Romance and A Reset at Talia Byre

Talia Byre’s Spring/Summer 2027 collection marked an era of change for the brand and the woman – “It’s a little bit sexy, a little bit easy,” says designer Talia Lipkin-Connor

There was something different about the Talia Byre woman this season, a logical deduction, perhaps, given that the notion behind the collection was transformation. In fact, there were a few threads running through it. “It’s a mix of lots of different things,” Talia Lipkin-Connor – the designer behind the label – said in a preview a few days before the show. Where in the past, Lipkin-Connor might have started with one reference in mind – a Deborah Levy memoir, a place, a particular person, childhood memories and nostalgia, family history – this season is broader, splintering out into a prism of ideas. For Spring/Summer 2027 there was the notion of clothing as a placebo, and there was romance, resetting and reimagining the Byre woman. There was strength, too, hence the collection’s name – Tuff, as in tough. And there were bridal references, following on from the brand’s recent expansion into bespoke bridalwear. “Maybe it’s hard to put your finger on it exactly, but that’s the beauty of it. I want it to be a bit of a change up, for people to find it a bit unexpected compared to past collections.”

One by one, models appeared from behind a curtain in oversized shirts with cinched waists, bibs and collars exploded with baroque ruffles, halterneck dresses with low scooping backs, raw-hemmed peplum jackets and tight-fitting bootleg trousers. They skulked around an almost clinical white catwalk, lit up bright, in Marylebone’s Hellenic Centre to synthy music, composed especially for the occasion by Luca Mantero. One wore a green-striped quilted fencing jacket – one of Lipkin-Connor’s favourite pieces this season – and powdery teal cargo trousers. Another wore a belted shearling jacket. Custom-developed paisley prints covered studded belts and jackets across the collection. “Paisley was something I was deeply obsessed with at the beginning of the season,” she says. This obsession with one particular motif recurs each season and has seen tartan, animal print and the polka dot take precedence in past collections. Wedged boots with studding and Brogue-like mules, designed by Lipkin-Connor and produced by Topshop, teased a collaboration to come later this year.

The collection started with a neutral palette in mind, a bridal palette actually, with lots of white and cream. Colour – jolting magentas and Irish greens, grey blues and dusty pinks, her signature stripes askew – was injected later. Those stripes were reimagined too, as Lipkin-Connor introduced moiré into her material lexicon, its grain creating a variation that looks almost iridescent with a stripe-like effect. “A fresh take in a world of stripes.”

Old met new as signature asymmetrical shapes and bias-cut silhouettes with nipped waists returned in new iterations, updated in different colourways and lengths: tighter, whiter, shorter, longer, magenta. That preppiness heralded by the brand was apparent through Lipkin-Connor’s V-neck cable knit jumpers, inspired by original Lucinda Byre designs – the by-now well-known family lore and legacy of her great uncle’s Liverpool-based boutique to which Lipkin-Connor’s brand pays tribute to – and recreated in a superfine mohair. “I like the heritage idea, the preppiness of some of those pieces – modernised.” Classic corset tops peeped out from behind jacquard jackets with strong geometric silhouettes. Mini dresses were a new idea and a focus for the season, “girls-night-out dresses”, as Lipkin-Connor describes them. 

Frill and sheer detailing leant towards the romantic. Shirt sleeves and cropped bibs had vivacious frills and ruffles, almost pirate-y, and corsets were made in lace. That romanticism is something Lipkin-Connor has previously, even if unintentionally, avoided. “It is romantic and femme – but not girly and not too clean.” Hemlines were frayed, threads free – a housecode at this point, much like the bias stripes, asymmetry, layering. “I always like a bit of wear and tear, the raw edges – there’s a little bit of fucked up in it. You’ve still got a continuation of those classic Talia Byre codes but we’re also moving it on, doing something new.”  

A starting point for the collection was the idea of clothing as a placebo. At each end of the room was a large-scale installation by artist Dillwyn Smith. From his Placebo Painting series, each a panel of translucent coloured fabric strips that ran perpendicular, appearing almost woven. ‘Paintings’ suggest they are something they are not. “Something can appear one way but be something else entirely. I like thinking of clothes in this way,” says the designer. “When you put them on you can become someone else, something different.”

This, Lipkin-Connor tells me, feeds into the bridal component beyond those romantic embellishments, something that she has been exploring since a customer asked her for a bespoke bridal look last year. Lending itself to more than just the colour palette, she points out that bridalwear is a ceremonial costume, worn (typically) for one day. With it comes this psychological potency, this fashioned ritualism – a placebo effect – which she’s long found fascinating. “Certain clothing or dress codes, in this instance ceremonial dress codes, make us feel a type of way. And I began thinking about how this is applicable to a woman’s everyday wardrobe.” Nowadays, a wedding party can necessitate many different outfits. From her cream-coloured raw-edged motor jacket to her tight-fitting moire bootleg trousers, Lipkin-Connor imagines these in and outside of a bridal context. “You don’t really need to get married to have all these amazing looks,” she says. “I was curious about bringing [bridalwear] into everyday dress. Not necessarily in white, but I liked the white at the beginning – it goes back to that idea of a transformation and reset.” 

The Talia Byre woman is changing, but that’s not to say she’s less sure of herself. She knows who she is. “There’s an ease to her, a coolness … maybe a boyishness, she’s not prim and proper but she’s aspirational and everyday, fresh, but not overly polished. She’s grown up a bit,” says the designer, who has a pinboard of women hanging on the wall of her studio, Charlotte Gainsbourg featuring heavily. 

An amalgam of ideas, sure, and a marker of change, indeed, but a collection as cohesive as ever, as distinctly Talia Byre as any that came before.