For the Vivienne Westwood Fall 2026 collection, light and dark permeate – exaggerated tailoring in rumpled poplin alongside dresses in barely-there polka-dot gauze or jacquard muslin.

Clothes inspired by England and its history; open sleeves and corseted knitwear from Holbein’s portraits of the Tudor court. Hunting breeches and checked corduroy cobbled together, sweet twinsets and picnic blanket tailoring.

Felted tailoring, lasered florals and faded handwritten names (the model running order of Vive La Bagatelle Spring-Summer 1997) – all worn, lived-in, loved. Elsewhere city stripes and oxford shirtings recalling Jermyn Street windows, in styles adapted from Spring-Summer 1994’s Café Society.

Then, an erotic undertone – flashes of leg, stockings and hold ups taken from the Andreas Kronthaler for Vivienne Westwood Paris show. Swaddling melton coats conceal party dresses in draped lurex, dark suiting cut with flashes of red. The banal mixed with the fetishistic – the office siren, the domestic goddess.