DREAMING ELI

'The Court of the Maddest'

Merriest Things Alive

Autumn/Winter 2026 

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At Dreaming Eli’s latest runway presentation during London Fashion Week, designer Elisa Trombatore distilled her language of corsetry, lace, and raw sensuality into a fully realized autumn/winter collection that felt equal parts romantic folklore and contemporary manifesto. Titled The Court of the Maddest, Merriest Things Alive, the collection unfolded as a poetic interrogation of desire, female alliances, and the spectrum of love that exists outside simplistic narratives. A love that is layered, paradoxical, defiant, and resonant with emotional history. 

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Presented in a candlelit space at the Beaconsfield Gallery, the show was theatrical without artifice, drawing on a restrained palette of nudes, blacks, and cream tones that emphasized technique over ornament and silhouette over spectacle. Structured corsetry, Dreaming Eli’s signature, served as both armour and articulation: boned bodices sculpted waists, while deconstructed lace and asymmetric fastenings suggested a controlled unraveling, a deliberate exposure of the garment’s interior logic. 

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The craftsmanship was palpable: raw-edged lace coiled around torsos, sheer tulle and chiffon layered with a sculptural confidence, and delicate filaments of fabric trailing like quotations borrowed from memory. Trombatore’s manipulation of texture and transparency operated as a form of storytelling, every seam and unfinished edge became a signifier of experience, vulnerability, and strength. 

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A standout motif was the tension between restraint and release. In several looks, corsets tightly laced the waist only to give way to cascading layers of fluid fabric; elsewhere, gowns built from rigid structure softened into billowing panels that moved like breath. This choreography of control and surrender, strength and fragility, anchored the collection’s deeper theme of love beyond convention. not simply romantic love, but the love that exists in kinship, in creative communion, and in the bonds between women. 

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Accessories and styling played into this sentiment with incisive precision. Towering heels elongated the body, lending a statuesque poise to the figures, while subtle headpieces and lace veils evoked myth and ritual. One compelling moment saw a model carrying an apple aloft, a symbolic gesture that nodded to temptation, folklore, and the cyclical nature of feminine narratives. 

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More than a fashion show, Dreaming Eli’s AW26 felt like a gathering of archetypes: femmes who are both saints and rebels, woven together by a shared language of craft, desire, and embodied expression. The collection didn’t just dress the body — it conjured presence, carved meaning, and affirmed that sensuality and strength are inseparable. 

In a season marked by depersonalized spectacle, Trombatore’s work stood out as intimate, profound, and deeply poetic — a testament to fashion’s capacity to articulate not only style but story, emotion, and collective imagination.

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Credits
 

Art Direction by Arian De Vos @youcancallmearian
Styling by Karen Binns @karen_binnszzzz
Production by Antony Waller @ant_waller
Casting by Chloe Rosolek @chloerosolek @cdr.casting
PR by Lobby PR @lobby.pr
Makeup by Carly Utting @mac_carlyutting and The M.A.C Pro Team for @maccosmeticsuki
Hair by Danilo Giangreco for Revlon Professional @danilogiangreco_hair @revlonprofessionaluk
Nails by @hannahbnt using @the_gelbottle_inc
Movement Direction by Angelica Wolanska @angelicawska
Music by Xiaoqiao @xiaoqiao0o
Photography by Aitor Rosas for Iker Aldama @ikaldama
Videography by Craig Maddison @maddsinceeightyone
Hosiery by Heist Studios @heiststudios
3D Accessories Designer Harry Mack @macfbx

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Samples can be requested at WE ARE VILLAGE PR