Mulberry returned to London Fashion Week on Sunday for the first time since 2020 with Christopher Kane’s debut collection, and the reference points he built it from were pulled straight out of menswear: football casuals, 1990s parkas, rugby kits, school uniforms. Mulberry is currently marketing the collection as women’s ready-to-wear. The interesting question is whether that design direction goes anywhere near the bags Mulberry actually makes for men.
A Second Chance, Deliberately Staged
Christopher Kane was named Mulberry’s creative director in March 2026, with a brief covering women’s ready-to-wear. He’s a Central Saint Martins graduate who won four British Fashion Awards including Womenswear Designer of the Year, ran his own label from 2013 to 2018. Fashion press has been calling this appointment a second chance, and Sunday’s ovation reads like the industry agreeing. CEO Andrea Baldo has framed the whole push as Back to the Mulberry Spirit, and this was Mulberry’s first runway show in six years.
The Bags on the Runway
For a house whose entire business is leather goods, the accessories were doing the heaviest lifting: axe-blade-shaped shoulder bags built around Mulberry’s Postman’s Lock fastening, an enlarged Piccadilly in mock crocodile, and a backpack worn harness-style across the chest. Boxy, notched-edge leather construction throughout — a harder, more architectural silhouette than the softer bags that defined the previous era.
Where the References Actually Came From
Kane built the collection around his own Glasgow upbringing, specifically the memory of football casuals, which produced oversized polo shirts carrying vintage Mulberry branding, alongside 1990s parkas, rugby kits, school uniforms and British tailoring, all stitched together under a town, city, country theme. It’s a collection built almost entirely from menswear’s visual vocabulary. Mulberry’s own category label for it — women’s ready-to-wear — is a marketing decision, not a comment on the clothes themselves.
Does It Reach the Antony?
Right now, no. Kane’s mandate is women’s ready-to-wear, and the collection itself doesn’t land in stores until January 2027. But the Antony and the rest of the range Mulberry markets to men have gone years without a design refresh, and a creative director this openly drawing on football-casual and parka references is a different aesthetic direction for the house than Johnny Coca’s softer, slicker era. Worth watching whether any of that — the boxier silhouettes, the harder hardware, the 90s-terrace mood — eventually turns up in the bags actually sold as menswear, rather than staying confined to whichever line carries the women’s label this season.