Marks & Spencer made its London Fashion Week debut with an archive-led, immediately shoppable collection, marking 100 years since the British retailer began selling clothing.
Held at London’s Design Museum, the catwalk featured 41 womenswear and 16 menswear looks created by Marks & Spencer’s UK-based design teams, with models Jodie Kidd and Karen Elson among those walking the runway. Half of the collection is priced below £50, maintaining the retailer’s emphasis on accessible fashion as it continues to strengthen its style credentials.
The presentation moved M&S beyond its recent consumer-facing fashion activations, which have included catwalks in Ibiza and at Silverstone, and placed the high street giant on the official London Fashion Week schedule for the first time.
A century of M&S design reworked for today
Designers from the retailer researched the M&S Archive in Leeds as the collection took shape, studying products from different decades alongside their silhouettes, materials, prints and styling details. Based at the University of Leeds, the archive holds more than 72,000 historical items.
The team drew on specific references, adapting the designs through new fabrics, proportions and cuts. The 1960s twinset appears in modern knitted sets, while wide-leg jeans draw on 1970s shapes. The company’s established lingerie business also influenced underwear-as-outerwear looks, along with camisoles and lace bodies.
A tan leather Borg jacket was one of the clearest examples of the collection’s archival influence, drawing directly from a St Michael design. Meanwhile, the tailoring worn by Christy Turlington in M&S campaigns during the 1990s was reinterpreted through a sharp black tuxedo paired with a crisp white shirt.
The menswear line drew on the 1980s for its velvet tailoring, alongside a dry-wax car coat, Japanese selvedge denim and heritage-check outerwear. Elsewhere, a Per Una shearling jacket was reimagined from an archive piece, while a bespoke floral motif featured across a skirt and dress was developed from two historic prints.
M&S Chief Executive Stuart Machin said: “Our first London Fashion Week collection is designed around that DNA; fashion that is stylish but wearable, made with outstanding quality and always value for money.”
The catwalk connects directly to retail
The presentation used a “see now, buy now” model, with products released through Marks & Spencer’s digital channels and ten flagship stores across the UK and Ireland immediately after the show. A stream will also be available on M&S.com from 6pm.
The format delivers the retail element outlined when M&S announced its shoppable LFW debut, avoiding the months-long gap between runway presentation and store delivery associated with many fashion-week collections.
The collection is also available to international customers through 46 M&S direct-to-consumer websites. In France, Germany, the Netherlands and Poland, Zalando’s Live Hub is hosting the presentation, giving the featured products a potential audience of 22 million customers.
The activity builds on the retailer’s European fulfilment partnership with Zalando’s ZEOS, which supports Marks & Spencer’s continental DTC operations through a shared stock pool and European logistics network.
M&S fashion business continues to develop
In FY26, M&S reported a 10.2% share of the fashion market, alongside a year-on-year rise of five percentage points in its style-perception score. Its customer numbers among those aged under 35 also rose by 16%.
The retailer’s 116 UK-based designers work across womenswear, lingerie, menswear, kidswear and home. Its wider fashion strategy includes investment in stores, supply-chain modernisation, technology and data, supporting its ambition to double online sales profitably.
John Lyttle, Managing Director of Fashion, Home & Beauty at M&S, said: “The show reflects the progress we have made, but it is not an end point.”