London Fashion Week’s Spring 2026 edition was meant to showcase British fashion’s global relevance to an IRL crowd of heavyweight buyers, media and cultural voices. Instead, for many attendees, the collections were overshadowed by overcrowded venues, safety concerns, and a lack of access for both international press and leading creators.
The problems came into sharp focus at one of the season’s most anticipated shows — Dilara Findikoglu’s comeback at the Barbican on Sunday. More than 100 guests were left stranded in an entrance hall, craning their necks and raising phones above their heads as the show unfolded out of sight. The venue was so overcrowded that attendees described feeling unsafe.
“It was absolutely frustrating to see a designer who does great work in such a small space and for a PR company to think they can pack a load of people in a room that’s essentially very dangerous,” said a stylist working with TV celebrities who asked to remain anonymous. “Luckily for most of us, we were near a door. But if anything had gone wrong, all I’m thinking is [how it could become a] stampede.” For some attendees, the lack of access meant that they had lost jobs covering the show, and hours waiting for the event to start.
Known for her Gothic, rebellious aesthetic, Findikoglu showed the collection, dubbed “Cage of Innocence,” inside a theatrical reconstruction of a village house. The show was not the first time the brand had received backlash for its leadership’s actions.
For those who did get inside, the experience didn’t translate into coverage. “I was six rows back, and I couldn’t take any photos,” said a veteran trade journalist who asked to remain anonymous. “I could have just stayed home.” She said access to the shows has narrowed over the years. London Fashion Week, which once felt welcoming to press and buyers, has become an insiders’ game, where only select audience members are prioritized, she said.
TikTok’s most-watched fashion commentator, Mandy Lee (@oldloserinbrooklyn; 196,000 Instagram followers; 606,700 TikTok followers), who has partnered with Tory Burch at NYFW and driven six figures’ worth of sales through her coverage, said she wasn’t invited to a single new show. “Everything I’m going to, I went to last season,” she said. “I had a good cry about it, because it’s like, ‘Why am I here?’” Despite her reach, she described London as stubbornly resistant to the role of digital media. “Exclusion has only gotten worse. It’s disappointing, especially because I was most looking forward to supporting smaller female emerging brands.”
The international press faced similar obstacles. Faran Krentcil, who founded Fashionista.com before moving on to Nylon, Teen Vogue and Elle, was among the journalists formally invited by the British Fashion Council this season. Yet she described being strung along by PR reps who dodge firm answers. “There’s a lot of, ‘Oh, yes, of course. We’ll be back in touch with show info,’ and then it’s radio silence,” she said. More than once, she was turned away at the door, only to receive an email hours later asking for coverage. She had stopped attending London Fashion Week before receiving the invitation from the British Fashion Council this season. She described an experience in 2022 where she was asked to vacate her assigned seat minutes before the lights went down.
And yet, even this season, when she finally did get into a venue, she noticed empty benches left unused. “This bench represents 10 people who could be helping [the designer] right now,” she said. For her, the treatment doesn’t just affect her reporting, but it shapes how she advises brands considering whether to invest in London. “When a designer’s PR makes it impossible to do my job, I don’t recommend them for collaborations later,” she said, pointing to a time she recommended a designer for a Sephora collaboration. “That matters.”
The limited seats are increasingly reserved for traditional print market editors and VIP guests, while international press, buyers and digital creators are left sidelined, or shut out entirely.
Meanwhile, the spectacle of London Fashion Week continues to draw fascination. “Fashion Week has become as much about who’s in the front row as what’s on the runway,” said cultural commentator Amelia Dimoldenberg at the eBay show. “It can often feel like a circus, as it’s so hectic and there’s so much going on, but that’s also what gives it an electric energy.” She noted that the front row itself has become a form of storytelling, signaling what kind of world each brand is trying to build. “As a consumer, if you can’t attend, you can still get a buzz from seeing the images online and who’s in the front row. That tells you as much as the clothes.” But for press, creators and buyers, the front row matters less than seeing the collection.
The absence of re-sees only compounded the issue. Unlike in Milan or Paris, London offers no structured opportunities to view collections after the show. For international guests and journalists, in particular, missing the room often means missing the story altogether.
Ida Petersson, co-founder of the creative agency Good Eggs and former director of buying at Browns, said the event’s lack of structure undermines buyers, as well. “In Milan and Paris, you have official re-sees that the brands plug into, so even if you only get one seat at a Prada show, you can bring a wider [buying] team to actually see the clothes up close the next day,” she said. “In London, there’s nothing. Particularly if you’ve flown people in from around the world, there should be a system, at the very least, for emerging designers [to get in front of the wholesalers buying their collections].”
And while the BFC has made many good steps, including waiving membership fees to make the platform more accessible to designers, curating a schedule that speaks to London’s cultural relevance and doubling the investment in the international guest program to ensure heavyweight buyers, media and cultural voices make the stop in London, the experience has not translated in person.
On September 20, BFC’s new CEO, Laura Weir, told Glossy that success would be measured by “measurable impact for designers, bringing global audiences closer to our designers and seeing tangible signs that the industry is [driving] policy conversations, partnerships with retailers and increased investment in new talent. It’s also about reminding the world of the cultural and economic force British fashion represents.”
But for many who were left stranded at the Barbican or unable to cover the shows properly, the disconnect between ambition and delivery was impossible to ignore. After the incident, the PR agency behind Findikoglu’s show sent an email apologizing for the problems. But no formal system is being put in place to ensure safety standards for audiences going forward.
The imbalance is striking: Designers are desperate for coverage, per interviews and PR requests, while editors, stylists and creators are locked out or unable to work from their seats. The result is a fractured ecosystem, where the spectacle makes headlines but the collections themselves risk slipping through the cracks.
What should have been a career-defining comeback for Dilara Findikoglu instead exposed how fragile London Fashion Week’s infrastructure has become. As Dimoldenberg put it, “Fashion Week has to serve everyone, including the industry, the insiders, the public. If it doesn’t, the whole circus falls apart.”
Both the Dilara Findikoglu brand and the BFC were unavailable for comment.
