Clara Chu AW26
Clara Chu’s AW26 offering for London Fashion Week was a short, brilliant thesis on value. What if the relics of the domestic; a toaster, a mop head, a mismatched curtain, were recast as objects of desire? The result was a witty, tactile parade of accessories that felt as much like pop art sculptures as they did wardrobe workhorses, and it landed exactly where it should; in the joyful, slightly subversive heart of London’s creative scene.
Making her seasonal debut on the LFW schedule, Clara Chu presented her AW26 accessories collection during London Fashion Week, staging a presentation that favoured intimacy and interaction over theatrical runway spectacle, an apt choice for a designer whose pieces beg to be touched.
If you’ve been tracking sustainable accessory makers, Chu’s vocabulary will feel familiar yet refreshingly literal: upcycling, reclaimed offcuts and found objects. For AW26 she leaned into household ephemera; CDs, toaster parts, bath mat textures, cable covers, and upholstery offcuts then paired them with more conventional trims to create something playful and surprisingly refined. The mash up read like domestic pop art translated into functional silhouettes; shoulder bags, mini carpet bags, cardholders and belts that all wore their provenance like a design credential.
Beyond the immediate cleverness, Clara Chu’s AW26 taps into two running currents at LFW; the celebration of craftsmanship and a playful reappraisal of everyday materials. Critics and trend houses flagged a wider “playful upcycling” moment across the schedule this season, where designers leaned into nostalgia, make do ingenuity and the visible labor of reworking deadstock into desirable formats. Chu’s collection is a tidy case study; accessible, Instagram friendly pieces that also have a credible craft story.
There’s a pleasure in work that makes you look twice at a mop head, at a curtain sample, at the way something was always meant to be used; then refuses that meaning and becomes something covetable. Clara Chu’s AW26 is mischievous without being gimmicky, rigorous without being forbidding. In a season that celebrated London’s knack for characterful invention, these were the accessories that felt both like an argument and an invitation, bring your own backstory and she’ll turn it into fashion.
