Power ballads are out, and paper dolls are in at Harris Reed for fall 2024. Instead of booking Sam Smith or Adam Lambert to entertain his salon-style show guests, the designer let his work, inspired by the dolls he fashioned from stacks of Vogues and National Geographics as a child, do the talking. Set in his dream venue of the Tate Britain—which he has been obsessed with since Jonathan Anderson staged an imaginative Loewe show in the Duveen Galleries—Reed stripped back the theatrics and hunkered down on his craft. Ten looks, which took three toiles each and five months to perfect, drifted around the museum’s hallowed halls as “moving art.”
Adding to the number of hours each piece racked up (fashion loves the anatomy of a look) are the swathes of wallpaper sourced from Fromental—Harris’s seasonal twist on sustainability. He fell for the elaborate wallcovering specialist as soon as the team started waxing lyrical about their exquisite hand-painted, hand-embroidered naturescapes. “The way they look at wallpaper is the way that I look at clothing,” he noted of his new collaborator, who might have only supplied enough scraps to make say, a bustier or a hat, but fueled Reed’s imagination and brought the paper theme full circle. The interesting part will be how he adapts these chintzy prints for his clients, who use Harris’s show collections as a barometer for their own custom commissions.
As his audience broadens, particularly in Asia, Reed is pivoting accordingly. Yes, there are still ballgowns, but so too, shorter confections, corset and skirt pairings, and less look-at-me headwear. “I’m thinking more about what someone is wearing to a cocktail party, maybe less than, you know, Vogue covers,” he smiled. “Whether it’s Harry Styles on stage in front of 30,000 people, or a woman at her 50th birthday party with her girlfriends in Gloucestershire, they want the same level of detail and drama.” Even his LBDs come speared with feathered arrows. While Reed’s Victoriana references—such as the corsetry that fashion is currently coveting (cc: Maison Margiela)—might be lost on the Gloucestershire cohort, Harris’s personal narrative ensures he comes out of London Fashion Week (even on his off-schedule slot) swinging. “I look at things with this childlike enthusiasm,” he shared, taking us back to the kid who shadow cast fairytale beings on his bedroom wall and who now daydreams on the Eurostar to and from Paris, where he creative-directs for Nina Ricci. Reed is prone to looking back at how far he has come—the exaggerated round lapels and curved sleeves on that new blazer dress hark back to the first rotund hat he made for Solange as a Central Saint Martins graduate—but this collection was a step forwards for an eveningwear brand where less is more. As Harris said himself, he lets his vulnerability shine here.
