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Fashion 1 min read

Marks & Spencer is doing a runway show at London Fashion Week

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A high street chain that sells more knickers than anyone in Britain is showing on the same schedule as Erdem. Whatever else London Fashion Week is doing this season, it is not pretending to be exclusive.

London Fashion Week September 2026 dates

Thursday 17 to Monday 21 September, on the British Fashion Council's provisional schedule.

The debuts

Marks & Spencer shows for the first time — a see-now-buy-now collection of womenswear and menswear, in the retailer's centenary year in fashion. Mulberry presents Christopher Kane's first collection for the house. McQueen returns with Seán McGirr's London debut, showing men's and womenswear together.

Who else is on it

Burberry, Barbour, Erdem, Simone Rocha, Richard Quinn, Roksanda, Emilia Wickstead and Harris Reed, alongside Aaron Esh, Ashley Williams, Chopova Lowena, KNWLS and Paolo Carzana.

The one that is not a show

H&M is doing something else entirely — a reworking of the fashion show format with photographer Nick Knight and SHOWstudio.

See-now-buy-now is the detail that tells you what M&S is actually attempting. A conventional runway sells to buyers for delivery six months out, which is a trade event that happens to have an audience; see-now-buy-now sells to the person watching, that evening, which turns the show into a shopfront. Very few houses can do it, because it requires the stock to already exist in volume — and a retailer with a hundred years of supply chain is precisely the sort of business that can. For anyone hoping to see any of this in person: the shows themselves are invitation-only, but the schedule reliably grows a public tier of talks, installations and store events during the week, and those are announced late rather than in the provisional schedule.

Source: British Fashion Council checked against the source

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