It began with the hits: a mock-neck dress in ankle-length charmeuse; a cap-sleeve shift in bubble flou jacquard; a georgette garden-party frock in watercolor polka dots. Then the smoke machine kicked in, and everything we’ve come to expect from Edeline Lee flipped on a dime. Prim sashes unraveled into rouleau tassels. Tassels multiplied into tendrilous gowns. Hemlines split from their bodies and floated on hoops. Hoops morphed into helter-skelter showpieces. And was that—huh?—Charli XCX rattling the walls of the St. George Ballroom? “I might make clothes for ladies,” Lee said. “But I’m still that fashion kid who refuses to be put in a box.”
For Lee, that meant calling time on the elaborate happenings—theater shows, sound baths, lectures, flash mob breakfasts—that have long been her chosen format, and instead do the most conventional thing of all: putting spring 2026 on a catwalk. “The pressure is on,” she said, during a preview of the collection in her Limehouse studio. “Because now it’s the clothes that have to tell the narrative.” This one took its cue from the fleeting magic of a traveling circus—here one night, gone the next—triggered in part by the candy-striped interiors of Lee’s Harrods concession. Those appeared in pale pink and mint circle skirts with varying hoop inserts—an architectural riff on the Big Top—while ruffled collars and dickies nodded to pantomime clowns like Pierrot, and sequined columns to the glitter left in their wake. “We already have a strong line of commercial pieces,” the designer said. “But to prove we can do a show in a runway format, the clothes had to bring the fun.”
So there was a clear sense of Lee wanting to challenge assumption, which leads us to her first foray into knitwear: a handful of her signature silhouettes—the best-selling Pedernal among them—reimagined in flechage panels of sustainable FSC viscose. “People automatically assume I want to do fuzzy sweaters,” she said. “But these are the chic, multi-functional pieces my woman needs.” It was an addition so instinctive you wondered why she hasn’t done it before. But producing knitwear in Britain—a non-negotiable for Lee, who continues to manufacture everything in her atelier—is anything but straightforward. “It’s been a real labor of love and yet so much more pleasurable than DHL-ing it all off to China,” she said. “Made in England means something, but we don’t give it the same weight as other nations. We need to support British fashion.” There’s a message worth firing from a cannon.