Paolo Carzana on his emotional London show: ‘To me fashion is meaningful, powerful, and completely unfrivolous’

It’s three days out from Paolo Carzana’s London Fashion Week show, and his studio above the meat markets of Smithfield, Farringdon, is a hive of activity. Stylist Patricia Villirillo has arrived to begin assembling looks from rails of pigmented pieces, interns are hand-sewing garments on messy tables, and the designer’s partner Joseph Rigby has decamped from his Sarabande Foundation studio to join the effort. ‘As much as I put everything into these collections, what I would like to imagine as magic really does come from the team around me,’ says the shy Welsh designer, who is sat across from me in a track jacket with a piece of silk tied around his head, his fingers stained from hours of working with natural dyes. ‘I’d feel lost without them.’

It’s a humble remark from one of London’s most singular rising design talents, whose emotive shows have become many editors’ most anticipated of fashion week. Last season, he chose the gothic – and, legend has it, haunted – 18th-century pub The Holy Tavern around the corner from his studio, which he first stumbled into two years ago to celebrate gaining the support of the Paul Smith Foundation. The season before, he moved several people to tears with a poetic display in the back garden of his Hackney flat, the first place in London that truly felt like home to him, after a chaotic period living in social housing in a former nurse’s accommodation. On Sunday evening, in the hushed rare-books reading rooms of the British Library, his S/S 2026 show managed to feel every bit as personal and intimate despite the imposing architecture of the building.

Paolo Carzana stages emotional display in the reading rooms of the British Library

Guests instinctively lowered their voices to whispers as they trickled into the vast library, taking seats at rows of desks surrounded by wood-panelled bookcases before a rousing score from David Attenborough’s new ocean documentary broke the silence. Then in came Carzana’s cast of characters, walking in a procession of delicately constructed silhouettes that only he could have made. Moving through a rainbow of mottled colours achieved with natural dyes derived from vegetables, flowers and spices, ornate pieces in pea silk and organic cotton merged 19th-century dress with forms drawn from Carzana’s own imagination: wizard-sleeved cascading tailoring, tattered pirate culottes with deconstructed blouses, and gauzy bias-cut dresses that floated from the body like jellyfish tendrils. Theatrical yet from the heart, these were clothes not made for buyers’ linesheets or the rush of social media likes, but for the pure love of Carzana’s craft.

As ever with the sensitive designer, the story the collection tells grapples with some big ideas. Following a trilogy of collections exploring the elemental powers of the planet – culminating last season in a fiery narrative of dragons and purgatory – this new chapter, he tells me in the studio, was about the supernatural. ‘I became obsessed with the idea of exploring the supernatural, and by that I don’t mean aliens,’ he explains. ‘I was thinking about really beautiful, extinct and endangered animals that we've lost. I wanted to explore the idea of Mother Earth being the genius and humanity being the monster. The idea is that we travel back from the sixth extinction to a time where the Earth can still taste salt, smell basil, and feel fire.’

Behind him in the studio, these otherworldly creatures are tacked up on a moodboard alongside faded lithographs of Victorian women by Welsh artist Albert de Belleroche, another point of inspiration this season. From impossibly blue lizards, monster-like amphibians, and regal tropical birds, Carzana points to an armadillo-like animal called the pangolin, to which the collection is dedicated. ‘It’s the most trafficked mammal in the world,’ he says. ‘Its only means of protection from poachers is to curl up into a ball. I’m obsessed with the beauty and the fragility of the animal, and how it's basically at the mercy of humanity. I get really emotional thinking about the fact that we will be the reason there'll be the last pangolin on Earth. That’s devastating.’

A love letter to the supernatural beauty of these animals, and an elegy to the ones we have pushed to extinction, comes through in special attention to this collection’s colours. Carzana is a lifelong vegan, priding himself on using only natural materials and dying techniques of ages past. This season, a finessing of his process allowed for a new kind of brilliance in the colours, which ranged from deep indigos to verdant mossy greens, blushing pinks and burnt oranges. Using mordants like cream of tartar, vinegar and sea salt to intensify some shades, dappling others with naturally water-resistant soy wax, the result was a palette that felt alive with an unreal kind of nature. ‘Every fabric, every thread, every button, every colour, has come from the earth,’ says the designer of the pieces. ‘I think that's very rare.’

Carzana usually conducts his research by trawling through archives and antique markets like Portobello, but this season he learnt about the endangered animals in the very location of the show itself – the rare-book reading rooms of the British Library. Though initially resistant to such a large venue, it felt fitting after the British Council invited him to host its annual fashion design competition, for which students create collections inspired by the library’s archives. ‘The British Council enabled my education with a scholarship, so the ability to hopefully inspire students with the project is something close to my heart,’ he says, adding that when he learnt the building (completed in 1997 after many years in progress) was designed by architect Sir Colin St John Wilson to resemble a naval ship, it became the perfect setting. ‘The reading room is a quiet space where there’s no talking, basically like being at the bottom of the ocean. I want to transform it to feel like an underwater world away from [what we experience], where the colours are beyond our imagination.’

Rather than a sanctimonious or self-righteous demand for us to save the planet, with these clothes, Carzana offers an invitation for us to recognise the unbelievable splendour of nature – making a quiet, purposeful plea to preserve what is left. ‘The idea was that you walk into the room and find yourself in a really special place that serves the public,’ he says. ‘Without ever telling anyone what to do, it's like an offering: look at the power of what we have. I feel like the last few collections, I've been working in this way, but I don't think I really understood what I was doing. This time it feels really clear.’

The authenticity of this message was evident in the room, as guests rose from their seats to applaud the designer at the show’s close; he seemed visibly surprised by the effusive reception. ‘It’s unbelievable that people say such wonderful things,’ he says, back in the studio, when I remark how much people love his shows. ‘It sounds like such a cliché, but I feel like I don’t particularly fit in. My idea of what fashion is, and what it means, is perhaps quite different from the industry at large. To me, it’s meaningful, powerful, and completely unfrivolous. I've had such amazing support that has enabled me to build, and I just hope to keep growing something with real value.’

Catch up on the standout shows of London Fashion Week S/S 2026 here.