Sarah Regenburger: LFW SS2027

​SøEdited Team
​Article by: Astrid Kearney 
SøEditor-in-Chief: Chris Saint Sims 
​SøFashion Director: Savannah Barthorpe

​At London Fashion Week, the German-born designer of Iranian heritage stopped being silent about where she comes from.

For years, Sarah Regensburger said little about her Iranian family, fearing it would cost her acceptance. On the opening day of London Fashion Week, she said it all. Diaspora: The Art of Belonging, her Spring/Summer 2027 collection, asks what it means to belong to two worlds and be fully accepted in neither.

A Sufi dance opened the show, and DJ Kiki's soundtrack carried the voices of young women in Baluchistan answering one question: what does freedom mean to you?
With each look British elements were entwined with Persian. British tartan suiting arrived hand-stitched with Iranian coins.

Vegan banana leather jackets carried paisley embroidery and Baluchi needlework made by young women in Baluchistan, through the charity Loug Chokan. Catsuits drew on Persian poetry, one model carried a book of Hafez, mirror work echoed Tehran's Golestan Palace, and Bandari masks were styled over tailoring. Everything, as always with this house, was vegan with perfect circularity.

"It became a clash of cultures," Regensburger said, "and that clash is exactly what the show celebrates."

​Backstage ,the beauty answered in kind. Skin was luxe and velvety, eyes smouldering with a tight black line and lashes were rich and smouldered. Lips were bathed in a swathe of henna, and cheeks bloomed from the apples, bleeding down towards the jawline. Hair was bound with silks and embroidery ,tied  plaited ,looped  and held close, with rawness and reverence.

Re styling the looks Rebekah Roy said “I understand the world Sarah wants to build. The emotion ,the energy, the music , the casting and the movement  all come together in one moment on the catwalk to bring it to life’

The heart of the collection is its smallest detail. In Persian script, the numeral five, panj, resembles an upside-down heart. Her grandmother brought her coins bearing it as a child; it now names her new sub-brand, PANJ. The final T-shirt carried the symbol on the front and 1962, her mother's birth year, in Farsi on the back.

At the finish Regensburger walked out with her mother, both in matching leaf-print suits. A tender close, less a bow than an embrace.

"This is my own story of never fully fitting into one culture," she said, "and finding a home in the in between."

​Credits:

Stylist: Rekekah Roy rebekahroy_  
Show PR: Aristos Patsalidis 1080p24
Makeup Designer: Astrid Kearney @astridkearneymakeup
@ardellbeauty_uk
Henna: @huqthat
Hair Lead: Chrystoph Marten @chrystophmarten
@beautickofficall
Backstage Beauty photography: Astrid Kearney @astridkearneymakeup
Show Photography: Lauren March @laurenmarchphotography