Brian De Carvalho A/W Couture 2025 “A Famine of Beauty, Honey…”

Brian De Carvalho’s Autumn/Winter 2025 couture collection doesn’t just walk a runway—it haunts it. Unveiled inside a derelict hospital in East London, the show unfolded like a fever dream, a tableau where decay met decadence. Inspired by the camp yet chilling refrain “It’s a famine of beauty, honey! My eyes are starving!”, De Carvalho force-feeds us a couture experience both brutal and intoxicating, reminding us that beauty today must be fought for, clawed through ruin, and stitched back together.

A magic carpet cocktail dress, extensive draping, and a silver gown constructed entirely from razor blades slinks across the floor with the weight of memory and survival, evoking both armour and allure. The razor blade gown, its silhouette—strong shoulders, full-length train—echoes classic couture glamour, but the material tells a different story: war, identity, loss. The model’s slicked hair and severe eye makeup reinforce a mood of confrontation, not invitation. This is not beauty as fantasy—it’s beauty as endurance.

In stark contrast, other standout looks embodied frayed fragility. A strapless corset dress crafted from shredded muslin hangs in deliberate disrepair. The deconstructed hem recalls flesh, bandages, or the remnants of a costume once worn by a tragic ballerina. There’s a romanticism here, but it’s smudged with grime—perfectly fitting for a show staged in a mildewed surgical ward. The juxtaposition of hyper-feminine form and apocalyptic texture makes the wearer appear like a goddess dragged through history’s rubble and still standing.

One of our absolute favourites, a metallic jade gown with exaggeratedly long sleeves and distorted volume, feels like a relic from a parallel universe. Its sheen evokes both luxury and toxicity. The intricate wrapping and gathering at the waist and hem suggest entrapment, while the towering bouffant hairstyle ascends like smoke. This is beauty forced to mutate—both haunting and haute.

De Carvalho’s vision is not merely dystopian for shock’s sake. It’s poetic, theatrical, and rooted in historical knowledge of couture, yet entirely reimagined. He tears through traditions to confront modern violence—environmental, political, aesthetic. Lace is replaced by weapons; tulle becomes gauze. These garments aren’t worn—they testify.

With beauty by Phoebe Taylor for MAC and hair by Patrick Wilson, the models became spectres—conduits of pain, defiance, and transformation. De Carvalho’s A/W 2025 offering is couture as eulogy, as a survival mechanism, as a scream in a decaying cathedral of fashion. A starving eye finally fed, not with comfort, but with confrontation.