Become a Vogue Business Member to receive unlimited access to Member-only reporting and insights, our Beauty and TikTok Trend Trackers, Member-only newsletters and exclusive event invitations.
London brand Knwls brought some British edge to Milan on Wednesday night, with a large-scale show and afterparty in modern Milan industrial space Padiglione Visconti. Models passed through a translucent box down the middle of the space, as the DJ played thumping techno above them. The show unveiled a new collaboration with Nike, including pointed sneakers, athletic corsets and second-skin separates, in Knwls’s signature denim wash.
It’s the first time the brand has shown outside of London. “It’s quite nice to shake things up once in a while,” says Charlotte Knowles, who co-founded the label in 2017 with her partner Alexandre Arsenault. The latter adds: “We’ve been doing the brand for eight years now. So we thought if we just continue being in the London ecosystem without shocking things, maybe it will kind of fizzle out. We need people in different places to connect with the brand in a physical way.”
It makes sense. For maturing brands like Knwls, which exist somewhere between emerging and the big leagues, it can be tricky to scale. The press tends to focus on the newest, shiny names and major houses. And in today’s challenging retail climate, buyers have pulled back spending on smaller players in favour of the major labels, leaving those in the middle a little overlooked.
That said, Knwls has quietly found ways to navigate the current climate. The brand declined to share revenues, but it has been bolstered by collaborations like Nike and a new, yet-to-be-announced project, also in Milan. Knwls is stocked in more than 30 stores, including H Lorenzo and The Webster. And prior to Nike, it collaborated with Jean Paul Gaultier (2023) and G-Star (2025).
“With London, we’ve known everyone for so long, and everyone has known us for so long, we kind of just became like [another] brand there,” Arsenault says. “It’s quite nice to go to Milan and connect with a new community.”
When we speak, it’s nine days out from the show. The duo is already in Milan, working on the aforementioned project that they can’t share details on just yet. They managed to sneak off to Venice for a day off one Sunday, but otherwise, it’s been all systems go preparing the project and the show simultaneously. The timing could have been better, perhaps. “I know — it’s ridiculous,” Knowles says. “When we were allocated our slot so early in the week, we were like, ‘Oh no.’ But it was too good a slot to miss, so we’ve made it work.”
Moving beyond world-building
Over half of the looks in the Spring/Summer 2026 show on Wednesday featured the new Nike collaboration, which could ostensibly be worn to the club or the gym. Even the non-Nike pieces felt futuristic and performance-based, from scuba jackets to almost prairie dresses, with cutaways and intricate straps. For the duo, this tie-up made the move to Milan possible. “It’s the first time we have had a bit of money to put into set design, so we’re excited,” Knowles says.
Knwls began conversations with Nike some years ago, but eventually, Nike’s energy marketing lead Madison Hahn — a fan of the brand — helped get it over the line in 2023. For Nike, the idea was to target the womenswear consumer with a new tone that reaches beyond the performancewear trope of “sweaty muscular women screaming”, Arsenault says. “We wanted to make something more lifestyle based and rooted in reality,” Knowles adds. The collaboration started off with apparel, before Nike asked them to make a sneaker. The futuristic sneaker is extremely unique. Somewhere between a sneaker, a clog and a ballet flat, it’s slick, with a narrow, squared-off pointed toe. Nike often collaborates with brands, but spanning apparel and footwear, this one feels on the scale of Martine Rose or Jacquemus, which is encouraging for the Knwls.
Staging such a major show and releasing the Nike collaboration is the start of Knowles and Arsenault’s ambition to home in on marketing and merchandising, recognising that fashion is “about so much more than design these days”, for better or worse, Arsenault says. “When you’re a young brand, you just want to make amazing clothes and build the world. But now that people understand the world, we’re focusing more on how we can offer that world to more people.”
Predominantly, this means working back from a target price when designing, to keep costs down for the end consumer. It’s a shrewd move in today’s retail climate, where aspirational shoppers are pulling back luxury spending. “It would go sideways in the middle of the season, because we’d be like, ‘It’d be so nice if we did all these complicated finishes, but we don’t have the units to buy that much of that trim; but we really want it, so let’s just do it.’” Arsenault says. “It’s about being a bit more clever, without compromising the quality.” To do so, the brand moved production from Italy to Portugal and Türkiye, where they can make similar (“or even better”) quality for less.
Collaborations are key to scaling for most brands in the current market. So while it’s not a shiny new name anymore, Knwls is approached a lot based on the designers’ experiences. “That’s the benefit of us having built that world over the last eight years, we are kind of able to reap those benefits,” Arsenault says. “In today’s market, without collaborations, it would be very difficult,” Knowles adds.
Overcoming challenges
The US is Knwls’s biggest market, “sadly”, Arsenault says, referring to the added cost of US tariffs. Knwls manufactures in Europe, so it’s not dire straits, but it’s still weighing on the bottom line. South Korea is a growing market, after Knwls became popular with several K-pop stars, including Blackpink’s Jennie and Lisa. In fact, when Jennie wore the brand’s Ace long-sleeve jersey dress this year, it sold out at all retailers, and the brand had to launch pre-order and make an additional batch to meet demand. “It’s funny because before that, it was on sale everywhere [at stores], and then we sold so many at full price,” Knowles says.
Vogue Business breaks down tariffs by country and what the rates mean for fashion.
Like many brands operating in the new retail environment, Knwls is investing in its direct-to-consumer (DTC) channel to connect to its community and mitigate a slowdown in wholesale. “Retailers don’t want to pay deposits anymore. So they’re like, ‘You should finance my multi-million-dollar company with yours.’ It’s like, what? Can’t we take the risk together?” Arsenault says. While the brand witnessed a large number of visitors to its website, conversion was “tiny”, Arsenault says. So they employed two friends, an art director and a programmer, to redesign the site. “Even if we improve conversion by 1 per cent, it’s tonnes of money.” The new website will launch in November, in line with the release of the Nike collab at retail.
Following Wednesday’s show, the pair will release another as-yet-undisclosed collaboration in November, and will travel to Seoul to promote the Nike capsule. The plan is to keep trying new things, to inspire new customers in new markets.
Avoiding stagnation
The Milan experience hasn’t been without challenges. “It’s been crazy, working in a different country with different regulations; different price points for different things,” Arsenault says. “You have no point of reference for what’s normal price-wise. But you need to please your partners and stay within budget.” Even shipping the collection has been a challenge, due to rising costs and waybill forms, Knowles adds. “I think we will all cry when the show’s finished.”
Initially, the plan was maybe Paris, but then they realised further space for young British brands on the Milan calendar, “so at least we can bring that to Milan without feeling like we’re competing against people, or we’re trying to fight for our spot”, Arsenault says.
Eventually, the brand aims to return to London Fashion Week, making the edition its home base — particularly under its new stewardship, Arsenault says, referring to new British Fashion Council CEO Laura Weir. “We’re super happy Laura’s there. She’s really positive and has amazing energy. At the core, we will stay a British brand, but we needed to do something different this season.”
The idea from now on is to be unconventional, Arsenault says. This means showing in new places, “like maybe LA”, or even not at all, instead launching collections in different ways. “Maybe we don’t even show and we do something again that’s more unexpected, so that we can kind of create that energy. We don’t want to be stagnant.”
Comments, questions or feedback? Email us at feedback@voguebusiness.com.
