LCF MA26 | MA Fashion Design Technology (Womenswear)

MA Fashion Design Technology (Womenswear) at London College of Fashion, UAL aims to redefine contemporary fashion practice, combining social responsibility with creative experimentation. Exploring themes of femininity, memory, control, and heritage, this year's cohort presents an inventive, confident, and visionary body of work.

Below, we take a closer look at the catwalk and exhibition, highlighting collective themes and individual projects that push the boundaries of womenswear.

“DEFIANCE and URGENCY emerged as the two dominant forces that would unite the MA Womenswear Class of '26, against a backdrop of an ever-more turbulent and incomprehensible world. Our community of critical thinkers, makers and rule-breakers have, in their own ways, sought to know more, to say more and to listen more than ever before. Choosing NOT to take the easy ride was intentional; a catharsis was found in the creative process – each stitch, strike of a hammer, the shattering of objects – an act of resistance and a reminder that creativity can never be underestimated.” - Dr. Nabil El-Nayal, Course Leader, MA Fashion Design Technology (Womenswear)

Femininity: strength, softness, and resilience

Across the catwalk and showroom, femininity is explored as a layered condition, one that holds strength and softness in equal measure. Several collections draw directly from personal histories and inherited forms of female power. Karolina Kalisciak’s project reflects on the strength and femininity of women across generations, reinterpreting Slavic craftsmanship through contemporary leatherwork. Lingle Zhao’s The Soft Warrior, reframes softness as a form of protection, rooted in the ritual of the shower as an intimate sanctuary. Emotional vulnerability is translated into garments that balance fluid drape with armour-inspired structure.

Elsewhere, femininity emerges through lightness and movement. Yuting Zhou works with transparency, layering, and motion, allowing form to respond to the body rather than control it. Softness becomes a method, quietly shaping silhouettes that shift with movement and behaviour.

In the showroom, multiple projects reclaim vulnerability as collective strength. Nana Cui’s collection gathers women who share the experience of objectification while wearing tights, transforming these fragile, disposable materials into sculpted armour; permanent emblems of resilience and extended material life. Weining Wang reflects on “steel women” in 1940s China, examining how women of that era negotiated tenderness and strength in order to live as themselves.

Memory, identity and integrity

Memory - familial, cultural, and material - runs deeply through the womenswear collections. Several projects use construction as a metaphor for lived experience. Shijia Liu asks whether an entire outfit can exist as a single, continuous piece, peeling away layer by layer like an onion, while remaining structurally connected. Inspired by Chinese ink landscape scrolls and the concept of liubai (leaving blank space), clothing is imagined as infinite and unfolding.

Aishwarya Singh’s oversized silhouettes appear as vessels for memory, shaped by returns to family, culture, and material history. Crafted predominantly from deadstock fabrics, these garments embed sustainability into acts of remembrance. Hai Li Sung explores memory through fragmentation and reconstruction, expressing dissociation and resilience through sculptural forms, layered structures, and the tension between raw and refined edges.

Control, structure and boundaries

Many designers confront systems of control and the ways womenswear both enforces and resists them. On the catwalk, Yulu Hou examines the hidden violence embedded in capitalist systems of productivity and power, where dressing becomes a quiet mechanism of control, presenting bodies as uniform, polished, and regulated.

In the showroom, collections address workplace discrimination, power imbalance, and self-protection. Carol Tong’s ‘On the Verge Of’ explores fashion as a tool for confronting discomfort within professional environments, while Ying Xin builds silhouettes around the image of the victimised woman, expressing tension between vulnerability and defence.

Boundaries, physical and psychological, are a recurring concern. Foqiang Xu’s Boundaries of Silence considers how strength can be held through structure rather than display, informed by observations of commuting women and their subtle bodily adjustments in shared urban spaces.

Heritage and the natural world

Heritage, folklore, and the natural environment form a rich foundation for many showroom collections. Eva Clarkson’s Tools of the Trade traces the commuter’s journey from countryside to capital, drawing on the durability and honesty of builders, plumbers, and scaffolders, with fabrics such as checks, plaids, leather, and tweed. Alice Ellingsen Barron focuses on Scandinavian folklore as a feminist framework, where spirits, ghosts, and shapeshifters embody the forces of forests, lakes, and mines.

Nature operates as both metaphor and material language. Sanjana Ghosh’s Go Fly a Kite frames human existence through movement and resilience, likening life to navigating shifting winds. Elsewhere, fear itself becomes a site of transformation. Yiju Tsai’s Oscillæ explores anxiety through the tactile and auditory discomfort of insect sounds, using material experimentation and exposure as tools to reconstruct beauty from unease. Garments oscillate between protection and vulnerability, embracing tension as an aesthetic of resilience.

A cohort shaping the future of womenswear

The MA Fashion Design Technology (Womenswear) graduates of 2026 reveal how womenswear can respond to the forces of time, nature, and society, reimagining femininity, redefining structure, and forging a path for the next generation of design.

An invite-only catwalk, presenting collections from LCF’s Menswear and Womenswear, will take place at The Chancery Rosewood as part of the official London Fashion Week schedule, - watch live on Instagram, Thursday 19 February at 6pm.

The LCF MA26 | School of Design and Technology Postgraduate Exhibition is open from 17 – 24 February 2026, Monday – Saturday, 10am - 5pm at London College of Fashion, UAL, East Bank campus.