Dreaming Eli SS27
Puts Dreamers in Exile
Writer: Anya Duncan
The collection, Dreamers in Exile, arrived at St Bartholomew’s Hospital, a location with enough history to make almost any garment feel haunted. Barts was founded in 1123 and remains the oldest hospital in England operating on its original site. Its current buildings were largely rebuilt in the 18th century by architect James Gibbs, with the North Wing containing the Great Hall and William Hogarth’s monumental paintings.
It is a place built around the body: its sickness, its survival, its repair.
So too are Trombatore’s clothes.
The corsetry. The cascading tulle. The lace that appears to unravel as the models move. Elisa Trombatore has built Dreaming Eli around the contradictions of femininity (softness and danger against fragility and strength), and those signatures have become almost impossible to separate from the label itself.
But this season, something new arrived. Trousers. It sounds like a small departure. For Dreaming Eli, it is not.
One of my favourite pairs sat low on the waist, their fabric ballooning outwards like the sleeves of a pirate blouse that had somehow found itself around the legs. Another was laced in black, resembling stockings stretched into the shape of trousers. They were strange, playful and, most importantly, unexpected. After seasons of corsets and lingerie-coded silhouettes, there was something refreshing about seeing Trombatore give the lower half of the body its own language.
The usual cascading tulle and corsetry remained, but they felt different against the hospital’s centuries-old walls. One look carried corset lacing across the bust and stomach, creating black lattices over the shirt. Another allowed lace to run from the neck, down one arm, before meeting a corset covered in tulle that fell asymmetrically down the opposite leg. All white, the look seemed almost angelic until you looked closer. The construction was anything but innocent.
This was my favourite of the night.
There was something about the balance of it one arm dressed, one leg disappearing beneath layers of tulle, the body caught between exposure and concealment. Dreaming Eli has always understood that the most interesting place for femininity is somewhere between what is shown and what is hidden. The white only made that contradiction louder.
And then there were the braids.
Long, almost impossibly long braids trained the models as they moved through the space, sometimes being gathered into the hands like purses. They became another part of the clothing another object to carry, another weight attached to the body. Hair became accessory. Nothing quite stayed in its expected place.
That seems particularly appropriate for Dreamers in Exile. Exile suggests displacement, a body separated from its usual surroundings, and these clothes seemed to exist in a similar state of uncertainty. Trousers become sleeves. Hair becomes a handbag. Lace becomes structure. A corset becomes something closer to armour.
There is a reason the collection still feels unmistakably Dreaming Eli despite these departures. Trombatore’s work has always been interested in women who refuse to choose between opposing versions of themselves. Her own description of the brand centres on the power and beauty of contradiction, whilst her designs are made to accommodate real bodies through adjustable, lace-up construction.
This season, that contradiction simply found somewhere new to live.
The result was a collection that felt familiar without being repetitive. Somewhere between the hospital walls, the trailing braids and those strange, beautiful trousers, Dreaming Eli seemed to find another body to inhabit.
A dreamer, perhaps.
But one no longer quite where we expected her to be.
