Lueder’s Honours Her Past During AW26
Words by: Anya Duncan
In Ghosts of My Life, Marie Lueder did not trade in colour, but in memory. The runway was staged in shades — formidable greys, blacks and near-whites — which evoked pale whispers of something half-remembered. These tones were her chosen hauntings. Each look was washed in a fog that made the collection’s sudden flashes of red feel like open wounds or warning flares.
Red appeared as punctuation: insistent, arterial, alive.
Layering continued this visual language of memory, as each garment was piled atop something contrary in texture. An asymmetric pinstriped skirt, for example, slipped aside to reveal a delicate lace tight. The tight’s gesture of exposure became clouded beneath the skirt’s rigidity; two separate memories lingering in a confused coalition. In another look, a hooded shirt was wrapped across the torso like a self-fashioned shield, only to be cinched by a structured corset jacket that halted abruptly beneath the belly button. The body was both armoured and revealed.
Zips caught the light like small blades, metallic glints in garments that seemed born of some soft dystopia — a world not yet broken, but bracing. One figure emerged with their face sealed behind a metal mask, wings of silver stretching across mouth and cheekbones. It was as though speech itself had fossilised. The effect was neither violent nor submissive; these were not ghosts that drift. They confront.
The fabric of Lueder’s AW26 collection appeared tugged and twisted, as though rescued from some medieval skirmish and reborn in stretch cotton. It moved with the body so that every stride revealed the careful violence of its construction, cut-outs flashing skin beneath a lattice of straps. One model passed in a hooded knit, elongated and spectral, the hood casting a shadow that made the face seem carved from stone. The knit was distressed, laddered in places, sleeves stretched beyond the fingertips. It suggested vulnerability, yet the silhouette was commanding.
There were breastplate motifs too: moulded panels stitched into tops that contoured the chest, creating an illusion of armour without sacrificing the intimacy of fabric. Over these, gauzy tunics and translucent skirts caught the air while blurring the body beneath. Protection and exposure, stitched into the same breath.
And then came the final apparition: American actress Rose McGowan in electric red leather. The bell-sleeved jacket (thick-collared and patchworked) burned against the prior restraint. Paired with figure-hugging black trousers, it felt like a sudden screech from the other side. Between delicate hints of misremembered references, this jacket lurched at the audience with bold determination.
Lueder’s harsh, structured leather sat beside coddling wraps and softened fabrics, tracing lines back to her own history while leaving space for ours. The references were personal but porous. One could imagine the audience’s own memories flickering in the folds — in the protective layers, in the tension between contradicting forces.
Not everything here strained towards rarefied couture. In fact, much of it seemed destined for London’s streetwear pulse: T-shirts reimagined with precision, an androgynous white dress tied in bows across arms and stomach, well-constructed trousers that could just as easily brush past you on the Overground. For every conceptual flourish, there were ready-to-wear anchors — garments that, styled differently, might dissolve seamlessly into everyday life.
What makes the collection linger is its tension. Fabrics that appeared torn were in fact meticulously engineered. Silhouettes were rendered in stretch, in mesh, in materials that breathed and yielded.
Lueder understands that ghosts do not belong only to grand houses or gilded halls. They live in club bathrooms and council estates, in teenage bedrooms and fashion week front rows. They wear lace and leather, but also cotton and jersey. This sporadic mixture of wearability felt deliberate — democratic, even.
The collection suggests that memory is not hierarchical. The people who haunt us come dressed in all manner of cloth: from humble T-shirts to deep red feather scarves. And in Lueder’s AW26, each of them was given form.
SHOW CREDITS:
Creative Direction: Marie Lueder | Music Danny Harle | Styling: Tati Cotliar | Set Designer: Alice Jacobs | Light Designer : Petter
Casting: Emma Matell | Hair: Lachlan Mackie | Make-up: Leana Ardelanu | Production: Blonstein, Laura Vaughn
Executive Producer: Claire Murphy | Movement Director: David Varhegyi | Lookbook Photography: Ottilie Landmark | Textile Design: Benjamin Grund