Simone Rocha Fall/Winter 2026 at London Fashion Week

Simone Rocha Fall/Winter 2026 / FW26 at London Fashion Week

The attitudes of youth – its obsessions through clothes. The catalyst is Tír na nÓg, the otherworld of Irish myth and legend – a land of eternal youth, immortality. Simone Rocha FW26 / Fall/Winter 2026 show opens with a white pony, a mythological steed, sublimated to a white dress, of embroidered laces, some recycled, like recollections of collections past, itself a piece of histories. The show chases her tale. Rose tapestries and tweed tailoring seem to carry an imagined past with them, silhouettes recollect the 1920s or 1940s. But clothes are pulled into fragments, like shattered memories, pieces migrating between eras, outfits and perspective – lingerie may be on show, a bomber collar can be inherited, abstracted to a gesture at the neck. Clothes tumble from bodies, dismounting.

Perry Ogden’s Pony Kids (1999) surrenders images of modern Dublin youth, boys and girls, with their own horses – a melding of old world and new, the contemporaneous with the timeless. Their distinctive, real mix of clothing inspires a collection that shifts between men’s and women’s, sportswear and formality, living, extremes and collisions. A significant partnership between Simone Rocha and adidas Originals across women’s apparel, footwear, accessories and jewellery, allows unique interpretations of these archetypical garments – cross-pollination of looks, hybrid pieces. Track tops and streamlined leotards sit alongside tulle and lace, migrating between. The language of bareback equestrianism surrenders clothes shaped by action and reaction – rifts and tears become part of a decorative language; prized rosettes are proudly displayed.

An imagined Tír na nÓg was painted again and again by the Irish artist Jack Butler Yeats; his siblings Elizabeth and Lily, the ‘weird sisters’ of James Joyces’ Ulysses (1922) form the final closing of the circle. Ground-breaking figures in the Irish cultural scene, particularly the Arts and Crafts movement, their influence nods to a meeting-place of woman and nature, and a constant sensibility of the hand. Here, gestures to historicism are reworked though the language of riding – hardware detailing, dressage ribbons and bows.

Evening gowns are executed like blown-up rosettes, or with crinolined volumes dancing around the body, holding their space, asserting their feminine presence. They are pushed, then pulled back. Gowns are laces with satin ribbon, coming undone — they speak to the energy of that which is inside.