Every designer debuting at London Fashion Week undoubtedly aims to create a splash—or, in Francesca Lake’s case, to wake people up. Scheduled at the very beginning of London Fashion Week, the Jamaican-born designer’s collection Wake the Town did just that. Structurally impressive and symbolically significant in more ways than one, this strong debut confirms Lake as a worthy recipient of not one but three of the most prestigious awards in British fashion: the British Fashion Council Scholarship, The Honorable Daphne Guinness Award, and the Central Saint Martins Dean Award.
Lake’s collection is deeply rooted in her Jamaican identity, as well as her own background as a multidisciplinary artist (including ceramics, film, and prose). A key motif throughout the collection is the subversive reinterpretation of colonial-era garments through a variety of means—structure, print, and symbolism. Most striking are looks fifteen and sixteen, two crinoline dresses that close the show. The parasols accessorizing each look are made of bananas, a recognizable symbol of Jamaican resistance. Parasols, used by white British settlers to shade themselves from the sun, are in this context symbolic of the intertwined colonial constructions of race and gender. By constructing them out of bananas, Lake turns a symbol of white womanhood on its head. Although the parasol may be an antiquated accessory, Lake’s message is not—in fact, the show’s name, Wake the Town, is a call to action that resonates across several historical contexts: the town being awoken might be Montego Bay during the Baptist War of 1831, or Kingston during the 1938 labor riots, or indeed London in 2026.
While the collection is consistently an ode to Jamaican resilience in the face of oppression, it is also, like any good debut, simply a testament to Lake’s diverse skill set as a designer. Look nine, for example, features a jacket that is a stunning feat of innovative tailoring, but is not directly reminiscent of colonial-era military jackets (unlike looks six, seven, ten, and eleven). Instead, Lake shows off her technical chops, creating complex, interesting garments simply to show London what she can do.
In this way, Lake seems to be subtly prompting London to consider not only Jamaica’s rich history of resistance to colonial oppression, but also the lingering role of colonial attitudes in the modern era. Artists and designers from formerly colonized countries are often tokenized, becoming constant symbols of anti-colonial resistance. Every piece, every collection, is invariably interpreted as an explicitly political act, regardless of the artist’s true intention. The work of a British designer, for example, is arguably just as closely intertwined with the country’s colonial legacy as that of a Jamaican designer—as in Jamaica, the history, prosperity, and culture of Britain were irreversibly changed as a result of the global project of imperialism and colonialism. British designers’ work, however, is rarely interpreted as commentary on the legacy of colonialism unless that intention is made glaringly obvious. The main difference, of course, lies not in the artists themselves but in how their work is received: the Jamaican artist’s work is more readily framed through colonial history, while the British artist’s work is rarely subjected to the same scrutiny.
The collection is at once deeply rooted in Jamaica’s violent colonial past and a call to move beyond it. Lake’s nuanced commentary on history, colonialism, and the construction of race and gender permeates the entire collection, alongside her raw technical prowess. Arresting and structurally complex, Francesca Lake’s multilayered debut collection functions as intended: it is a wake-up call in more ways than one.
