Seasonal Edits

Twice a year, what the season actually turns out to be once the shows have stopped being interesting.

We write two of these a year and they are always late. The autumn one goes up in the second week of October, by which time the season has been in the shop for six weeks and we know which of our own predictions were wrong. The spring one goes up after Easter. Writing them in advance would be easier and would make them worthless.

What goes in is what has actually moved, what was bought twice by the same person, and what came back. The returns are the honest part of a season and nobody publishes them, so we do.

Autumn 2026, as it happened

What we got right

The mid-weight coat. We bought forty per cent more outerwear in the 400 to 600 gram range and it went, because Athens has about eleven days a year cold enough for anything heavier and everybody has finally admitted it.

What we got wrong

Colour. We bought a rust that looked extraordinary in Biella in March and dead on a rail in Kolonaki in October. Nine pieces, four sold, and Élise has written the word “rust” on the wall of the office as a warning.

What came back

Everything with a set-in sleeve above a certain price. The returns rate on structured shoulders was three times the rest of the rail, which is a fit problem we should have caught in the fitting room and did not.

What surprised us

Trousers outsold dresses for the first time in ten years, and not by a little. We have no theory for this that survives contact with the numbers.

What sold twice

Fourteen customers bought the same knit in a second colour within the season. That is the only metric we know of that means a garment is genuinely good, and it is the one we now buy against.

What we are not repeating

The pre-Christmas trunk show. Everybody was too busy, including us, and the maker travelled from Somerset to sell eleven pieces. It moves to February.

Next

The spring edit will go up after Easter and will say something honest about linen, which we have never bought well. Every year we buy it in March for a city that does not want it until June, and every year we discount it in September. This is the fourth time of writing that sentence.