Craig Green’s first physical show in two years was an industry, and family, affair.
Fellow designers Michèle Lamy, Sarah Burton, Simone Rocha and Martine Rose, as well as five of Green’s family members, were among 120 guests who attended the designer’s spring 2025 show held at his top-floor studio overlooking Greenwich Peninsula and Canary Wharf in East London.
“It scared me a lot to have people in a space where I spend seven days a week. I was trying to finish the collection while people were painting the runway,” said Green.
The designer has always created a sense of intimacy for his compelling, emotional shows, but he took things to a different level this season with a loving tribute to his father, who died recently.
The show highlighted the bonds between father and child and the expectations that each has of the other. The result was a blend of masculine and feminine, with nods to rugby, cars and grown-up clothes in a palette full of pastels, loose shapes and layers.
“I was trying to avoid talking about it because I thought it was sentimental, but it is quite about my dad,” said Green, whose soundtrack featured his and his father’s Spotify playlists mixed by Frédéric Sanchez.
At the same time, Green said he’s been thinking about being a father himself. Those thoughts came through in the rugby-inspired, padded and quilted corsets, which Green said reminded him of a wearable baby carrier.
He upsized and repurposed his signature handkerchief, which made its runway debut in spring 2017, and turned it into a series of loose shirts and pullovers. The designer said these were meant to resemble baby’s bibs.
Protection, another Green theme, came in the form of Frankenstein-like, oversized biker jackets that were assembled from various leather garment parts, supplied by Ecco, at the start of the show. By contrast, the closing looks were made from soft strips of rolled jersey cut from old T-shirts and painted with floral motifs. Green called them “melting tea towels.”
Overall, the collection felt familiar, yet refreshing. The designer updated signature staples such as boxy work jackets, trenches, quilted shirts, wide-leg trousers, parkas and statement ponchos with different fabric and color combinations. The workman jacket, for example, this time came in a shimmering lamé cotton mix and waxed nylon with a zip instead of buttons, while the patterns for check-shirts were distorted.
He also teased collaborations with Eastpak on bags and Fred Perry for a series of polo shirts, which come with Green’s signature circle motif under Fred Perry’s laurel wreath logo.