Every week out from London’s Vogue Awards, Duro Olowu, holed up in a red-lit Chelsea condo dotted with leopard furnishings, is in a reflective temper whereas unveiling his spring 2026 assortment. He isn’t going to this 12 months’s Royal Albert Corridor extravaganza, however he remembers 2004’s quieter ceremony on the V&A when the Greatest New Designer accolade was bestowed upon him regardless of by no means having staged a runway present. Olowu continues to be the one designer to have been acknowledged by the British Vogue Council for going his personal method and exhibiting off-schedule in a good friend’s plush pad, slightly than by way of the normal runway route. It’s a testomony to his character and expertise that, over 20 years later, editors nonetheless collect on cheetah-print sofas to listen to him inform the newest instalment of his story.
“All the pieces good got here from someplace, and also you don’t know the place you’re going till you already know the place you’re from,” he shares, introducing his two muses of the season: the inimitable American singer Eartha Kitt, whom Olowu’s father liked, and the Parisian born Venezuelan artist Marisol Escobar, who was identified for sculptures imbued with social critique and a vibrant sense of non-public fashion, catnip for devoted colorists, like Olowu. But when Olowu’s new palette is borrowed from Escobar and the effortlessly elegant aesthetic is a nod to Kitt, then the element is all Duro.
Olowu is the type of designer who’s enthusiastic about pocket placement. He has a WhatsApp group devoted to the exact place of his prints, which, he laughs, drives his sample cutters loopy. “Individuals say, ‘Oh, it’s couture, it’s couture’, however, I say, ‘It’s simply nice shapes and good cloth’,” he says. “What I prefer to attempt to do is to offer the texture of one thing gentle that’s like couture, however not make it appear so.”
Regardless of the properly thought of units, equivalent to a memorable bulbous caped jacket and peplum costume produced from lace mounted on shiny black taffeta, Olowu shouldn’t be non secular about his purchasers sporting full seems to be. In actual fact, he positively encourages mixing and matching outdated and new garments and sporting his items, slightly than saving them for finest. In his hand-gathered, cinched-waist summer season attire, fluid shirting, and tulip-bulb sleeved, back-pleated jackets, his purchasers will look effortlessly put-together even when, as he says, they’re taking the bus.
Of his quest to convey his ever-evolving pool of references (an hour in Olowu’s firm is healthier than any BBC doc) into the now, he says “I like the thought of classic, however I don’t like the thought of retro. My factor was to indicate {that a} lengthy skirt can be liberating. And which you can cinch within the waist of a jacket a bit to make it sensible with none corsetry or constraining issues.” Olowu had assistance on that entrance. A decade in the past, when confronted with a belting conundrum, he flicked via the Yellow Pages and located a Stockwell-based maker named Carol, who has nipped in the perfect of them from her personal lovely rambling house in South London.
Olowu’s belts for spring 2026? Excellent cloth lengths to raise simple day attire, together with his private favourite: a black midi composed of strips of brocade and hammered silk paneled collectively in inky concord. “I like it, I actually like it, as a result of it’s form of like somebody who’s critical, but in addition feels pleasure,” he says. “I feel that’s one thing girls have that may be very particular to them; this capacity to evoke emotions in garments.” Taking a look at Olowu’s personal joyful work, it’s unimaginable to not assume and really feel. Even when it’s simply mulling over the notion that his exquisitely reduce black summer season costume is the epitome of loveliness.
