It’s become a tradition for Emilia Wickstead to cast friends for her pre-fall and resort lookbooks—and this season, she also invited along their dogs. (For some of her previous outings, Wickstead has also included their infants and toddlers—clearly that old saying about never working with children and animals isn’t a concern.) Writer Plum Sykes can be seen in a sleek, claret red one-piece cradling her beloved Twiglet; director Janicza Bravo poses in an emerald green knit holding up the glossy-maned spaniel Ted; and at the end, you’ll even find Wickstead herself in a paisley, pajama-inspired silk suit, proudly clutching her recently acquired pup Margot.
“If I said to you, ‘I’m shooting women with their dogs,’ it probably doesn’t sound like the most tasteful way to campaign my clothing and collection,” said Wickstead, laughing. “But I enjoyed that there was a bit of an ironic twist to it.” (And if you needed further confirmation 2024 was the year of the Dogue, well, here you have it.)
It wasn’t just the cheering presence of those four-legged friends, however, that lent Wickstead’s resort its charm. For inspiration, she turned to the work of Karen Knorr, whose trio of photography books published throughout the 1980s take a sideways look at the aesthetic signifiers of the British class system, capturing both the fusty upper crust in their St. James gentleman’s clubs and the more bohemian milieu to be found in pockets of West London. Wickstead’s spin on this theme saw her take many of the classically British motifs she’s known for—ditzy florals, Prince of Wales checks, chunky knits—and lend them a more playful, whimsical twist. “There’s a sense of nostalgia there in the textiles and the prints, but then I wanted to translate that into very modern shapes and silhouettes,” she said.
Many of the otherwise more restrained looks—a pretty column dress in baby blue worn by philanthropist Noella Coursaris, say, or Sykes’s green sleeveless number—came trimmed with delicate crystal and pearl trims that added a little sparkle. An especially rich, tactile detail were the 3D abstracted florals punched into double satin, creating an offbeat effect Wickstead likened to the crinkling of a dress’s fabric when you pull it out of a box. Those hints of razzle-dazzle also served as a nod to the 1980s, and Wickstead’s memories of her mother’s wardrobe during that period. With the collection’s touches of full-throttle ’80s glamour mixed with tweedy English eccentricity, it was hard not to be reminded of the recent release of Rivals, the splashy Hulu adaptation of Jilly Cooper’s racy novel from the same period set among the well-to-do who inhabit the fictional county of Rutshire. “Obviously I didn’t watch it before I designed this collection, but it does feel fitting, in a way,” Wickstead added. “I’m in the middle of it right now, and I’m slightly obsessed.” If there were a real Rutshire set shopping for glamorous gowns next summer, one imagines the feeling would be mutual.