This may be the only collection where the humble, functional garb of the postal worker is a source of inspiration. (And actually let’s hear it for postal workers, for their public service, sometimes against all odds.) But then this is Margaret Howell we’re talking about, the British designer who has raised the everyday and the familiar to an art form, and made some of the best clothes—real, thoughtful, intelligent, sensitive clothes—of this or any season. These were most definitely not about the hoopla of spring 2026’s big reset, or whatever we’re calling it; rather the pleasure to be found when things go quiet and still after it, and we all get to thinking, ‘Well, what are we actually going to wear?’
“This collection is about ease and balance,” Howell said. “I wanted the clothes to be relaxed, with soft tailoring and generous shapes. It’s about proportion, always with a sense of wear. Pieces work quietly together, comfortably.” Which takes us back to the mailman. Howell delivered a vintage uniform: short, zip-front jacket in crisp black wool, paired with matching tailored shorts—shorts were a recurring motif here, the basis for her vision of spring’s suiting, irrespective of gender—and worn with a striped shirt which to the naked eye looked conventional enough, until one noticed the contrast stripe bands on its short sleeves.
In essence, this calibration of something prosaic was typical of the joys on offer here: the gray woolen sweater bonded so that while it looked like a conventional crewneck it actually had a much sportier hand when you felt it; the Ventile jackets with their storm-flap collars, like cut down trench coats, the roomy but abbreviated silhouette adding a little bit of an edge. There was also Howell’s throwback to the ’90s, her ’90s, with small, neat jackets—in linen/silk, say, in a delicious shade of earthy brown, part of her palette along with parchment, pewter, chamomile and a dusty pink so delicate it looked like the memory of the color—over a long, slim skirt with a deeper slit than in the past. The update was to make it easier to move in it, the result of the team trying it on and giving their feedback.
That’s not the only way Howell’s colleagues helped with the collection: The dotted silk scarf which popped up here and there came about because a long-term employee of Howell’s had been wearing hers, which is decades old, and seeing it on her, Howell wanted to bring it back. There’s something charming about that; a gesture of something treasured and used finding its way back into the spotlight, but without any of the attendant hoopla which has become so much the story of fashion today. Instead, for Howell, it’s a constantly measured and unshowy state of what’s past, what’s present, and what’s future.
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