“So many people asked us what we were going to do after the Wedding show and we decided, spontaneously, that the answer was… nothing,” said Jordan Bowen and Luca Marchetto, in a note mailed out to press last night. The “Wedding show” they’re referring to was of course January’s AW25 offering, where the JordanLuca designers tied the knot at the catwalk close, bringing the house down in floods of tears, as friends, family and fashion people looked on. Admittedly, it’s a tough act to follow, which is why the pair decided to scale it back to “nothing”, skipping the catwalk altogether and delivering SS26 as a lookbook instead.
But for Bowen and Marchetto, “nothing” is actually getting out of bed at six in the morning, lacing up some trainers, chucking heaving weights about and downing a protein shake all before sunrise – which, let me tell you, is definitely not “nothing”. Yes, JordanLuca hit the gym for SS26, and if Milan memberships are anything like London’s then it was probably at the expense of their entire catwalk show.
Shot inside an actual training space, the duo describe this collection as “self-referential and symbolically charged: a confrontation with discipline and physical and psychological transformation.” In the shots, tough guys in grey sweats hang out by the bench press while some models push themselves to the limits of exertion, and others just look bored by the dumbbells. Sandblasted denim and fierce, spiked jewellery reflects the strength of the surroundings, while floating vests defy gravity and peel off the body (probably due to all that sweat).
Elsewhere, sweat sets are splashed with a cursive ‘JordanLuca’ logo, as is a checkered shirt, while gym bags take the form of a leather duffel or faux croc crossbodies. The tripled tiered boxers are back – which were first introduced as part of a Lonsdale collab for AW23 – but that’s not the only British iconography the designers are playing with. While one model sports a shabby looking Union Jack kilt with a slogan tee that says ‘THE QUEEN IS DEAD’ on it, another reclines on a bench, a pink-skied Stonehenge printed on her top.
Scroll through the gallery above for the entire gym rat lookbook