Emilia Wickstead Resort 2027

Reported by Vogue.

Helen Frankenthaler never made it onto a runway, but Emilia Wickstead just gave her one. For Resort 2027, the London-based designer turned to the mid-century American painter as her latest muse — a recurring obsession with female artists that has quietly become one of fashion's most interesting ongoing creative projects. According to Vogue, Wickstead pinned archival photos of Frankenthaler in her New York studio to the mood board and asked herself a single guiding question: if she were alive today, what would she wear? The answer, it turns out, is extraordinary.

The eveningwear is where the collection earns its headlines. A floor-length gown in a moody, painterly floral — deliberately spattered, evoking the controlled chaos of Frankenthaler's studio — trails a narrow stream of fabric over the shoulder with the kind of elegance that looks effortless and isn't. Wickstead's signature cloqué reappears in sapphire and powder pink, its embossed flowers stretched into something more abstract, more alive. The showstopper is a mini dress and twin set encrusted with sculptural 3D paillettes — layered, oversized, flowering at the shoulders and pockets like something between couture and installation art.

The Other Half of the Wardrobe

But Wickstead is too smart to let a collection live only in the evening. Frankenthaler's personal style — the real-life uniform of a woman who made serious work and looked good doing it — yielded the collection's most quietly covetable pieces. Chunky V-neck cable knits with a 1950s silhouette, gray check wools, and what Wickstead called her "artist's shirts" — roomy gabardine button-downs with exaggerated collars and sleeves — all carry that particular appeal of clothes that belong to a woman with somewhere to be. Floral prints pressed onto raw shantung silk completed the thought, the textured weave deliberately echoing Frankenthaler's unprimed canvases.

The personal stakes are higher than usual this season. Wickstead recently dressed NHS nurse Harriet Sperling — who married Peter Phillips, son of Princess Anne — in a custom lace gown that generated global coverage. It's a reminder that her clothes operate at the intersection of intimate occasion and public spectacle. Still, she insists the point is always wearability. "I'm a very fast dresser," she said, "and I want my customer to know that it can be effortless and fast for them too." After 18 years running her brand, she still designs to fill gaps in her own wardrobe — which might be the most honest thing a designer can say.

When a collection can dress you for a royal wedding and a Tuesday morning in roughly equal measure, that's not range — that's a point of view.

Read the original at Vogue.