Most girls grow up dreaming of their wedding dress; if you’re like me, you skipped straight to the revenge dress, only to find that Dreaming Eli has somehow cracked the code for wearing your emotional baggage with absolute style.
Step inside the Barts North Wing at St Bartholomew’s Hospital, and the room doesn’t just hold an audience; it holds a century of secrets. Victorian ceilings stretch overhead, the corridors hum with things they’ll never say out loud, and you get the distinct, spine-tingling sensation that the walls are watching you right back. It is the kind of impeccably gothic backdrop that makes you half-expect Tim Burton to pop out from behind a pillar taking frantic notes.
It was the ultimate stage for Elisa Trombatore to present Spring/Summer 27, and the only place dark enough to confront a question most of us spend our adult lives actively avoiding: what actually happens to the wide-eyed dreams of childhood once you grow up, move to London, and start carrying the heavy weight of every heartbreak, scar, and hard-earned lesson along the way?
Victorian, Vampire, Sultry
Trombatore’s notes imagine an empty house with eroded curtains, set against a burning sky, where two curtains move in a slow wind “like two lovers going through life together.” Naturally, the North Wing gave that image a home: a place with stories to tell and tears absorbed into its fibres. Thus, it felt tender, a little ruined, and entirely deliberate.
On the runway, the look was Victorian with a vampiric edge: regal, sultry and unashamedly sexy. Corsetry led the way, with boned bodices and lingerie-inspired pieces that gave the silhouettes real structure, holding you together when everything else feels frayed. Grounding dainty dresses with chunky platforms, the collection made the bold contrast work. Softness on top, weight underneath, and a wearer who is clearly carrying her past and striding forward anyway.
Although the palette stayed neutral, black and white, but this was not minimalism. The layering, distressing and detail were rich enough that the clothes did all the speaking, turning every patch and tear into a badge of honour.
From Sicily to London
The story starts in childhood, with Sicily at its centre: inherited traditions, old photographs, domestic objects and the small traces of home that you pack away in your emotional carry-on. Yet, it isn’t nostalgia in soft focus, though. Rather, Trombatore knows that the rituals that give us belonging also draw its borders, meaning the familiar is never entirely innocent. Anyone who has walked back into a family kitchen as a changed, weary person will recognise the feeling.
Then the dreamer leaves. London, with its urgency and perpetual speed, turns her into a wanderer, piling on the late nights, the lessons, and the baggage. Consequently, the body becomes a living record of the journey, with tattoos acting as physical scars for what was lost, survived, and ultimately carried forward. Each character on the runway marked a stage of this accumulation: innocence, desire, disillusionment, resistance, and renewal. It’s a coming-of-age story without the tidy ending, because true emotional baggage doesn’t vanish—it just gets tailored.
The Craft and the Verdict
The distressing has grown up, mirroring the weight we carry. Silks are broken and manipulated, while cotton and gauze are layered, with white set against a harsher black and blush and rose in the mix. Hand painting returns from last season and goes further, with adorned fabrics that look vintage and lived-in, like old photographs collaged with ruffles and pearls—every version of your past self, strung together to make the baggage-toting adult you are now.
New this season is screen printing, drawing on baroque Sicilian churches and tribal-inspired tattoos. It’s holy and hell-raising in one print, capturing the internal friction of moving through life. Dreaming Eli pushes last season’s vinyl to the edge, combining denim, lace, and vinyl until they read as a tough, protective skin. Ripping through hand-cut lace exposes the layers beneath, laying bare the truth that what you survive writes itself right on the surface.
Underfoot, the Wild Hearts Bleed Platform Heels return in a satin finish, with blush and rose joining the core
colours—built sturdy enough to walk you through any emotional storm. The New Pearl 3D bags, 3D printed with Harry Mack and engineered by Unit9, tie the collection together as the ultimate vessels for your heaviest secrets.
Final Thoughts
The cleverest thing about SS27 is that it refuses to pretend we arrive unblemished. The dream refuses pristine preservation in glass, and it refuses surrender. It crashes against reality, embraces the scuffs, and turns out more complex, more grounded, and thoroughly wearable. Adulthood doesn’t kill the dreamer; it just gives her heavier bags to style.
If Dreaming Eli isn’t on your radar yet, this is the season to fix that. The dream gets scarred, patched, stitched with pearls, and turned into the chicest baggage you’ll ever own.
On the constant edge between dream and reality, it’s in this fight—and with all this baggage—that you truly exist.
