Leave it to Conner Ives to bring a blast of upbeat energy on the final day of London Fashion Week. Within the Art Deco ballroom of Claridge’s, with an oh-so-’90s spotlit decal of Ives’s monogram logo on the back wall, models strutted across the black-and-white carpet floor to a hip-shaking house music soundtrack. (The vibe was a little like one of the Bryant Park fashion shows the Sex and the City women might have attended back at the turn of the millennium—so it only felt appropriate to find Kim Cattrall sitting on the front row.)
But while the looks contended with various notions of American glamour from across the decades, they also felt thoroughly contemporary. Ives’s secret sauce is understanding how today’s transatlantic party girl wants to dress—increasingly, however, he’s been showcasing the ways in which a whole spectrum of generations and genders might fit into the Conner Ives world.
Take the first look out, which featured a new riff on Ives’s current It piece: a series of lavishly embroidered coats upcycled from Qing Dynasty tapestries. (Last season’s version has been worn by the likes of Kate Moss and Jennifer Lawrence.) “The irony of this is that it’s the most expensive piece on our line sheet and it’s also our current bestseller,” the designer noted at a preview. But instead of pairing the piece with an evening dress—it’s the kind of thing you can imagine a client wearing to a gala night or the opera, after all—Ives styled it with a pair of jeans embellished with a gold trim, and a T-shirt reading “I work nights.” (A second tee read “AI betrayed me”—it turns out the pieces are a collaboration with comedians Kate Berlant and Jacqueline Novak of the cult podcast Poog.) It made for a deliciously witty high-low mix.
Elsewhere, Ives evolved another of his current signatures, the rugby shirt, here in shades of purple and royal blue, and emblazoned with the Ives family crest—or at least one the designer found online. “I don't even know if that’s the proper family crest, but I think that’s what made me even more interested in it—that tongue-in-cheek kind of pomp and circumstance, that could actually be faked,” he laughed. New iterations of his upcycled silk scarf pieces came with a new, almost psychedelic twist, having been pleated and stretched diagonally across the hip or tied around the neckline, while a series of ravishing evening looks were cut from slinky velvets. Arguably his most accomplished look was a gorgeous bias-cut dress made from layers of chocolate brown silk chiffon worn by Debra Shaw, with 500 hand-cut and hand-painted fall leaves decorating the surface. Inspired by a trip to his aunt’s house in New Mexico, where Ives found himself struck by the dead leaves still hanging on the trees after an unusually warm autumn—as a designer who’s always kept sustainability at the forefront, climate change is never far from his mind—it could have felt a little de trop, were it not for the exceptional execution.
As always with Ives, there was a weightier flipside to the frivolity. The collectsion was titled El Dorado, after the Weimar-era Berlin nightclub that catered to an LGBTQ+ clientele and where people of all genders could express themselves and dress as they chose. As with many of Ives’s previous journeys through the annals of American history to inform his collectsions, it was a case of “almost looking to the past to try and resolve the present. Though I don’t know if I found much resolution in it, because unfortunately, we all know how this story ends.” Still, Ives contends, there are intentional glimmers of hope. “We look at the challenges of everything that we're going through right now, and it feels almost like it began yesterday, but these are themes that have been repeating themselves for hundreds of years—of power and control and of making the other person smaller.”
Ives has been steadily working in the background to harness the buzz around him and convert it into something that will help his brand remain sturdy in the long-term: he used part of the cash from winning the 2025 BFC/Replica Handbag Store Designer Fashion Fund to bring in an experienced managing director, whose input has—among other things—made this the most efficient development period, partly by whittling the line sheets down by more than half to focus on the core pieces. “Beforehand, I was probably spending 80% of my time on the business side, doing things I probably wasn’t that well equipped to do, or good at either,” he said. “I think I’m already seeing the positive effects of that—even just in my state of mind.”
Ives may be leveling up his business, but he still knows how to have fun. Naturally, the most effusive response to any of the models was reserved for Ives’s boyfriend, Max, and his wire-fox terrier, Rex. But it was the final look, worn by actress and ballroom legend Dominique Jackson, that drew the biggest gasps: a bridal gown inspired by a Marc Bohan-era Dior couture look cut from satin organza, with a fur-trimmed hood that Ives envisioned as a “winter-themed bride getting married in Aspen.” Added Ives: “It’s so on the nose, and so campy, that I think it just works.” He’s right: as always, there’s something about his eclectic vision that always just works.
