Fighting for the beauty of fluidity, the eponymous house of Harris Reed designs to create conversation. First to London’s Fashion Week, Reed’s latest demi-couture debut entitled, “MISE EN SCÈNE,” exudes the stringency of traditional dressmaking with the liberation and experimentation on which Harris Reed thrives. In the intention to intersect the rigorous codes of a debutante ball with the performative nature of a dress, Reed’s gowns are exaggerated to the greatest extent and reimagined for a new fluid society taking center stage.

Reinhabited to reflect the overall DNA of the Harris Reed label and personal identity, a “Romanticism Gone Nonbinary” exudes – putting the wearer and their fluidity at center stage, as always using deadstock fabric. Traditionally female tropes, crinolines, corsets, headpieces, and embellishments, are exaggerated and inverted to create new silhouettes.

A ball gown is upturned, its inner workings forced up above the model’s head and caged in technical organza, while a white silk cape takes its cue from a crinoline that is upended and worn on the back. Excessive meters of duchess satin, which might be expected to pool along the floor as a train, is instead elevated and create a vast orb around the wearer, focusing attention on their face.

Rich and regal, the palette for this debut varies in peacock and royal blue, chartreuse, and fuchsia and is often offset by black velvet and white silk. Proportions are exaggerated and distorted, creating theatrical shapes, including fishtail and ballet-like skirts, cinched-in waists, and oversized bustles that drape across the hips. Costume jewelry reaches new extremes, with celestial and lunar symbols cascading over the chest as a breastplate.

Constructed alongside long-term collaborator Vivienne Lake in bluebell and spherical forms, the headpiece balances and elongates the silhouettes.