TIME IS elastic in Richard Quinn’s world. For Autumn/ Winter 2026, the designer invites us into a realm suspended between eras place where the past hums beneath the surface of the future.
The models did not simply walk onto the runway; they emerged, one by one, through towering hexagonal gateways that glowed like portals from another era. Each figure paused for the briefest moment at the threshold, as though gathering courage before crossing into a different time. Then they stepped forward, and the room shifted with them.
The floor beneath their feet spread out in vast, panels that caught the light and moved in subtle reflections, giving the uncanny sensation that the audience was not seated in a venue at all, but inside the mechanism of a great, elegant time machine.
This season, the silhouettes told stories of 1950s haute couture, the curved femininity of the hourglass figure was present but sculpted anew for a modern muse. Drop waists and puffed tulle skirts floated with quiet defiance, evoking elegance without constraint.
Women appeared hooded, their identities half-veiled, commanding the runway with the enigmatic power of presence. It was less nostalgia, more transformation: classical beauty finding its rhythm in a world that moves faster than reflection.
In a shimmering echo of Audrey Hepburn’s cinematic poise, Quinn reimagined the Breakfast at Tiffany’s ideal, hemmed dresses structured yet soft, peplums sculpted to flatter the movement of light and body alike. Flowing boots swept across the floor with effortless grace, merging the practical with the romantic. His dazzling bodices , each one gleaming like captured starlight, offered gowns for moments both grand and achingly private, garments that held confidence like an unspoken language.
As the models passed, the air seemed to soften. The audience watched not only clothes but echoes, small gestures borrowed from forgotten ballrooms, silhouettes reminiscent of photographs fading at the edges. There was a sense that the garments had lived before and had chosen this moment to live again. In Quinn’s vision, beauty was not fragile but persistent, surviving cycles of taste and time.
Colour played its own symphony. Shocking pinks pulsed against the darkest of blacks, rich turquoise, hues that seemed to breathe, refracting light like facets of a gemstone. Together they signalled a designer attuned not just to fashion’s cycles, but to the tempo of emotion, to how beauty endures when anchored in feeling, not trend.
“Enduring Elegance: A Future Archive” is both statement and question. What does it mean to preserve grace in an age of acceleration? Quinn’s answer is simple yet profound: revisit the past, not to imitate it, but to remind us that true elegance , like time and like womanhood itself, is never fixed. It evolves, glitters, and endures.
by Ellis Dowle