tees, London’s beautiful chaos is far from over.
The details were where Rose’s sly humour shone. Socks fused to trousers, handbags smothered in Martine tees, scarves printed with vintage adult personal ads. Denim embossed to look like tooled leather wrapped bodies tight. Sportswear collided with streetwear: track bottoms doubled up so the inner leg could be rolled out, shrunken tracksuits sprouted hoods attached to baseball caps. And then there was the return of a personal favourite: the Nike Shox MR4 mule, reimagined in a fresh colourway. Square-toed kitten heels and mutant driving shoe-pumps in glossy leathers joined the footwear party, anchoring looks that felt as much about attitude as fabric.
Threaded through the collection was a logo that spoke louder than any one piece: Everything Must Change. It was both a rallying cry and a quiet confession, a nod to the shifting ground beneath the fashion industry, the political fractures around us, and perhaps even Rose’s own evolution.. If London’s future is uncertain, Martine Rose’s SS26 was a reminder that creativity, community, and chaos are the city’s constants. In the absence of a formal fashion week, Martine made her own —messy, sexy, defiant, and exactly what London needed.
