The tartan suit came down a London runway with coins stitched into its cloth. Tartan is familiar enough to make a tailored jacket immediately readable; the coins interrupt that familiarity. At Sarah Regensburger's Spring Summer 2027 presentation, the runway report published by KIMU identified them as Iranian Panj coins, connected to a motif passed down from the designer's grandmother. The suit did not have to abandon its jacket and trouser structure to carry a second history. Its surface became the place where an inherited object and a widely recognised Western dress code met. A body moved inside both.
Regensburger was born in Germany to an Iranian family and is based in London. She explains on her own site that for years she kept quiet about her family's origins because she feared they would make acceptance harder. Her collection, Diaspora: The Art of Belonging, marks a decision to put that history into public view. Yet the interest of the clothes is not exhausted by the disclosure. A suit has to fit; a coin has weight; embroidery must be placed and secured; a coat made from an unfamiliar material has to survive assembly. The question running through her work is how a garment can hold conviction without losing the pleasures and difficulties of being worn.
The British Fashion Council's current profile dates the label to 2019 and identifies its vegan approach. It lists earlier collections, including The Coven, I Am a Rebel and The Trinity, as well as the latest Diaspora runway. Those titles suggest a continuing interest in groups, belief and defiance, but the actual garments are more varied than a single manifesto might imply. A sharply cut tartan dress, a partly cactus-based coat and a tight fringe top answer different needs. Each gives the wearer a different way to occupy a room.
The visible inheritance
The designer's collection statement names coins, poetry, mirrors, rugs and family memories among the elements brought into Diaspora. These are objects and surfaces with different scales of intimacy. A coin can be kept close and passed between hands. A rug occupies a room and records domestic life through use. Poetry may be carried in memory before it appears on fabric. A mirror returns a person's own face to them. Placed on a runway, the references risk becoming decorative shorthand. Regensburger's more exact gestures give each one a physical task within a look: coins alter a suit's surface; a patterned cloth changes the face of an outer layer; a textile associated with a home is taken onto a moving body.
The BFC look sequence names a Persian rug-inspired look, an Atish knitwear set, a Baluchistan needlework piece, a Termeh look, a Mah dress, a Zendegi suit and several catsuits. The designer's site identifies further combinations: the Baluchistan Needlework Jacket with Banana Jorts, a Bandari Top and Diaspora Skirt, and a Paisley Banana Leather Blazer. A look name alone cannot establish every fibre or technique in the finished garment. It does reveal the range of categories she chooses to work with. There is tailoring, knitwear, a short, a dress and the close-fitting catsuit. In each, a reference to home has to negotiate a different bodily function.
The jorts are especially instructive. Their familiar casual shape sits beside a jacket named for needlework. The outfit does not treat heritage as something reserved for formal dress. A pair of shorts changes the terms of the jacket, allowing a craft reference to enter a less ceremonial register. The paisley blazer likewise holds a recognisable tailoring form even as its surface and stated banana leather material alter the expectation of what that form is made from. A name cannot tell us how either piece feels against the body. It can show that Regensburger keeps returning to known garments as a base for unfamiliar surfaces and combinations.
A report from the presentation describes Baluchi needlework made by young women in Baluchistan through Loug Chokan. Crediting their work matters. A designer can choose where an embroidery enters a jacket, but the stitching has its own makers. The same report credits stylist Rebekah Roy, shoes by Sophie Park, hats by Katherine Elizabeth Millinery, jewellery by Farids Design and henna by Huq That. The runway's effect was assembled by many hands. Separating those contributions from Regensburger's garment design makes the clothes clearer, not smaller.
A family at the end of the runway
The Diaspora show ended with Regensburger and her mother together in leaf-print suits, according to both the designer's site and KIMU's runway account. KIMU describes a T-shirt bearing the Panj sign at the front and 1962 in Farsi on the back, the year of her mother's birth. Such a detail can sound like a caption until one thinks about where it sits. A date placed behind the wearer becomes visible as she passes. It asks the audience to look at the person leaving as well as the person arriving. A mother's birth year becomes part of a public collection without requiring the wearer to explain it at every encounter.
In a Reuters interview recorded at the show, Regensburger explained the collection through the experience of growing up in Germany with an Iranian family and later finding a home in London. She wanted to show a culture larger than its appearance in the news. The statement helps locate the show's urgency in her own words. It does not turn every coin or garment into a compulsory symbol. Clothes can let a wearer decide how openly to carry a reference. The runway made Regensburger's choice public; the garments may travel into other lives with meanings she cannot control.
The show used performance as well as dress. KIMU reported an opening by BombayMami, a Sufi dance by Maryam and a soundtrack by DJ Kiki Fazli incorporating the voices of young women from Baluchistan. Those contributions gave the audience more than a static sequence of looks. Their presence also places a limit on what can be credited to the garments alone. A catsuit can change how a performer moves, and movement can reveal its cut. The music, voice and dance bring their own authorship.
When a new material resists
Regensburger's vegan position is clear on her brand's about page: the label says it uses no animal-derived materials. She has worked with bamboo fur and cactus-based leather alternatives and has described a desire to make glamorous clothes without using animals. A product page gives more useful detail than a general claim about innovation. The I Am Cactus Coat has an elongated tailored fit and a belt at the waist. Its body is listed as 80 percent polyurethane and 20 percent cactus fibre, with a polyester-cotton backing and a recycled polyester lining printed with the label's Rebel design. The coat was listed as made in Germany from fabric made in Mexico. Those figures specify what “cactus leather” means in this piece: a composite material containing plant fibre, rather than a coat made entirely from cactus.
The composition does not lessen the importance of the designer's animal-free choice. It does prevent the word plant from doing all the explanatory work. Polyurethane affects what the surface can do, the backing gives it structure, and a lining changes how it feels when the coat is put on. A belt lets the wearer alter the outline rather than accept one fixed waist. The shop lists specialist dry cleaning and says not to wash or iron the coat. These practical instructions belong to its life after the runway. A material called innovative still has to be handled, cleaned and repaired in the ordinary world.
At an October 2026 discussion hosted by Vegan Fashion Repository, Regensburger spoke about why she chose animal-free design before starting the label. The organisers also recalled her story of a cactus coat that could not be glued. That small construction problem is more revealing than a seamless claim of progress. It suggests a designer and maker having to discover how an unfamiliar material can be joined. A new substrate may not accept the methods that work on a conventional coated cloth. The garment can succeed only when the design is adjusted to the material's behaviour, rather than when the material's novelty is announced.
There are different questions about the animal-free choice and the environmental effect of a garment. The first is an ethical rule the brand can set and explain. The second requires evidence about fibre content, manufacturing, transport, use and disposal for particular pieces. The cactus coat's product composition gives a good beginning, not a complete life-cycle account. Regensburger's own pages make broad claims about limiting harm. The specific coat shows the more complicated work beneath them: a composite body, backing, lining, a shaped fit and care requirements. It deserves to be understood at that level of detail.
The shape beneath the statement
The same concern with cut appears in a garment whose cloth is much more familiar. Regensburger's Warrior Dream Dress is made from a purple tartan the brand says was locally sourced and produced in the United Kingdom. Its top is cut like a low corset. The skirt is gathered to make volume, shorter on one side, with a veil of fabric at the back. A rear zip secures it. The product record gives the main fabric as 65 percent polyester and 35 percent viscose, with cotton binding, and says an earlier red colourway appeared at the label's September 2022 London show.
That description makes the dress legible in three dimensions. The corset-like top holds the torso; the uneven hem changes the rhythm of the legs; the back veil becomes most visible when the wearer turns or walks away. The skirt's gathers create fullness without making the whole garment equally large. Tartan is not asked to carry the entire effect as a sign of rebellion. Its lines are bent by drape, shortening and motion. The brand's local textile claim applies to this specific fabric.
Regensburger's fringe pieces work at another scale. The Goddess Summer Top is listed as 97 percent polyester and 3 percent elastane, made in the United Kingdom. The page describes a close, slightly cropped, semi-sheer fit with a gathered high neck and fringe texture. Matching long gloves are sold separately. In the Goddess Summer Dress, the brand describes a close upper body opening into an A-shaped lower section, with gathering at neck and hem. The two pieces show how a textile treatment can recur without giving the same result. A top must work beside trousers; a mini dress can carry the texture over more of the body.
The separate gloves are a small but telling decision. A wearer can add or remove the extension from wrist to arm, changing the outline without replacing the central garment. Regensburger's glove product page identifies the same polyester-elastane blend and stretch as in the top. The pieces are visually emphatic, but their modularity offers a practical choice. It is one way the label's punk and glamour references become clothing rather than simply a styling instruction. The wearer has a hand in determining how complete the look becomes.
From Rebel to Diaspora
The brand's Season 22 page describes I Am a Rebel through the stories of women working for change. Earlier Coven and Trinity collections are listed in the BFC archive. The language of rebellion and collective power is part of Regensburger's public vocabulary. Diaspora brings the question closer to her family. The coins, birth year and mother-and-daughter finale identify particular people and objects rather than an abstract rebel figure. That movement does not erase the label's earlier clothes. It gives the statement a more specific wearer and a more exact set of things to carry.
The designer's Season 24 statement turns to the sun, moon, darkness and light; the accompanying pieces include fringe tops, dresses, gloves and knitwear. The subject is broad, while the product records make it tangible. A gathered neckline needs stretch. A fringe surface changes the outline whenever the body moves. A removable glove lets the wearer choose a larger or smaller gesture. By the time Diaspora placed coins on a suit and pattern across a blazer, Regensburger had already developed a vocabulary of clothes that could announce themselves through texture while keeping familiar cuts close at hand.
Her work therefore asks for two kinds of attention at once. The public story concerns Iranian family memory, a German childhood, a London home and an animal-free design rule. The close view concerns a coin's attachment, a corset top's hold, a coat's layered composition and the small freedom of putting on gloves or leaving them off. Neither view is sufficient alone. The clothes become more interesting when belief has to answer to construction and when construction makes the belief visible without turning the wearer into an illustration.
The tartan suit remains the sharpest example. It kept the recognisable authority of tailoring and made room on its surface for objects inherited from another life. At the runway's end, Regensburger and her mother wore matching suits, making the family relationship unmistakable. The collection may begin with the designer's own history, but it does not end there. A suit leaves the show with a new wearer. Its cloth, coins, fit and movement will determine whether the story can travel with that person as something lived, rather than simply read.