Edeline Lee Fall 2025: The Good Fight
As runway events go, it was certainly unconventional.
Edeline Lee tapped her friend, the film and theater director Josie Rourke, to stage a show with fight scenes. The two women had talked about doing it for years, and while fighting may not be a fashion-y topic, Lee liked the idea of showing women sparring, training – and lifting each other up.
“I think all women are strong, and I wanted to show that strength, and bodies in action,” she said.
So Lee invited 50 industry guests (no celebrities this time) to breakfast at The Dorchester, and served up a side order of fencing; combat with katana swords; and slow-motion, anime-style fighting to go with the smoked salmon, poached egg and avocado on toast.
Lee and Rourke worked with director Kate Waters on the display that saw lean, muscular female fight actors, all of whom were dressed in Edeline Lee clothing, slash the air with foils, strike warrior poses, and cartwheel across the space, their long ponytails swishing.
They managed all of that action wearing silver sequin dresses layered over whisper-thin knits; boxy cotton poplin suits with martial-arts flair; fluid dresses with draped sleeves made from chainmail; and shapely dresses in Lee’s signature bubble-textured charmeuse fabric.
“See, you can even do karate in my clothes,” said Lee, who designed the entire collection around “how the girls were going to move.”
Rourke, the former artistic director of the Donmar Warehouse theater who now works across stage and screen, said she wanted the audience to feel empowered watching the women jump, punch, and fly through the air with style.
“Strength comes in lots of forms, and Edeline’s shapes are made for the female form. They’re proof of how design carries us through the day, and gives us the armor to face the world,” she said.