M&S Will Make Its London Fashion Week Runway Debut This September
Marks & Spencer will show on the official London Fashion Week schedule for the first time in its history this September, presenting an exclusive runway collection to mark its centenary year.
The show is currently listed for Friday 18 September, within the wider London Fashion Week run of 17 to 21 September, though M&S has yet to confirm final venue and timings. It will cover both womenswear and menswear, and it will operate on a “see now, buy now” basis — meaning the collection becomes available to buy immediately after it appears on the runway, rather than in six months’ time.
What’s actually being shown
M&S has confirmed the collection will be exclusive to the show rather than a selection of existing lines, and that it will be available online and in flagship stores nationwide, as well as in key international markets.
That last detail is the interesting one. The traditional fashion-week model is a trade event: designers show to buyers and press, orders are placed, and the clothes reach shops the following season. See-now-buy-now collapses that entirely and treats the runway as a shop window. Several designers experimented with the format around a decade ago and most quietly abandoned it, largely because the production timelines are punishing.
A retailer with M&S’s supply chain is in a rather different position. It can make the format work in a way an independent design house cannot, and that is arguably the point of it being on the schedule at all.
Why this matters for the schedule
London Fashion Week has spent several seasons trying to broaden what a fashion week is for, and the September edition leans hard into that. Alongside M&S, eBay is returning with its Endless Runway pre-loved show, shoppable through eBay Live. Selfridges will run in-store highlights and a curated edit of participating British designers. H&M is working with photographer Nick Knight and SHOWstudio on a reworking of the show format itself.
Taken together, that’s four separate attempts to close the gap between the runway and the till — which tells you something about where the pressure currently sits in British fashion retail.
The centenary angle
M&S is marking 100 years of fashion this year. Its drapery department opened in 1926, and the anniversary is being used as the peg for a run of activity, including a collaboration with London label Aries that revives the historic St Michael name across a 26-piece collection.
There’s a neat symmetry in a retailer that built its reputation on well-made, unglamorous British basics arriving on the official schedule in its hundredth year — and doing so with a format designed to sell clothes rather than court critics.
What to expect
Realistically, this will not be an avant-garde collection. M&S’s clothing business has improved substantially over the past few years by being clearer about what it is: good fabric, sensible cuts, prices people will actually pay. A runway show is an unusual vehicle for that message, and the question is whether the collection stretches beyond what already hangs in the shops.
If it does, the see-now-buy-now format means we’ll all find out within hours. Which is, presumably, the idea.
London Fashion Week runs from 17 to 21 September 2026. The provisional schedule was announced by the British Fashion Council in July.