It can often take young designers a few seasons to find their identities. We forgive them for an unfinished hemline or shoes way too big for the model, one: because they’re new to fashion week chaos, and two: because the pace of the cycle and the demands expected from today’s designers can be crushing. But then there’s Petra Fagerström, the Swedish designer who, yesterday, blew everyone’s expectations out the water. 

Opening day two of London Fashion Week, Fagerström hosted her debut on-schedule runway at 180 Strand’s NEWGEN show space; the next step after her debut on-schedule presentation last season. However, unlike many debutantes, there wasn’t a loose thread in sight. In fact, Fagerstrom’s debut catwalk was near perfect. 

While last season was all about winter — specifically, the designer’s ice dancer past — this season’s collection was titled Swedish Summer (Zara Larsson just flinched somewhere). That said, the show was much less Midsommar and more Don’t Worry Darling. Fagerström’s goal was to subvert perceptions of femininity – something she’s been doing since her graduate collection. “I want to create a woman who fractures the ideals of purity, passivity, and cleanliness tied to the image of a ‘traditional wife,” she told us last year. 

During yesterday’s show, she played with 1940s and 50s silhouettes (a full-skirted hourglass shape adopted by tradwives today), and even offered her own interpretation of Dior’s famous Bar jacket. She also used the opportunity to critique the flatness of AI-generated imagery, incorporating trompe l’oeil prints and garments unnaturally stuck together. In the same way that Florence Pugh’s character begins to question what’s real and what’s not in Don’t Worry Darling, the Petra Fagerström woman is also beginning to glitch. It was a show that cracked open female stereotypes, proving that really, we’re at our best when we ‘malfunction’ in the eyes of society. It also proved that Fagerström is here to stay – flaws and all.

Scroll through the gallery at the top of the page for the entire SS27 collection