Jean Louie Castillo Fall/Winter 2026 - SILVERCITY

Okay, so imagine checking into the Mandrake hotel in London and accidentally slipping into a parallel universe where heartbreak, ego-death, and couture tailoring are all part of your stay. That’s basically what went down at Jean Louie Castillo’s F/W26 show, welcome to SILVERCITY, not just a collection, but a full-blown emotional support dimension that makes the Upside Down look like a walk in the park on a hot summer’s day.

We are talking unhinged glamour of monstrous proportions. One model was drenched in chains, wrapped in a shaggy black fur jacket that hung open, revealing a bare torso webbed with silver hardware. The chains aren’t accessories, they’re infrastructure. They swing from shoulder to waist, layered over harness straps like emotional baggage you’ve decided to style out instead of unpacking. The face is painted in streaks of inky black tears, lips bleached ghost-white. Sunglasses on indoors, obviously.

Another look, the elongated fur gown and overcoat: floor-sweeping, smoke-hazed, almost spectral. The texture is insane, shaggy, feral, dramatic to the point of absurdity. Sleeves engulf the hands. The body disappears inside it. It’s less coat, more creature. It moved like something half-born, half-shed. In black and white, it already feels archival, like a still from a fashion séance. The model clutched a cigarette with the casual menace of someone who had nothing left to lose.

And just when you think you’ve adjusted to the drama, and the smoke and the Game of Thrones Long Night style lighting, Castillo hits you with tailoring that looks like it crawled out of the underworld. One sharply structured jacket, textured like cracked bark or scorched leather, is paired with exaggerated fur chaps that erupt from the hips. The silhouette is alien, broad-shouldered, hyper-masculine, but destabilised. The trousers dissolve into the wild texture of it all. It’s business up top, breakdown at the bottom. Corporate demon-core.

It swallows the body. It exaggerates it. It protects and exposes at once. Chains bind and decorate. Harnesses support and restrict. Everything feels like it’s caught between construction and collapse.

And that’s the point.

Castillo roots the collection in discomfort, in the fracture of identity, in imitation mistaken for evolution, in self-destruction dressed up as ambition. But he doesn’t romanticise it. He stages it. He lights it beautifully. He lets it unravel in front of us so we can see the seams.

SILVERCITY isn’t a dystopia. It’s a threshold. It’s that feral, ugly, intoxicating moment where you realise becoming someone else might actually mean confronting who you already are. The silhouettes feel mid-metamorphosis. The textures feel raw. The characters feel like they’re auditioning for their next life.

It’s gothic fashion with a pulse. Couture as a coping mechanism. Fashion as theatre, therapy, and maybe a small exorcism.

In a season obsessed with quiet luxury, Castillo chose horror, but controlled and intentional. The kind that builds a universe instead of just a wardrobe.

Check in at SILVERCITY at your own risk. With any luck, you might not check out the same person.

Words by Lewis Robert Cameron