The preview for Margaret Howell’s fall 2026 collection took place at the brand’s Paris store near the Église de la Madeleine, where the usual menswear and womenswear had been cleared to make way for the upcoming season. A crisp olive green railway mac lined with wool herringbone caught the eye near the entrance. But the real story was further inside, where Ewa — manager of the Margaret Howell London Workroom — sat sewing the collar stand of a blue cotton shirt with pale stripes. Who needs background music when there’s the ambient, purposeful thrum of a sewing machine?

The London Workroom is a newly opened facility in North London where the brand is doubling down on its founding commitment to shirt-making. Margaret Howell began her career making the perfect shirt from a home studio, pitching her bed above her machine because space was tight. More than fifty years later, that same dedication has its own dedicated space — machinists assembling London Workroom shirts, each carrying a black label, in three to four hours and some 12,000 stitches. A small display traced that arc from origin to present, and it was quietly moving for what it said about the consistency of the brand’s values.

The fall collection itself was shaped, characteristically, around what a regular client might actually be missing. A relaxed tuxedo jacket and trousers with a pleated poplin shirt offered a solution for occasions that call for something more formal without demanding full black tie. Cotton shirts with frilled collars were designed to create a fresh neckline under existing sweaters and jackets — an easy update to things already in the wardrobe. A wool linen check skirt paired with a sweater landed as an effortless coordinated look, in step with the polished-bookish sensibility emerging elsewhere this season. A navy collarless dress with a dropped waist was reedited from the archives — apparently one of Howell’s own favourite pieces.

Cold-weather accessories, as always, were a strength. The standout was a stylised tam-o’-shanter in lambswool, finished with a small pom-pom — a flat bonnet with enough charm that, as the review noted, wearing one on the streets of Paris should reasonably be expected to attract compliments about your beret.