Fashion Scout Ones To Watch A/W26

There are fashion weeks, and then there are moments. And this February, Fashion Scout delivered the latter. Back on the official London Fashion Week evening schedule (as if it ever really left), the AW26 edition of Ones To Watch felt less like a showcase and more like a temperature check on the future. The never-ending queue snaking outside? Biblical. Editors are almost getting run over on the pavement. Students begging to be let inside for a glimpse. A disgruntled coffee shop is asking us to clear the entrance for its caffenistas. You could feel the excitement in the air. Seven designers, one runway, a life-changing runway.

Approaching its 20th anniversary this September, Fashion Scout isn’t just reminiscing. It’s reminding everyone why it’s still that girl. For two decades, the platform has quietly, and sometimes not so quietly, launched the careers of designers who now orbit the global fashion system. Press, buyers, industry heavyweights: they all know that if you want to see tomorrow’s names today, this is where you start.

“London has always been a city of discovery,” says Founder & Director Martyn Roberts. And honestly? He’s not wrong. London doesn’t just host fashion, it incubates it. Co-Director Biljana Poposka Roberts calls this season “fashion without borders,” and that’s exactly what it felt like: a cultural collision in the chicest possible way.

Here’s what went down.

First up, we have Aleksa Vertige, 22, winner of Fashion Scout Armenia 2025, and already operating with the conceptual precision of someone twice her age. Drawing from Bushidō, the Japanese samurai code of honour, she translated discipline, courage, and loyalty into razor-sharp silhouettes softened by sheer panels and macramé detailing.

Soft blues, stormy greys, flashes of deep red. Structured tailoring brushing up against delicacy. Eight looks spanning womenswear, menswear, and deliciously unisex territory. Strength, but whispered.

Invisible Boundaries said: no gimmicks, no trends, no over-sharing. Rooted in architectural thinking, the label stripped everything back to form, proportion, and construction. No loud narratives. Just silhouettes doing the talking. Clothing as sensation. As tension. As something unresolved. You don’t “get” it. You wear it.

Khushi Kumar, founded between Delhi and London, came through with cinematic emotion and serious craft receipts. A graduate of Manchester School of Art, with experience at Alexander McQueen and Christian Dior, Kumar understands both poetry and production.

The brand reframes Indian textiles and heritage techniques as modern luxury artefacts, not nostalgic, not costume-y, but future-facing. Think reimagined heirlooms for a generation that wantsdepth with its drip. Old-world artistry, new-world energy.

Astha Garg, currently completing her studies at London College of Fashion, is less about spectacle and more about sensation. Her garments are immersive, textured, intentional, and emotionally tuned.

Working between London and Dehradun, she approaches fashion slowly and deliberately. Sustainability isn’t a buzzword here; it’s structural. Every piece feels like it’s been considered from fibre to feeling. It’s quite fashionable. Intimate fashion. The kind that meets you halfway.

MAD DAISY, founded by Dr Margarita Fedoseev, took us to the museum and then straight back to the city. AW26, titled Lumière de Guillaumin, reimagined the brushstrokes of Jean-Baptiste Armand Guillaumin (yes, the one whose works hang in the Petit Palais) as wearable art.

Silk, linen, cotton, viscose, airy dresses and tailored suits washed in painterly colour. It was Impressionism with a pulse. Less “gallery hush,” more “city girl on a cultural bender”.

Then came Adolf Maldonado. Remember the name.

The Spanish designer, fresh from London Metropolitan University with a First Class Honours (casual), delivered one of the night’s undeniable standouts. Raised by a dressmaker mother, his relationship to craft is intimate, almost instinctive.

Inspired by insects and arthropods (stay with us), the collection explored texture, exoskeleton-like structure, and fragility. Majestic silhouettes with surgical finishing in Spanish leather and Mongolian goat hair, to name a few. The colour palette, an expensive dream as mustards swam alongside emerald and teal. It was bold. It was beautiful. It was beyond luxurious. Structure and softness coexist in one impeccably cut garment. Graduate? Yes. Amateur? Absolutely not.

Closing the show was Min-Ji Kim, Korean-born, London-based, armed with a Master’s from London College of Fashion and a Textiles degree from Rhode Island School of Design.

Through MinJiKimStudio, she builds surreal, tender worlds in knit and textile. Her AW26 collection, Call Me, was oversized, overstated, and emotionally charged. Garments as characters. Silhouettes as sculptures. Colour as rebellion.

It was giving a couture circus. It was giving a soft warrior. It was giving “main character finally stepping into frame.”

By the finale, the energy in the room had shifted, from less polite applause to more collective screams of absolute joy. The kind of ending that reminds you why you fell in love with fashion in the first place.

Seven designers. Countless narratives. Hundreds of happy attendees.

As Fashion Scout edges toward its 20-year milestone, this season didn’t just celebrate emerging talent; it flexed its curatorial muscle wholeheartedly.

And if AW26 proved anything, it’s this: the future of fashion isn’t coming. It’s here.

Words by Lewis Robert Cameron