It’s hard to join a story in the middle of it, but not impossible.
Kyle Ho’s ‘Human Condition’ Presentation at London Fashion Week SS26 was the third chapter of his series of collections. The first, ‘Love, Louis’ introduced fashion and fashion week enthusiasts to a world of his design, and the second ‘Goodbye, Martin’, was a quick departure from it. So this third chapter focuses on humanity overall, specifically how the very qualities that make us human can be our very own demise and disease.
Forever using his Saville-Row training, his collection plays with masculinity and presents wonderfully exaggerated proportions and elongated silhouettes that can reinvigorate any bleary-eyed, early morning fashion show guest.
On a well-weathered Thursday morning, Kyle Ho’s collection took over the Crypt on the Green, a gorgeous venue with original vaulted ceilings and brickwork with help from this collection’s collaborators: Pantherella, British sock manufacturer, Katherine Elizabeth, British milliner, and Fabric House, a sustainable fabric supplier.
Menswear is a unique challenge — it can be hard to excite an audience about suits and trousers season in and season out, but thankfully this collection came to entertain. Short shorts paired with dramatic blazers and a matching white ruff around the neck, long skirts and veils, and crop tops all were pieces that felt ready to wear yet still exciting. With a collection that stuck to a relatively small colour palette with whites, greys, blacks, blues, beige, and maroon, every piece that did walk the runway was purposeful.
The tiny details really mattered with each piece to have them stand out. Dark grey, high-waisted shorts looked wrinkled and worn purposefully, scarves and large ornate brooches appeared on most models, and so many models had clean faces with under-eye makeup to look worn-down and ill. The themes of demise and disease played right under the noses of guests, so rather than having pieces that could only be worn under certain artistic circumstances, the blazers, trousers, overcoats, and even sparkly broad-shoulder tops, could be worn in day-to-day life.
