Painting Outside the Lines
Review of S.S. Daley Fall 2025 Fashion Show
By Mark Wittmer
THE COLLECTION
THE VIBE
Quaint craft. Reconsidered classics.
Fall 2025 sees S.S. Daley continue its exciting expansion into womenswear while mining new artistic territory to loosen up its reconsideration of classic British dress codes.
This time around, Steven Stokey-Daley drew inspiration from the creative world of the Scottish Colourists. Comprising four painters – Francis Cadell, John Duncan Fergusson, Leslie Hunter, and Samuel Peploe – the group drew inspiration from the bright colors and bold brushstrokes of contemporary French Impressionists and Fauvists, but took Scottish life as their subject matter: rural landscapes, Edinburgh interiors, and fashionable models.
This artistic reference is most directly palpable in the printed shirts, playful wooden beads, quaint jacquard knits, and one particularly gorgeous felted wool dress, each of which incorporate impressive craft techniques to cleverly translate paintings and portraits into wearable statements. But looking more broadly, a sense of the painters’ blending of free-flowing approach to color and form with a more homey subject matter can be felt in the way Daley freely constructs his silhouettes and riffs on classically British daily uniforms. A preppy wool blazer, for instance, is paired with printed leggings, while a quilted nylon hunting jacket is worn with a surreally ballooning skirt.
THE DIRECTION
The brand officially launched its womenswear category on the runway just last season, so it’s great to see such a wide range of women’s pieces woven confidently throughout the collection.
At the same time, however, this rapid expansion may be partly responsible for the disjointedness that characterizes some of the looks and the collection as a whole. Daley also shared that he wanted his womenswear to create an ode to the work and style of the iconic English singer and actor Marianne Faithfull, who passed away at the end of January. The pace of the fashion calendar is brutal, especially on young brands, and it’s not unusual to be working on a collection up to the last minute. But to be arriving at the conceptual groundwork for a key part of your collection less than month before its runway debut feels particularly risky, and that last-minute rush does not go unfelt.
THE WRAP UP
S.S. Daley is a young brand with a distinct design vision in a city and point in time where young brands often don’t find longterm success, so it’s great to see the vision continue to evolve and the business generate enough success to keep growing into new categories. While time constraints and an excess of ideas meant that not every single moment saw Daley find his footing, his brushstrokes continue to shine brightly.
