Celebrating Two decades of Reframing Femininity as a Refuge
Review of Roksanda Spring 2026 Fashion Show
By Angela Baidoo
THE COLLECTION
THE VIBE
Deconstructed modernity, soft structure, architectural silhouettes
In her debut year of 2005 Ilincic shared the stage with fellow British designers who, despite no longer featuring on the London scene today, at the time made up a cool new creative collective who were drawing attention to the city during the tail end of the Cool Brittania era. Names such as Jonathan Saunders, Giles Deacon, and Sophia Kokosalaki.
Affirming her place as one of fashions unsung female heroes of design, Rosksanda Ilincic celebrates two decades of her namesake label in the city where it all started. Her body of work has consistently considered the world beyond fashion and used both artists and their art, as well as architecture to communicate her uncompromising modernist designs.
Undeterred by the ebb and flow of fickle trends, a daring use of colour and shape – performing as wearable sculpture – helped champion a new way to look at femininity.
For her 20th anniversary it would have been easy to fall back on a greatest hits show, yet when so much of fashion has become concerned with 2D visuals made to be consumed via screens, the background story or layers of meaning (read inspiration) can be lost. Not so here, as outlined in her show notes her spring 2026 collection was a reimagining of ‘iconic silhouettes’(the spring 2012 Margot, spring 2016’s Anya, and fall 2022’s Cataline dresses return) and was also inspired by the work of British sculptor Barbara Hepworth – one of the numerous female voices and visionaries championed by the brand since its inception. Shapes influenced by nature and Hepworth’s forms evolved from wood and stone created a rhythm in each look. Fluid silks were draped and gathered, cut-outs formed organic openings to reveal-and-conceal, and exaggerated fringing wrapped around the body and extended from the hems of tailoring, creating an ‘interplay between structure and softness’ according to the notes.
Illincic’s ’architectural silhouettes’ look back to her youth growing up in Belgrade, where she found beauty in the linear precision of Brutalist architecture. What has given her work an emotional underpinning though, is her ability to add levity into her own mega structures, then through her clever use of unexpected fabrics and vibrant colour play the designer has solidified a legacy of intellectual designs which ‘shelter as much as they empower’.
THE DIRECTION
THE WRAP UP
Volume, vivid colour and inventive shapes are what have endeared Roksanda Illincic to her fiercely loyal ‘community of international women’, from conceptual artist and performer Marina Abramović, actor Golda Rosheuvel, artist Beyoncé and model Erin O’Connor. Blending the industrial with the organic, and art with fashion her globally recognised shapes have reframed how femininity can present itself as both a powerful tool and a refuge.
