Charlie Constantinou came into this season looking for a reset. Where previous collections had been built around character and narrative, fall 2026 pulled back toward something more foundational — a renewed focus on the fundamentals of garment making, and a single organising concept: uniform.

Not the kind of uniform you might immediately associate with a designer known for his hand-wrought, gorp-inflected approach. Constantinou was looking further back — at military dress codes from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, at Lord Nelson and Napoleon, at the formal rigour and romanticised silhouettes of a period when uniforms were designed to project authority and identity in equal measure. “I’m really fascinated by these romanticized, almost costume-y silhouettes and details,” he said. “Though of course they’re deeply impractical in terms of function, so it was about transforming that into something that’s actually more wearable.”

The translation was precise and considered. A stone grey mackintosh and a padded chore jacket both carried asymmetrical fastenings that recalled a historical lieutenant’s jacket, with jutting epaulettes and shoulder tabs that sat somewhere between functional and ceremonial. A hooded zip-up sweater with a nipped-in storm flap arrived with punchy purple appliqués echoing the ornate gilt frogging of an admiral’s uniform. Traditionally decorative pleating and braiding details were reimagined as toggles that introduced a degree of modularity — allowing seemingly strict forms to be loosened and adapted, which quietly subverted the rigidity the reference implied.

That tension between uniformity and individuality was the collection’s central argument. Constantinou resolved it through colour — a cold-dyed palette spanning British Redcoat scarlet, camo fatigue khaki and dip-dyed blacks bleeding into ice blues. No two garments would come out the same, he said. “It’s about evoking the sense of togetherness that uniform provides, while also contradicting it.” The handcraft that has always defined his work ensured that even within a framework built on conformity, each piece remained distinctly, irreducibly its own.