Fashion Week 2026 / LABRUM
LABRUM | AW26
LABRUM AW26 | THREADS OF OSMOSIS
LABRUM London’s Threads of Osmosis was the latter.
Under the direction of Foday Dumbuya, the collection unfolded as a meditation on exchange on what seeps through fabric the way culture seeps through generations. Osmosis, in scientific terms, is a quiet transfer. In LABRUM’s language, it becomes something far more charged: migration not as disruption, but as enrichment.
Tailoring remains central to the house vocabulary precise, deliberate, anchored in British sartorial codes. Yet here it was softened, infused with West African references that never felt decorative, but structural. Colour carried meaning. Embroidery traced lineage. Silhouettes moved between formality and ease, between ceremony and street.
There is always a political undercurrent in LABRUM’s work, but it never overwhelms the garment. Instead, it sharpens it. A jacket becomes more than cut and cloth; it becomes testimony. A print becomes cartography. A thread becomes connection.
Threads of Osmosis suggested that identity is not fixed instead it absorbs, adapts, reshapes. Much like fabric responding to the body, culture responds to time.
What stood out most was the clarity. The confidence to present heritage without nostalgia. To honour British tailoring while reframing who it belongs to. To show that tradition itself is porous.
For LUMEN, the resonance lies in this quiet strength. In the idea that fashion can hold complexity without losing elegance.
LABRUM does not shout its message.
It weaves it.
BACKSTAGE
Backstage Photographer Stefan Knauer
RUNWAY
Potographer Stefan Knauer
LABRUM
Autumn/Winter 2026
Threads of Osmosis is the second chapter in our LABRUM trilogy.
Sound was the first archive. Textile is the second. In SS26, Cultural Osmosis, we explored sound as the first carrier of culture. Before borders. Before passports. Before the idea of nation-states. Sound moved freely through rhythm, oral tradition, highlife, prayer, laughter. It crossed oceans without permission. It belonged to the people.
The garments you see here are not metaphors. They are propositions. They test ideas physically on the body, in motion and in community. Cloth is history you can touch. It absorbs climate, labour, belief, ritual and resistance. Textiles record migration not through dates, but through weave structures, fibres, motifs and cuts. They move quietly across continents; West Africa, India, China, Europe, and Britain, transforming as they encounter new hands, new climates, new meanings.
This collection is not nostalgic. It does not look at textile history from a distance. It operates inside it. Each silhouette is an experiment in cultural osmosis, asking how structure and fluidity, discipline and movement, heritage and evolution, can coexist on the body.
Foday’s journey from Freetown to Cyprus to London lives inside this work. But this collection is not only his; it is for the people. For every migrant story stitched into a hem. For every parent who carried fabric in a suitcase. For every culture that refused to disappear.
Our fabrics themselves have travelled. They are developed through bespoke fabrication across Japan, Hong Kong, India, Turkey, Portugal, Scotland, Italy, France and Sierra Leone. Each place leaves something behind. Each technique alters the next. That is osmosis. That is exchange.
British tailoring remains the foundation; precise, structured, intentional, but it becomes a base for global craft. Tailoring reaches across menswear and womenswear equally this season. Suiting is empowerment. Structure is protection. Form is pride.
Our updated passport print carries new stamps and motifs reflecting the ever changing nature of migration. It is laser etched into Japanese indigo denim, turning travel into texture. The edge is always in the detail.
Our Freetown print, depicting scenes from Sierra Leone, becomes craft through appliqué and hand embroidery on wool outerwear, memory stitched directly onto structure.
The cowrie shell artwork, also seen in our upcoming adidas running collection, is developed through traditional hand embroidery, grounding movement in heritage.
The cord appliqué dress draws from West African braided hairstyles; hair as architecture, hair as identity, hair as language. It carries the Nomoli and the Olokun flower, symbols of spirituality, protection and ancestral presence. Fashion becomes archive.
Crocheted bags reference Sierra Leonean pottery and raffia craft, and woven textures echo vessels that once used to carry water and grain.
Jewellery this season, in collaboration with Florence West, explores movement and form in hand-shaped brass sculptural pieces forged through traditional metalsmithing.
Headwear references the accordion-shaped hats of Agadez warriors, garments of finery worn at migration crossroads, where cultures gather rather than divide.
Hair is graphic. Threaded. Tensioned. Looped into circular coils, silhouettes of resilience.
Makeup layers colour and texture like molecular exchange; a study of osmosis on skin.
This show is also a tribute as we honour the legendary Ebo Taylor, whose music has long been the heartbeat of LABRUM. Highlife is itself osmosis, West African rhythm shaped by jazz, funk and diaspora exchange. The soundtrack, created by Juls, reflects Ebo Taylor’s spirit. It carries the warmth of brass, the pulse of migration, the softness of memory. It reminds us that culture does not stand still. It travels. It transforms. It survives.
The world is better when we understand each other’s cultures. When we see migration not as threat, but as exchange. When we recognise that the fabric of Britain, of anywhere, is woven from elsewhere.
This show is for the diaspora. For the immigrant. For the craftsman. For the next generation watching from the side of the runway.
Culture moves.
Threads connect us.
And we are all part of the weave.
adidas x LABRUM
Showcased alongside LABRUM’s AW26 collection were select pieces from the upcoming adidas x
LABRUM running capsule, fusing cultural heritage and performance. An edit of the reimagined running apparel - including shorts, singlets, and compression sleeves - debuted alongside an all-new adidas x LABRUM Adizero Evo SL performance silhouette. The full adidas x LABRUM running collection will be announced on Tuesday 03 March.
Potographer Stefan Knauer
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