Emilia Wickstead’s Resort 2027 occasion pieces merge architecture with painterly surface
Sculpted gowns and elongated columns in silk shantung and printed taffeta faille define the designer's new capsule collection, where structural precision meets the softness of movement.
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Emilia Wickstead’s Resort 2027 Occasion Capsule collection articulates a familiar paradox in her practice: the architectural silhouette undone by movement, the structured line dissolved into fabric that flows. These are gowns built for moments that demand presence, yet they refuse rigidity.
Silk shantung and printed taffeta faille form the vocabulary here. The sculptor’s hand is evident in the elongated columns and carefully considered proportions, but the painterly impulse interrupts geometry: florals bloom across surfaces, their edges bleeding softly into the cloth as if caught mid fade, whilst sequins scattered through the weave catch and hold the light with an almost casual luminescence.
What emerges is not the severity of structure alone, nor the formlessness of drape, but rather their conversation. A gown catches the body in precisely cut angles, then releases into silk that moves with the wearer’s own rhythm. The printed florals suggest a garden glimpsed through gauze, botanical forms rendered with the loose hand of a painter rather than the clarity of a printer.
The collection photographs beautifully at Badminton House, that baroque setting amplifying the tension between the ornamental and the modern that Wickstead orchestrates so carefully. Against damask wallpaper and gilt frames, her gowns read as contemporary sculpture, yet they belong entirely to the language of occasion dressing.
Available in store and online.
Imagery courtesy of Emilia Wickstead (@emiliawickstead).
