London Fashion Week’s runway is only the beginning of London’s stunning fashion life. While the shows bring together the latest collections, there is another side of the city’s fashion culture happening in museums, galleries, archives, independent spaces and vintage fairs. These places offer a chance to look at the references, materials, craftsmanship and creative decisions behind the finished image. From Burberry’s iconic trench coat and Schiaparelli’s relationship with art to NIGO’s Japanese creative universe, Fashion East’s 25-year history and KNWLS’s alternative approach to presenting a collection, these are some of the experiences worth exploring around London Fashion Week.
The Burberry Trench: Crafting an Icon
21 September 2026 – 3 January 2027 | V&A South Kensington | Free No Booking Required
To mark Burberry’s 170th anniversary, the V&A and the fashion house have brought together pieces from the Burberry Archive and the museum’s collection for an exhibition dedicated to one of British fashion’s most recognisable garments. Rather than simply looking at the trench as an established fashion icon, the exhibition follows how it developed through invention, craftsmanship and successive creative interpretations. The story begins with Thomas Burberry’s development of cotton gabardine in 1879 and continues through the construction details that became part of the garment’s identity, including the storm flap, hand-finished collar and House Check lining.
The display brings together pieces from different periods, including a women’s catalogue featuring trench coats from around 1937–44, a mirror-embroidered men’s trench from Autumn/Winter 2015, a pink metallic silk trench from Spring/Summer 2013 and more recent interpretations. Seeing these garments together makes the transformation much easier to understand. Changes in fabric, proportion, decoration and construction show how designers have continued to reinterpret the trench while keeping its recognisable character. The exhibition is particularly interesting because it allows visitors to see how an established fashion symbol can continue to evolve without losing the history that made it distinctive in the first place.
Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art
Until 8 November 2026 | V&A South Kensington | Book here
Elsa Schiaparelli’s relationship with art was at the heart of her fashion house from the beginning. Her collaborations with artists including Salvador Dalí and Jean Cocteau brought surrealism, illusion and unexpected imagery directly into clothing. The V&A’s Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art brings this history together with the house’s contemporary identity under creative director Daniel Roseberry. It is the first major UK exhibition dedicated to Schiaparelli and follows the house from the 1920s to the present.Among the pieces on display are the trompe-l’œil bow-knot sweater, the 1937 evening coat created with Jean Cocteau, Dalí’s Lobster Telephone and the famous Skeleton Dress.
The exhibition also has its own soundscape, created with sound design studio Father, incorporating references to Debussy and recordings of materials used in the work. That detail adds another dimension to the exhibition. Schiaparelli’s world was never only about the clothes themselves; it was about the relationship between fashion, art, the body and imagination. For visitors interested in fashion as a form of visual storytelling, the exhibition offers an opportunity to see how those ideas have travelled from the house’s early collaborations into its contemporary work.
NIGO: From Japan with Love
Until 4 October 2026 | Design Museum | Book here
NIGO’s career has developed across fashion, music and design. From Harajuku street culture and the founding of A Bathing Ape to his current role as artistic director of KENZO, his work has consistently crossed the boundaries between different creative worlds. The Design Museum’s NIGO: From Japan with Love brings these influences together in the first museum retrospective of his work outside Japan. With more than 700 objects, it looks beyond his fashion collections to explore the interests and references that shaped his creative identity. The exhibition includes a recreation of NIGO’s teenage bedroom, rare clothing and collectibles, ceramics made by NIGO himself, traditional Japanese crafts and a life-size glass tea house created for the exhibition.
What makes the exhibition interesting is the way it connects seemingly different interests. Music, toys, interiors, architecture, craftsmanship and collecting all appear alongside fashion. Rather than presenting a designer through one discipline, the exhibition gives a sense of how a wider collection of interests can gradually become a recognisable creative language.
Craft x Tech: Tokai Project
12–30 September 2026 | V&A South Kensington | Free | Website
The Craft x Tech Tokai Project brings together Japanese artisans from the Tokai region and international designers to explore what can happen when traditional craftsmanship meets contemporary design. Presented as part of London Design Festival, the second edition focuses on techniques including lacquer, metal, woodworking, ceramics, washi paper and textiles. One of the six collaborations, Grid Unwoven, combines the traditional paper-making of Mino Washi master Takanori Senda with the work of Lanzavecchia + Wai. The resulting illuminated screen makes the structure and texture of the paper part of the design itself.
The project was founded by designer and engineer Dr Hideki Yoshimoto of Tangent, with curatorial direction from Maria Cristina Didero. Rather than simply adding technology to traditional techniques, the project brings artisans and designers together so that the two approaches can influence one another. For fashion and design enthusiasts, it offers an interesting way to think about heritage and materials. A traditional technique can be understood not only as something to preserve, but also as something that can become the starting point for a new creative idea.
For the More Discerning Fashion Enthusiast: Frock Me!
For those who want to go one step further and take a piece of fashion history home with them, Frock Me! offers a different kind of experience. The long-running London vintage fashion fair returns to Kensington Town Hall with more than 100 dealers across three floors, bringing together antique and vintage clothing, jewellery, textiles and pre-loved designer pieces.
This is not simply an exhibition to walk through. Frock Me! is an event you can take part in — browsing the rails, speaking with dealers, discovering pieces from different periods and, if something catches your eye, actually taking it home. For anyone interested in British fashion, that changes the experience completely. Instead of seeing the history of clothing behind glass, you can become part of it by owning a garment, accessory or textile with its own story. Vintage names such as Ossie Clark, Bill Gibb and Biba are among the British references visitors can encounter, alongside pieces from many different periods and styles.
Where: Kensington Town Hall, Hornton Street | Website
Date: Sunday 18 October 2026
Time: 11:00–17:30
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