Tifaret’s SS26 Explores Shanghai Docklands’ Elegance, Grit and Global Exchange

There are collections that you view, and then there are collections that make you feel as if you’ve stepped into another world entirely. Pai Tou by Tifaret belongs to the latter. From the first look, the runway felt like stepping onto the 1930s Shanghai docklands a place thick with stories, movement, and secrets. The designer didn’t just reference the port; she lived inside it. You can sense it in the way the clothing captures tales of sailors, the coded language of sex workers, the quiet politics of business at the docks, and even the eerie poetry of modern piracy.

Victorian-influenced silhouettes framed the narrative, but it was the colour story that pulled me in first. Electric blues lit up the runway like neon reflections on water. Gold tones glowed under the lights like lanterns swinging in a harbor breeze. Chinese and tropical florals softened the mood, while the darker pieces, cargo coats, sharply cut trousers and structured jackets brought in the dockside grit, adding a shadow, a weight, a grounding.

The lighting played its own role. Every time the spotlight moved across a look, the fabrics seemed to warm, glow, and shift. The bolder pieces especially the trousers and the heavy coats didn’t lose their edge. Instead, they grew even more defined, as if each look was stepping forward to introduce itself personally.

What I loved most was the emotional anchor beneath all the theatrics. The collection pays tribute to the designer’s mother, one of the first women present at Shanghai’s international trade fairs in the 1990s. Suddenly, the port wasn’t just a backdrop; it became a lineage. A bridge between mother and daughter, between Shanghai and London, between memory and imagination.

For me, that was the heart of “Pai Tou”: the sense that every garment carried a story, a whisper, or a piece of someone’s life. This wasn’t just a fashion collection. It was storytelling layered, intimate, and unexpectedly moving.

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Catwalk Images by Chrisy Ates

Written by Maria Jonah