Dreaming Eli FW26 Women Looks Report

Dreaming Eli FW26 Women Looks Report

London Fashion Week

Dreaming Eli FW26 builds a wardrobe around corsetry as a structural skeleton, layering Victorian underpinning with distressed textiles, gothic hardware, and deliberate disintegration to push intimate dressing into outerwear territory. Buyers navigating the sustained demand for corset-forward silhouettes alongside the growing appetite for dark romance will find both here, delivered with a level of craft that justifies premium positioning.

Silhouette and Volume

The boned, lace-up corset bodice anchors nearly every look, from the barely-there mini of Look 12 to the full ballgown volume of Look 17. Volume shifts dramatically at the extremes, with sculptural ruched sleeves in Looks 10 and 15 and the ruffled organza cocoon coat of Look 13 adding mass at the shoulders and torso while legs remain exposed. Look 4 breaks the formula entirely, pairing a cropped corset top with wide-leg cargo trousers and oversized draped hood pieces, signaling willingness to move the silhouette beyond the lingerie-adjacent zone. Shape language reads as compressed at the waist and deliberately frayed or expanded everywhere else.

Color Palette

Two distinct color camps alternate across the lineup. Blush, parchment, and bone tones dominate Looks 1, 3, 10, 12, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, and 19, creating a pallid, candlelit warmth that reads as corporeal rather than romantic. Pure black runs through Looks 2, 5, and 8, with the black in Look 2 pulling toward carbon and the distressed grey metallics of Look 8 sitting at the boundary between the two camps. Look 6 stands alone as a nude-to-skin moment, with a mesh bodysuit so close to the model's tone that it reads as color-absent.

Materials and Textures

Chantilly-style black lace and raw-edged ivory lace carry the most visual weight, appearing as stockings, skirts, bodysuits, and sleeve panels across at least ten looks. Heavily crinkled silk, which behaves like compressed paper with a matte sheen, structures the coats and draped sleeves in Looks 10, 14, and 15. Leather, either matte or patent-adjacent, grounds Looks 2, 5, and 8 through corset belts and cropped moto jackets, adding rigidity against the softer lace and mesh pieces. Frayed, deliberately unfinished edges on the lace throughout Looks 3, 11, and 18 suggest a production approach built around controlled disintegration rather than clean finishing.

Styling and Layering

Intimate pieces layer outward, with corset bodies stacked under deconstructed outerwear or over sheer mesh base layers, so that the underwear logic always reads as the foundation even when fully dressed. Footwear splits between extreme platform shoes with lace-up or crossover ankle straps in black or white, ruched thigh-high boots in white as seen in Look 10, and the flat white sneakers of Look 6, which land as a deliberate subversion. Accessories are sparse but decisive: long cascading pearl chains in Look 6, a black lace eye mask in Look 1, and the red apple carried in Look 17 function as narrative props rather than commercial accessories. Knee-high ruched leg warmers or lace stocking panels complete the lower half in Looks 3, 4, 7, 11, and 18, creating a continuous fabrication story from bodice to foot.

Look by Look Highlights

Look 2 An all-black construction pairs a textured knit capelet over a sheer lace bodysuit with a leather mini corset skirt and full-length lace stockings. This is the most retail-translatable dark look in the lineup, with separates that can be bought and sold independently.

Look 5 A cropped black leather biker jacket over a black lace maxi skirt introduces a hard-soft split that speaks directly to the leather outerwear buyer looking for a gothic-adjacent direction without full costume commitment.

Look 8 Distressed grey metallic denim corset and micro-skirt layered over sheer black mesh and finished with lace garter details and lace-up platform boots reads as the strongest candidate for editorial licensing given its layered construction and tonal complexity.

Look 14 A crinkled parchment silk corset gown with structured draped shoulders and a deep front slit delivers the collection's clearest argument for formal occasion dressing, with a silhouette that requires minimal adaptation for luxury occasionwear buyers.

Look 16 Blush tulle ballgown with a boned corset torso, off-shoulder lace sleeve panels, and rosary-style front closures is the most wearable full-length option in the collection, balancing sheer volume with structural definition at the waist.

Look 17 An ivory duchess satin ballgown with a strapless corset bodice, extreme gathered skirt, and the model carrying a gold apple as a prop represents the collection's most overt theatrical statement, with construction that signals investment in bridal or costume licensing conversations.

Look 19 Blush ruffled chiffon gown with a deep V corset structure, scattered lace appliqué frills, and a coordinating veiled headdress comes closest to a commercial red carpet proposal, with the fraying details kept subtle enough to suit a luxury dress rental market.

Look 12 Nude lace long-sleeve corset mini with garter straps and white platform heels is the most direct commercial translation in the lineup, compact enough in construction cost to warrant a capsule or collaboration conversation with an intimates or bridal brand.

Operational Insights

Corset construction volume The boned lace-up corset bodice appears as the primary structural unit in at least fourteen of the nineteen model looks. Any buying or production partnership needs to factor in specialized boning, grommets, and lace-up cord sourcing from the outset rather than treating it as an embellishment add-on.

Separates opportunity Looks 2, 5, 8, and 9 are built as genuine separates rather than unified garments. Style directors should evaluate them as modular units that can be remerchandised with existing inventory, particularly the leather corset belts and lace skirt panels.

Platform footwear dependency Extreme platform shoes or boots anchor the majority of looks, which means the proportions and hem lengths are calibrated for significant heel height. Buyers sourcing footwear companions need to treat this as a non-negotiable variable rather than a stylistic preference, since the silhouette collapses at flat or mid-heel height.

Fabric fragility and production replication Deliberately distressed and frayed lace edges throughout Looks 3, 11, and 18 require a production brief that specifies controlled degradation rather than a finished seam, which adds labor cost and quality control complexity at scale. Buyers commissioning production runs should request sample destruction testing before bulk order sign-off.

Colorway prioritization Blush and bone colorway accounts for the majority of looks and carries the broadest commercial range, from lingerie to bridal to occasion dressing. Black grouping is narrower in styling range but higher in immediate retail readability. Style directors building a capsule buy should weight the palette roughly two-thirds light to one-third black for maximum floor flexibility.

Complete Collection

About the Designer

Elisa Trombatore grew up in Sicily, an island whose layered history, centuries of conquest by Greeks, Arabs, Normans, and Spaniards, produced an aesthetic of collision that she absorbed before she could articulate it. The baroque ruins, the mythological coastline, the particular brand of femininity she witnessed around her, powerful women shaped by a culture that nonetheless kept them quiet, all of it settled into her as both wound and material. She left at 18 for Milan to study fashion, throwing herself into the structured, exam-driven curriculum with the focused intensity of someone who had been waiting for the exit. Milan gave her discipline; it was London that gave her permission to go further.

She enrolled in the MA Fashion programme at Central Saint Martins, graduating in 2021, and the shift in register was immediate. Her graduate collection was backed by the Isabella Blow Foundation, the support that carries with it a certain lineage of taste for work that refuses to be comfortable. The pieces landed in Vogue Runway, Vogue Italia Talents, i-D, and 10 Magazine almost simultaneously, drawing the attention of celebrity stylists before the ink on her degree was dry. That same year she was offered a slot in London Fashion Week's Discovery Lab, and she took it, launching Dreaming Eli without the buffer of industry experience most designers accumulate before showing publicly.

Her working methods are as specific as her references. She does not use synthetic fabrics, a constraint that became a creative engine: when she needed a structured, waterproof outer layer without polyester, she developed a wax treatment for silk that hardens its surface while keeping it malleable. Corsetry appears in almost every collection, not as period reference but as a recurring question about what restraint means and who applies it. Her sources are mythological and personal in equal measure: the Spring/Summer 2025 collection drew directly from Homer's Scylla and Charybdis, the sea monsters who guarded the strait between Sicily and the mainland, women recast by history as dangerous, reclaimed here as fully human. Everything is made in London, by hand, and entirely to order. Kylie Jenner, Tate McRae, Julia Fox, Lizzo, Zara Larsson, and Rita Ora have all worn the brand. In September 2025, Dreaming Eli took its first on-schedule catwalk spot at London Fashion Week.

"Growing up in Sicily I was surrounded by extremely powerful women. Sadly they were all a bit too submitted to social constructs around who and what they were supposed to be. This annoyed me so much growing up. I always felt the need to create a space where women can feel it all and where sensitivity and emotions can be a means of power."

"Sicily has been conquered basically by everyone. So I grew up seeing all these opposite aesthetic visions working together and somehow creating something beautiful."

✦ This report was generated with AI — combining human editorial vision with Claude by Anthropic. Because the future of fashion intelligence is already here.