Marco Capaldo doesn’t remember exactly where he first saw Antony Price’s work, but he does remember when a dress by Price made him sit up and take notice. Back in 2021, the designer’s late partner and cofounder of the 16Arlington brand, Kikka Cavenati, was looking online for a dress to wear as maid of honor to her best friend’s wedding when she stumbled across a vintage bias-cut dress by Price—the legendary, if widely undersung, designer behind some of the most memorable fashion moments of the 1970s and ’80s. (By chance, a couple of years before that, Price had crossed paths with the two designers at a party and complimented them on their dedication to bringing a new spirit of full-throttle glamour to London fashion.)
Earlier this year, while reorganizing his studio, Capaldo came across the dress again, which Cavenati tragically never got to wear. Somewhat spontaneously, he decided to reach out to Price. “We spoke on the phone, and that was that,” Capaldo remembers. “I checked my phone, and we’d been speaking for about four and a half hours.”
When I meet them both in the 16Arlington studio a few days before the show, they’re surrounded by a swirl of activity: Price, wearing a cap of his own making decorated with a military badge, is overseeing the placement of feathers on a crinoline minidress that will be worn by the model Alva Claire, while Capaldo is leafing through a rack of archival Price designs lent to them for the project by the fashion writer and collector Alexander Fury, an enthusiastic champion of Price’s work who also became involved in the project.
“My memory isn’t what it was these days, but it all comes rushing back to me when I see them dredged out of the ark—I was personally involved in every piece,” Price says, with a smile, after they settle in Capaldo’s office. Price himself owns few of his own pieces still, having been forced to “flog everything to pay the machinists and landlords” when he closed his label in the 1990s: “It’s very trying, to be a businessman and a creative at the same time. Usually the two things completely hate each other, even if they’re necessary to each other. But somehow, I survived for a while.”
Surviving is putting it mildly: In his heyday, Price’s vision was practically inescapable. Even if you don’t know his name, you’ll know many of the era-defining images and outfits he helped create: Roxy Music’s Siren album cover, featuring Jerry Hall crawling over a rocky outcrop on the shores of Anglesey; or the outfit worn by Amanda Lear on the cover of the band’s For Your Pleasure album; or the shiny black dress worn by Gala Mitchell on the back cover of Lou Reed’s Transformer vinyl. His menswear was a triumph too: He designed plenty of the wide-lapel suits worn by Bryan Ferry over the years, as well as custom looks for David Bowie and Mick Jagger.
But what really draws Capaldo to Price’s work is the technical wizardry of his garments, from the masterful bias cuts of his dresses to his razor-sharp men’s tailoring to the meticulous construction of his corseted jackets. “It’s just the way Antony understands the body and the clever trickery in pivoting a dart ever so slightly or building a corset in a specific way,” Capaldo says. “I think it was his love of the body that drew me to him and how he mastered making both men and women feel like these incredible superhumans. There’s this real love of glamour and of just making people feel really good.”
Still, as the pair spent the past year working on the collection—continuing to talk on the phone “for hours every day,” according to Capaldo—they came to realize the connection between their design styles lay in something more profound. “I think there was something really inspiring about the people that surrounded Antony, and I felt there was this real parallel between the people that surrounded Antony and the people that surround me,” says Capaldo. Price was also famous for the spectacle of his runway shows, which he staged at iconic London venues like the Camden Palace and the Hippodrome and often opened to the public. They turned up in droves to witness Hall and Marie Helvin strut down the runway in zipped leather skirts and motorcycle helmets to the sound of engines revving, and to look for Mick Jagger and the Duran Duran boys in the crowd. “But all those famous people weren’t necessarily that famous at the time,” Price points out. “They’ve become household names since, but they were like Marco’s young friends starting out now.”
So, when it came time to figure out how to present the 16-look collection Capaldo and Price had concocted, they decided to keep things simple and focus on the clothes. On Monday night, a crowd of fashion editors and friends—Simone Ashley, Beth Ditto, and Tali Lennox, whose mom, Annie, famously wore a look by Price to sing with David Bowie at a Freddie Mercury tribute concert—gathered outside of Capaldo’s studio off the Hackney Road in East London, bundled up in scarves and gloves due to a London cold snap. (Also in the mix were a number of friends of Price’s: Philip Treacy, Duran Duran’s Nick Rhodes, and, representing the Roxy Music contingent, Bryan Ferry’s son Tara.) Inside, the chaos of the studio from days before had been entirely expunged. The bare bones of the room’s concrete walls and exposed wiring across the ceiling—not to mention the glasses of Champagne being passed around—gave it the feeling of a party at an industrial loft.
To a soundtrack of clattering drums and jangling guitars that sounded exactly like a Roxy Music track given a 2025 update, a dazzling roll call of models vamped their way around the space in chiffon and crystals and feathers. Then they paused to pose in front of photographer Felix Cooper, who was crouched on all fours like David Hemmings in Blow-Up, calling out their names over the music: Adwoa Aboah, Edie Campbell, Paloma Elsesser, Lara Stone, Jean Campbell, Alva Claire, Kai-Isaiah Jamal—the list goes on. (It certainly speaks to the sense of community Capaldo has cultivated around the brand that many of them offered up their services for a small-scale, off-season runway show in London, with some even flying in from overseas to support the project.)
Kit Butler strutted in a glossy midnight blue douppioni suit, offering a brief showcase of Price’s equally accomplished way with menswear, while Lila Moss took a turn in a strapless bodice dress bedecked with silvered cock feathers, loosely inspired by a Price dress that belongs to her mom, Kate. Naturally, the moment that prompted the most dramatic flurry of raised iPhones was Lily Allen, riding high off the success of her blistering comeback album West End Girl, in an impeccably structured strapless velvet dress with a tail that flicked behind her to reveal a punchy absinthe-colored satin on the interior, a Vogue cigarette dangling from her mouth. Turns out you don’t need whizbang theatrics to create the kind of extravaganza Price’s fashion shows were famous for—you just need the right women wearing the right clothes.
“It’s going to all be about the energy and the people we bring together to celebrate Antony,” Capaldo had said a few days before, nodding to the fact that the show was, first and foremost, an opportunity to honor a designer hero of his who he felt had never truly gotten his flowers. (Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the level of craftsmanship involved in each look, the collection will be made to order only—though the unusual timing of November to show it makes a lot more sense when you consider it’s the dawn of awards season; these are red-carpet looks that celebrity stylists will be clamoring over.)
But there were a few more subtle tributes woven through the show too: The menswear look was a subtle nod to Price’s longtime friend Hugh Devlin, the beloved lawyer who worked on behalf of many in London’s fashion community and died in 2023, and Cavenati’s never-worn maid-of-honor dress was brought to mind by the Heavenly Solaria dress, which fused a 16Arlington dress with the subtly padded breasts and hips of a Price classic. Next to the corner where models exited, two seats were left empty with a white rose placed upon each as a tribute to Cavenati and Devlin, to whom the collection was dedicated. The evening was about glamour, yes, but it also had soul.
