At London Fashion Week, Marks & Spencer showed something more interesting than a retailer’s ability to put on a fashion show.
It showed how lingerie can move from being the foundation of an outfit to becoming part of its expression.
Across the Spring/Summer 2027 shows, the body was back in view. Designers explored sensuality, craft and clothes made for pleasure and social life. Bras, lace and bodywear appeared as deliberate elements of a look, shaping the silhouette and giving it character. Lingerie was no longer waiting for a glimpse beneath a jacket. It was helping to decide how the jacket would be worn.
For Concepts Paris, this feels like a natural evolution of the 24-hour wardrobe. Women do not live in separate compartments called lingerie, fashion, leisure and eveningwear. They move between them, choosing what feels right for the moment and for themselves. The opportunity for lingerie is to join that conversation with all its beauty, technical knowledge and emotional power intact.
M&S was an especially compelling name to see on the London Fashion Week schedule. Its show at the Design Museum celebrated 100 years of M&S fashion, bringing womenswear, menswear and lingerie onto one runway. It also put a familiar British wardrobe in a new light.
The much-discussed look worn by Jodie Kidd made the point beautifully: a green Sabine longline balcony bra beneath a leather jacket, paired with a pencil skirt. The bra was neither hidden nor presented as a provocation. It belonged to the outfit. Tailoring gave it a frame; the lingerie gave the look its energy.
That idea ran through other looks, including lace bodies and teddies worn as visible fashion pieces. Soozie Jenkinson, Head of Design for Lingerie at M&S, told Concepts Paris that the Margot lace teddy and Emma stretch-lace body drew on the brand’s intimate apparel heritage while allowing women “greater freedom to express their personal style and wear pieces in ways that feel individual and contemporary.”
That word, freedom, matters.
The question is no longer whether a bra may be seen. It is what a woman wants to do with it. She might wear lace under a shirt, a body with tailoring, or a beautiful bra beneath an open jacket. She decides how much to reveal and how to combine it with the rest of her wardrobe.
M&S has an advantage here that a runway alone cannot create: women already trust its lingerie. For generations, the brand has been present through first bras, everyday favourites and changing bodies and needs. Its offer reaches from accessible lace to more luxurious fabrics, and from practical essentials to pieces chosen simply for their beauty. That breadth gives its new fashion message substance.
It also raises the stakes. If lingerie is to take a bigger place in fashion, it must offer more than a photogenic styling trick. The construction must work. The materials must feel good. The design must give women a reason to return after the excitement of the show has passed. This is where M&S’s long experience in intimates could make its fashion direction genuinely persuasive.
At Concepts Paris, we have long argued that lingerie deserves a place in the whole wardrobe. Its future cannot be reduced to a choice between comfort and seduction, or between technical function and fashion. Women want these qualities to work together, in combinations that reflect their different lives and longings.
M&S’s London Fashion Week debut gave that possibility a public stage. The most promising message was wonderfully simple: lingerie is already part of how women dress. Now the wider fashion world is beginning to see it.