Emilia Wickstead: London Fashion Week

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 29 September 2025

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Inspiration for Emilia Wickstead’s luxury fashion brand comes from her childhood home in New Zealand, her adolescence in Italy’s most fashionable city Milan, but also from her hard-working fashion designer mother. Her feminine silhouettes and creative use of colour and textiles have made her a popular choice among members of the British Royal Family and Hollywood celebrities. Belinda Naylor has had a sneak preview of how Emilia’s Spring/Summer 2026 collection has taken shape – referencing the romance of bygone eras with a contemporary twist. Emilia explains the importance of teamwork, being a perfectionist and how she still gets a thrill from seeing women wear the designs from her own label, which she established in 2008.

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, Music, radio, podcasts.
0:06.1	Welcome to the documentary in the studio.
0:09.4	I'm Belinda Nailer and I love fashion.
0:18.0	The New Zealand designer, Amelia Wickstead, has invited me for a behind-the-scenes look at the clothes she's creating for her collection for spring, summer, 26.
0:28.1	Known for her feminine silhouettes, floral prints and bright colours, her fans include Catherine, Princess of Wales,
0:34.8	who chose an elegant burgundy dress to welcome President Trump on his recent
0:39.6	state visit to the UK. I caught up with Amelia early in the summer to find out how her ideas were
0:48.4	evolving for her show at London Fashion Week in September. We are pretty far advanced with that process with my design team.
0:57.6	We sort of sit around in a group and talk really for hours on end about our different
1:02.6	inspirations.
1:03.6	We would have started this process really two, three months ago and then we're still
1:08.9	continuously changing the narrative, the muse, the colours, the
1:12.6	fabrics.
1:13.5	But I'm very much thinking of what's the uniform for my customer.
1:16.9	And so me being a real uniform lover, I find it just incredibly joyful and fun and not
1:24.9	too strenuous.
1:26.1	Whereas the show, I always put a lot of extra pressure
1:28.7	on myself and on my team,
1:31.4	and I think that's just the nature of the business.
1:38.3	Amelia's style is influenced by her childhood in New Zealand,
1:42.3	her adolescence in Milan, and her fashion designer mum.
1:50.4	We're surrounded by magazines that I've collected over the years. My mother was a big collector
	...

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