Drowning
London Fashion Week 25
FALL/WINTER 2026

2025 SS26 Photographer Elizabeth Motley

There’s a quiet power in the way Chelsea Grays confronts emotion through design. Her latest collection, Drowning, feels less like fashion and more like confession — an immersion into the fragile, fluid space between struggle and strength.

Grays, the Cleveland-born designer whose work has long blurred the lines between streetwear and storytelling, channels her personal battles with depression and anxiety into garments that speak softly but hit hard. “There were times I felt submerged,” she says. “But the water didn’t destroy me — it transformed me.”

Transformation is the undercurrent here. Military-inspired precision — always a signature in Grays’ lexicon — meets gentler forms: pleats that ripple like tides, airy mesh and washed cotton that breathe, ropes that both bind and release. The palette shifts through emotion itself: deep burgundy, burnt umber, and forest green pierced by shocks of lime, like sunlight slicing through water.

The collection was also shown as Chelsea Grays’ DROWNING in London — with features in Emerge, Alt A Review, and Harper’s Bazaar — continuing her mission to redefine menswear and womenswear as dynamic expressions of community, creativity, and cultural dialogue.

What emerges is a meditation on endurance. Each look feels like an act of resurfacing — a slow, defiant exhale after being underwater too long. It’s precise yet vulnerable, disciplined yet fluid — menswear and womenswear in conversation, sharing the same breath.

In Drowning, Grays reminds us that survival itself can be beautiful — that even in the depths, there is design, intention, and art.