John Richmond has never believed in neutrality. His latest collection, Savage Heart, makes this clear without hesitation. The show notes state it plainly: “Velvets bring weight and sensuality, transparency reveals without reassuring, and every surface seems worked, worried, and intentional. Nothing here is passive. Everything has an attitude.” It reads like a goth-punk manifesto aimed directly at the soothing minimalism and quiet luxury currently dominating many runways.
The setting, the Crypt at St Martin-in-the-Fields, amplifies that statement. Models stride forward as remixes of Depeche Mode’s Personal Jesus set the tempo. The reference is deliberate: the 1989 track, suspended between desire and devotion, echoes themes of control and vulnerability that shape the collection’s aesthetic. The heart, the season’s central symbol, is not romantic but pierced, suggesting that romance itself is under siege.
From a tailoring perspective, Richmond works through cultural layering.
The wardrobe consciously remixes British subcultural codes: drainpipe trousers recalling Teddy Boys, poet shirts with a new wave undertone, bondage straps and industrial chains rooted in London punk. Yet nothing is left raw. Everything is recalibrated into something more formal and ceremonial.
A black velvet tuxedo features the words “Angel” and “Devil” spelled out in mother-of-pearl buttons along the lapels. Capes and capelets adorned with leather straps and silvery grommets push gothic imagery toward couture. Even the little black dress is unsettled by prim white collars, clashing with body-conscious cuts and provocative detailing. It works visually and its restraint feels deliberate. Rather than chasing rapture, the collection sustains a measured, composed tension throughout.
The palette is restrained yet vibrant: dominant black, sharp ivory, and flashes of “pink punk”: an acidic, electric shocking pink that slices through the darkness. This disruptive shade evokes Californian punk as much as 1990s club culture. Then come the scrunch boots and slouchy silhouettes, with chains and studs reinforcing a calibrated after-dark attitude.
Culturally, the collection traces a lineage from Vivienne Westwood to the club kids, and those references surface with clarity. Richmond chooses to reconfigure rather than reinvent. By sharpening and recontextualising familiar codes instead of overturning them, he highlights their enduring force in a fashion climate too often equating innovation with mere newness.
The result is a collection that could take a goth girl to a formal evening event and a contemporary Teddy Boy to an underground gig. Savage Heart pushes back against the silence of quiet luxury with volume and surface. Subversion is not simply about volume, but about risk. Here, the heart beats with conviction even if the broader fashion landscape absorbs it without much resistance.