Alessandra Rich AW 2026 - Bedtime Stories

At the heart of every Alessandra Rich collection stands a singular woman: assured, impeccably composed, and keenly attuned to her own image — not simply aware of her reflection, but orchestrating it.

For Autumn 2026, presented as a lookbook, Rich framed the collection with a line borrowed from one of the season’s unlikely muses, Addison Rae: “Not for life, just for tonight.” The sentiment captures the collection’s spirit — fleeting, impulsive, and unapologetically self-aware.

Following her return to the London calendar last year, after showing in Paris since 2010, there is a renewed charge around the brand. As Rich remarked last season, “It’s not so much about the clothes; I worry that nobody is really overdoing it anymore.” This outing reads as both response and provocation. Overdoing it, she suggests, may be precisely the point.

If previous seasons revelled in romance at full tilt, this one tightens the frame. Rich imagines her protagonist alone at home, mid–wardrobe upheaval: garments strewn across the bed, each a possible version of herself for the night ahead. There is a particular electricity in that ritual — the trying on, the discarding, the impulsive adjustment, the final, satisfying decision.

The collection unfolds like that exercise in self-invention. Signature tea dresses appear first — flounced, floral, lace-trimmed — in butter yellow, faded pastels, and saturated violet. There is an echo of Judy Garland’s fragile glamour in their heightened femininity, sweetness sharpened by experience. Lace and tweed iterations are punctuated with bows climbing the thigh or fastening front flaps, gently unsettling their ladylike codes. Tassel-trimmed belts, reminiscent of antique upholstery, cinch the waist with deliberate excess. The mood shifts from afternoon propriety to something more nocturnal and introspective.

Then comes the counterpoint. A slouchy nylon jacket cuts cleanly through the lace and florals, introducing a faint abrasion. Accessories heighten the tension: bright red mules paired with ribbed, over-the-knee silk stockings; vintage-style jewellery with a pronounced ’80s inflection. The effect is knowingly theatrical, but never ironic.

The setting sharpens the narrative. Shot inside a slightly tawdry motel in Milan, the lookbook leans into nostalgia with a cinematic wink. Between takes, models drift from room to room, captured in off-guard moments that distil the season’s core: a woman alone with her choices, perfecting the character she has always been.

Rich has, once again, conjured a brand of femininity that would feel at home in the world of Twin Peaks — think Laura Palmer suspended between innocence and enigma. Like David Lynch’s vision of womanhood, bathed in haunting duality, Rich’s heroine exists in tension: idealised mid-century American sweetness spliced with surreal, dark romantic undertones. In subtly unsettling the very codes she embraces, Rich continues to complicate the nostalgic femininity that defines her aesthetic — and this season is no exception.