Ten seasons into his eponymous label, Harris Reed is contemplating his home codes. The place the designer has beforehand made spectacle a key signature, his spring 2026 assortment has a way of intimacy and ease, whereas remaining very a lot inside the lexicon of the maximalist, Met Gala carpet-traversing (and up to date Venture Runway visitor choose) Harris Reed. Whereas earlier seasons have introduced within the cavernous Tate Britain and been launched by Florence Pugh, at this time’s outing was organized salon-style within the low-lit Gothic Bar of St. Pancras London.
“I used to be considering again to uni once I was doing these over-the-top, queer artwork items. They might say, ‘no buyer would ever purchase this.’ Now, trying again at 10 seasons—11 when you depend that scholar assortment—there’s a consumer base we nearly…made up?” displays Reed. “Nicely, not made up—we’re pulling from couture purchasers and actual trend fans, but it surely’s cool to see the entrance row isn’t simply supportive pals and journalists anymore, however individuals who purchase from and imagine within the model. It has allowed me to actually dwell in what the model has to say.”
Whereas his couture purchasers look to him for galas, or hold his items of their archives, one, he says, likes to show her corset above the pastries in her kitchen. “The nuances of my prospects are in my mind as we scale globally,” he stated. “And I’m counting on the well-made maximalism of the model to take up house on the crimson carpet this yr.”
A extra reflective temper manifested within the compact 14-look lineup, although the designer admitted it could be laborious to see a throughline—“aside from, actually, the crimson thread,” he stated. It’s his most colourful assortment but—periwinkle and cobalt blues, golds, burgundy, and pastel pink. “I needed these seems to be to face alone, to be particular person characters and communicate to all points of the Harris Reed DNA: David Bowie and Mick Jagger, Victorian girl, and English heritage. Items that carry out for you.” There’s one look you might say is Reed’s personal tackle the “one and carried out” gown: that means, it requires much less arithmetic to strap you in than his different architectural robes. It’s a fishtail quantity with a bubbled, animal print skirt.
The seems to be really feel poised for flight—swirling ice blue duchess satins and crimson tulles rubbed up towards strong animal prints, and feathers burst from conical shoulders. The caged silhouettes and corset program are carried by: one stands to consideration like a paper doll with a dense halo of black feathers, whereas one other gilded floral bustier falls right into a devoré velvet skirt in an acid yellow spinal print. Reed continued his collaboration with English wallpaper studio Fromental, utilizing classic panels of hand-painted and embroidered wallpaper as bodices and skirts. He created his personal “whispering wisteria” sample utilizing historic portray methods and textiles, impressed by a ceiling he noticed on a visit to Italy. “I’ve at all times had the dream of ‘Ralph Laurening’ the entire model,” he stated, with hopes to breed these prints for delicate furnishings and his personal wallpapers. “Harris Reed has at all times been hate or love—which I’ve at all times appreciated—however you possibly can by no means criticize the making.”
The glowing, moody synths of Siouxsie and the Banshees’s “Pink Gentle” soundtracks Reed’s forged of characters’s gradual—ever so gradual, of their towering Roker Atelier platforms—stalk out of the salon, doubtless off on their very own, very completely different, nocturnal adventures.
