The organizing principle of Harry Pontefract’s Spring 2026 collection – a dress-up party – provides a framework that unites their distinct characters and brings the evolution of the brand and its pillars to best advantage. These are storytelling, “exploration of body and proportion” and mind-bending techniques. Take Look 19, a suit that was colored hour after hour with pencil and then burnished by hand with a spoon so that “the layers would blend into each other,” the designer said on the call. Look 21 features a Joan of Arc-like character wearing a dress made of “finer than hair” wire filaments, which were cut by a hairdresser and then brushed with magnets.
Even the simplest looking designs are a little simpler. The “nun’s” habit (the designer wants the viewer to assign roles to the figures) is created with a circular pattern. “Harlequin” bodysuits are made of diamond-shaped pieces of hosiery. Each garment is like a party in itself, celebrating craft and imagination, memory and the body. A lumpen-looking T-shirt filled with microbeads that allow it to be manipulated into various shapes; Oversized blazers have shoulders that slope forward; And the “gilded” look achieves the “living sculpture” aspect that Pontefract wanted.
You’ll notice that this review is being posted after the season. The gap is intentional because, as the designer said, Ponte “is kind of its own kind of animal, because it’s not fashion, it’s not art, it’s not one thing or the other.” What it is is extraordinary. Every season Pontefract pushes the limits of what is possible in terms of make. The hours required for clothing are similar to the hours required for pieces of clothing. Yet, despite all this, there is a practical Englishness about the work.
Pontefract said, “Maybe I’m dreaming, but for me I see them as really wearable pieces. That’s why we worked so much on them. I mean it’s nice to have an escape… Click through a series of pieces, it’s always like, ‘What’s going to be the next person and the next person and the next one and the next one?’ This is a nice surprise. And I think I’m hungry for that kind of thing. You want to be surprised. And because next season we’ll probably only make 30 suits. . . ” If so, they will definitely break the mold. Excuse or not, Ponte is always building a bridge between this and the dream world.
