Issue #212 July 2026

Week of 12 July 2026

Lisa’s take

Every portfolio I look at shows finished work. Barely any of them show what the work was actually for.

The brief is not a formality. It is the evidence that you can read a problem and respond to it. Without it, I am looking at aesthetics. With it, I am looking at thinking.

What a brief should include

It does not need to be long. Customer profile, season or occasion, price architecture, any constraints you were working within. Three sentences is enough. What matters is that I can see the box you were working inside.

The brief reveals your priorities

When I read a brief alongside the work, I can see whether you understood the customer, whether you respected the commercial constraints, whether you made interesting decisions within a tight frame. That is what buying and design directors are actually assessing. Not the output. The judgement.

If you did not have a formal brief

Write one retrospectively. Look at the work you produced and reverse-engineer the brief it was answering. This is a useful exercise anyway. It forces you to articulate what you were actually trying to do.

Your portfolio is a conversation. The brief is your opening line.

Anyway, here's your week in fashion.

The week in fashion

Paris couture week just handed us two creative director debuts, a designer's old jumpers going under the hammer, and a British label quietly proving it belongs on the same schedule as the giants.

Chanel's New Chapter

Matthieu Blazy's first couture outing for Chanel landed this week, and by all accounts it was a serious, considered debut rather than a victory lap. He's inherited a house built on strict codes: tweed, pearls, camellias. The job now is knowing which of those codes to keep and which to quietly bend. Early signs are that he knows exactly which threads to pull.

Dior, Sharpened

Jonathan Anderson's latest couture collection for Dior arrived with the precision he's built his name on. Pleats cut like knife edges, restraint where a lesser designer would reach for spectacle. This is Anderson doing what he does best, taking a codebook everyone thinks they understand and rewriting the grammar underneath it.

British Fashion Needs Backing

The British Fashion Council used couture week as its moment to lobby the new government directly, arguing the industry needs real investment or it will keep losing talent and manufacturing to Paris and Milan. It's not a new argument, but the timing makes it land harder. London's design schools keep producing brilliant graduates. London's industry keeps failing to give them somewhere to stay.

Margiela's Wardrobe, Under the Hammer

Martin Margiela, the designer who spent a career refusing to be photographed, is having his personal wardrobe and archive material sold at auction. For someone who built a whole philosophy around anonymity, there's something quietly funny about his actual jumpers becoming collector's items. Expect the final prices to make even his most devoted fans wince.

The Quiet British Couture House to Watch

Standing Ground showed a couture collection in Paris this season, proof that serious British tailoring doesn't need a French address to earn a seat at the table. It's the kind of story that gets buried under the big house headlines, and it shouldn't be. Keep an eye on where this label goes next.

Sustainability, One Upcycled Piece at a Time

Designer Gina Corrieri released a new upcycled sportswear collection this month, built from reworked jerseys rather than fresh yardage. It's a small collection sitting next to all that couture headline news above, but it's doing the harder work: proving circular fashion can look genuinely desirable, not just responsible.

Couture week is a good reminder of why this industry is worth watching closely: new hands on old houses, quiet British labels doing the real work, and a market that's still working out what it actually wants to buy.

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