Christopher Kane's First Mulberry Show: Axe Bags, Organza Scales and a Roaring Ovation

Christopher Kane showed his first collection for Mulberry on Sunday 20 September at the Queen Elizabeth II Centre in Westminster, on the official London Fashion Week schedule. The collection is Spring/Summer 2027 and lands in stores in January 2027, TheIndustry.fashion reports. Kane made it with his sister Tammy Kane, and at the end of the show, Wallpaper* reports, he received a 'roaring ovation'.

TheIndustry.fashion calls it Mulberry's 'first runway show in six years'. Wallpaper*'s London Fashion Week guide had put the last physical runway show at 2017, and neither Wallpaper*'s review nor The Business of Fashion gives a figure, so we are attributing the six years rather than asserting it. Either way, a British house best known for one bag has not stood on a runway for a long time, and a designer who closed his own London label in June 2023, as Wallpaper*'s guide records, has come back to do it.

What was on the runway

Wallpaper*'s Jack Moss lists the pieces: axe-shaped shoulder bags fastened with the Postman's Lock, boxy notched-edge leather that refers to the Bayswater, enlarged Piccadilly bags in mock croc, iridescent organza minidresses cut like scales, a vinyl trompe-l'oeil tartan overcoat, oversized polos carrying the vintage logo and parkas with the extended hoods of the 1990s. TheIndustry.fashion adds a Chop bag and axe-shaped heels. The crenellated edges were taken from the Bayswater, it reports, and the axe motif refers to the founder Roger Saul and the brand's Somerset origins. A 1980s raincoat was reproduced and a 1990s sweatshirt revived; TheIndustry.fashion calls the approach a way of saying Mulberry 'without relying on a logo'.

A bag brand back on a runway, with a designer who cuts the house crest into an axe.

What Kane and the critics said

Kane put the argument in one line to Wallpaper*: 'For me, heritage is a foundation, not a limitation.' And another: 'I want to write my own codes.' Tim Blanks, reviewing for The Business of Fashion, called the collection an audacious reformulation of the heritage brand's iconography. BoF also sets out the commercial stakes: after what it calls 'years of dwindling profits and missing trends', chief executive Andrea Baldo's aim is for Mulberry to 'evolve from a leather goods brand into a culturally relevant British lifestyle brand'. The runway show is the visible part of that plan.

For London the point is the schedule. The same five days brought Alexander McQueen back to the city on 20 September and hands Burberry the closing slot on Monday 21 September. Mulberry, a Somerset house showing in Westminster, sat between them. The collection itself is four months away; the verdicts, for now, are the reviews above.