Edeline Lee Fall 2025 Ready-to-Wear Collection

London Fashion Week has seen several designer businesses forced into finding new ways of showcasing their collections—intimate dinners, show-and-tell sessions, even karaoke parties—as rising costs leave them priced out of the traditional runway format. Good for them: these events are often more engaging than a robotic fashion march. Edeline Lee has been following this formula for years. “It’s much more human,” said the designer during a preview of her fall collection in her East London studio. Her presentations have taken the form of dance recitals, feminist lectures, and immersive flash mobs. “I always design the clothes around the show concept,” she said. “It drives the narrative.”

This season’s happening took place at the Dorchester Hotel, where no more than 50 guests hobnobbed over a seated breakfast of avocado, smoked salmon, and poached eggs in the Wedgwood-inspired interiors of the Orchid Room. But any sense of this being a genteel banquet was all of a sudden disrupted with the arrival of two fencers bursting through the doors—one of whom drove a saber into this reporter’s croissant—parrying away in peplum shirt dresses with rouleau tassels swinging from their hips. Then along came a pair of boxers sparring in toffee-colored bubble flou jacquard bandeau tops and coordinating twisted-seam charmeuse trousers; a martial arts duo in layers of kimono-indebted stretch-poplin shirting and high-waisted culottes; and a final quartet of kendo samurais in hoop-skirted dresses of chainmail mesh and leg-flashing sequins. Each bout concluded with an approving handshake: a gesture of alliance. “Powerful women don’t fight,” Lee said. “We train one another to fight.”

While the images here reveal the full breadth of the designer’s fall proposal, this morning’s presentation—devised in collaboration with theater director Josie Rourke and fight director Kate Waters—featured just ten looks in total. Which is fair enough. These collections develop incrementally season after season, making it logical to highlight only what feels novel. For Lee, a slot on the Fashion Week schedule is as much a showcase as it is an occasion to connect in person with her most loyal followers. Instead of retreating backstage after her bow, she stood at the exit, chatting with guests. “Did you like all those strong women?” she asked one of their young children. “They were warriors.”