ANCIELA SS27 Takes Root at London Fashion Week

By Xinlin Wang

Merciful mother, we shall gather what we left behind and make beauty grow from what we discard.
— ANCIELA

Fashion is not only about the clothes we wear, but also the stories we carry through them. In founder and creative director Jennifer Droguett’s SS27 collection “Roots” for ANCIELA, the body, and specifically womanhood, becomes more than a canvas. It becomes a place where memory, ancestry and our connection to the natural world meet.

Presented on 17 September during London Fashion Week at Regent Quarter, “Roots” unfolds across three acts, using the maternal bond as a metaphor for our relationship with Mother Earth. It looks at the mother-daughter relationship through care, protection and the passing down of knowledge, while acknowledging the more complicated memories that can exist between generations.

This idea of inheritance extends into ANCIELA’s approach to tailoring. Adjustable panels and detachable sleeves allow garments to change with the wearer, while layers wrap around the body and respond to movement and shape. Clothes become something that can be altered, passed on and made anew.

Directed by filmmaker Marie Lanna with artist Luzmira Zerpa, the show sits somewhere between fashion presentation and performance art. Models lingered before the audience with the gaze of someone entirely in command of herself. One emerged wearing a sculptural headpiece, sheer fabric falling over her body like a cloud. Elsewhere, sinuous fabrics, avant-garde cut-outs and diaphanous forms brought a sensuality to the collection, while more utilitarian elements gave the clothes a harder edge.

The collection’s abstract fern motifs draw from the jungle and deep forest. They were created using a black bio-based pigment developed by Octarine, a synthetic biology platform developing low-impact solutions inspired by nature. The forest appears not simply as a visual reference, but as something woven into the making of the clothes themselves.

The show reached its most striking moment when the models returned to construct a woodpile. One wore a slashed leather jacket, its rib-like cut-outs creating a three-dimensional effect and revealing flashes of red fabric underneath. Raw and sensual, the act of building the woodpile recalls the rituals of renewal, regeneration and rebirth.

ANCIELA also chose women of different ages, races and body types for the presentation, bringing the idea of womanhood beyond a single image of beauty. The collection’s women do not appear as passive figures within its story. They carry it.

Sustainability sits at the heart of ANCIELA’s practice, with the collection bringing together materials that have already had a life of their own. Vintage silk donated by artist Allegra Hicks, rescued wool suiting from Orsola de Castro and deadstock cottons are combined with certified Tencel and recycled cotton. AlgaFila, a fibre made from seaweed extract, air and nanotechnology, appears across knitwear and padded garments, while garments and accessories are made using Savigne by Planet of the Grapes.

There is something fitting about a collection concerned with roots being made from what already exists. Rather than treating discarded or rescued materials as an afterthought, “Roots” places them within the story of the clothes, allowing the past to become part of what comes next.

In asking what role fashion might play in responding to environmental challenges, ANCIELA’s SS27 collection becomes both a remembrance of where we come from and an acknowledgement of our enduring connection to the planet.

The roots, after all, are still there. What we choose to grow from them is another matter.